Whilst reading the Norman Kirby book mentioned in a previous post, I came across this incident. It is worth considering what challenges the Christian goes through in life to question his or her faith.
Here he is describing the aftermath of the Battle of Falaise Gap:-
It was this valley which during the fierce battles of 18 to 20 August [1944] became trapped with the choked traffic of German tanks, guns and transport at the mercy of Allied air attack by rocket-firing Typhoons in all their ear-splitting fury. As the gap closed, the escape routes for the German Army had become blocked, not only by rocket and shell-fire, but also by the wreckage of burning vehicles, by their own exploding ammunition and by the stampeding of terrified horses entangled in their harness, dragging their waggons and gun carriages with them. Ten thousand Germans died in this battle and fifty thousand were taken prisoner.
There was hardly any room for my vehicle to pass through the gruesome piles of bodies of men and horses. When our next site beyond Falaise had been chosen I came back through the same dreadful scene, and the following day was on my motorbike again, riding in escort for the main body of Tac HQ. It was here that occurred to me one of the worst mishaps of my life in Normandy. With the bodies of dead Germans heaped high on each side of the road, my motorbike broke down and refused to go any further. Meanwhile our convoy moved on, overtook me, passing out of sight to leave me alone. The maintenance of my vehicle was my own responsibility, but this was no routine job and demanded the skill of an expert mechanic and the resources of our Motor Transport (MT) workshop, which unfortunately had disappeared into the distance.
The heat was intense, the smell nauseating and I decided to push my motorboke into the shade of a tree which stood up starkly on a hill in front of me in silhouette against the sky. When I reached it I found that it was not a tree at all but the roasted bodies of a German tank crew trapped at waist and knees in the opening of the turret with their blackened arms and charred faces stretched upwards, locked tightly in a frantic effort to escape from their burning tank. It was nightfall when the MT crew, having noticed my absence, eventually made their way back along this road of death to resuce me from my forlorn and grisly vigil. Many of the dead were mere boys, some of them looked no more than fourteen years old. I had taught boys of that age and taken them to Scout camps.
There was much to think about during those hours spent in their company. It was not long after arriving in darkness at the new camp site that I was taken ill with dysentery and with what I can only describe as a spiritual sickness involving religious values and anxiety about life and death and human destiny. Why was the reality of war so slow to make its full impact? I don't think it was due to a sluggish imagination. I had seen newsreels of the war, experienced the London Blitz, heard my father talk, sparingly it must be said, about some of the horrors of Mons, Ypres and Passchendale in the trenches of the First World War, and I had recently taken part in the stirring and disturbing climax of D-Day. Perhaps the truth is that up to that moment I had been enjoying (yes enjoying!) too much the feeling of being on some unique mission; still intoxicated by the adventure of Overlord and the awareness, encouraged by our politicians and war leaders, of being part of history, and too busy with endless duties to meditate on the larger issues of life and death. The odd church parade was no substitute for such an appraisal. It required five hours of solitary confinement in the company of ten thousand dead men to bring the real message of war home to me.
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