War stories

With the anniversary of D-Day in mind, here are three vignettes to reflect on.

This June sees the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings on D-Day 1944. We have all been beneficiaries of the freedom which resulted from the efforts of many ordinary men and women in the Second World War.

During the war God was at work in many different ways. Here are three brief stories from the lives of people from different countries on which it is worthwhile to reflect.

A British spy

The exploits of Wing Commander F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas as a British agent in France, his imprisonment, terrible torture and his eventual escape are told in the book The White Rabbit by Bruce Marshall.

In February 1944, Yeo-Thomas was parachuted into France. However, he was betrayed and captured in Paris. He was then taken by the Gestapo to their headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch and subjected to water-boarding and innumerable physical beatings and electric shocks. Held in Fresnes prison, he made two failed attempts to escape.

There were four men in the cell above his and he found ways of communicating with them regularly. In return for the consolation of the daily contact he tried to encourage them by promising them that it would not be long before the Allies invaded France and set them free.

Then one night he had a dream which seemed to be more than an ordinary dream. In his dream he saw a large calendar whose leaves kept slowly flicking over until they stopped at June 5. His biographer says, ‘It was prophetic’. He was made to feel sure that this would be the day on which the invasion would begin. ‘Dis donc, l’Anglais, et le fameux debarquement?’ one of the men upstairs asked next day through the air vent. ‘If your invasion doesn’t take place this year we’ll all be dead.’

The man’s doubts convinced Yeo-Thomas that the dream had been sent to hearten the despondent. ‘The invasion will take place at the beginning of next week’, he told the man and, deciding that it would be imprudent too definitely to commit General Eisenhower, added: ‘On Monday or on Tuesday’. ‘How do you know?’ the man replied. ‘Don’t ask me. I know. That’s all’, he said.

He then heard the man discussing the news with his cellmates. ‘The English officer says that the invasion will take place at the beginning of next week.’ ‘Il se fout de nous.’ ‘No, he’s sure. Pass it on to the men next door.’

When, on the evening of June 5, there was still no news, Yeo-Thomas had his doubts, but to counteract this he sang loudly to buoy himself up. He dreamed that night not of calendars but of the sun shining on the green and golden fields of France. The contrast to his freezing cell when he awoke was terrible. Hopping and dancing to get warm, he heard a shout from the air vent: ‘Allo, le comerade anglais. Your comrades have landed!’ Somehow the news of the D-Day invasion had infiltrated the prison. In the depths of his dungeon he could hear the other prisoners singing the Marseillaise!

An American soldier

The bestseller Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose gives the history of Easy Company of the 506th regiment of the US 101st Airborne Division from D-Day to their capture of Hitler’s ‘Eagles Nest’ at Berchtesgarden. The TV series of the book produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg has been very popular. Private Wayne Sisk of Easy Company was part of the dangerous parachute landings on D-Day. He fought right through to the end of the war and was included in a group of soldiers detailed with the ‘elimination’ of a Nazi head of slave labour camps hiding in the Bavarian mountains.

In 1991 he wrote to his old commanding officer, Richard Winters: ‘My career after the war was trying to drink away the truckload of Krauts I stopped in Holland and the die-hard Nazi that I went up into the Bavarian Alps and killed. I was told that all the killings I did would jump into bed with me one of these days and they surely did. I had a lot of flashbacks after the war and I started drinking.

‘Then my sister’s little daughter, four-years old, came into my bedroom (I was too unbearable to the rest of the family, either hung over or drunk) and she told me that Jesus loved me and she loved me and if I would repent God would forgive me for all the men I kept trying to kill all over again.

‘That little girl got to me. I put her out of my room, told her to go to her Mommy. There and then I bowed my head on my mother’s old feather bed and repented and God forgave me for the war and all the bad things I had done down through the years. I was ordained in the latter part of 1949 into the ministry…’

A German pastor

Long before D-Day one of the most dramatic raids by the Royal Air Force during World War II was the attack by the Lancaster bombers of 617 squadron on the dams around the Ruhr in 1943. By breaching the dams and flooding the surrounding area it was hoped that much of the industry for the Nazi war effort in the Ruhr valley would be brought to a halt. The story is told in the famous book The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill.

The night of the raid, using the famous ‘bouncing bombs’ invented by Barnes-Wallis, was a night of astonishing heroism on the part of many men amid the destruction. However, perhaps the greatest hero of all was the pastor of a church.

Three miles down the valley from the Moehne dam lay the sleeping village of Himmelpforten. The name of the village means ‘Gates of Heaven’. The explosion of the bombs had wakened the village priest, Father Berkenkopf. He sensed immediately what was happening. The breaching of the dam by Allied bombing was something he had feared might happen one day. He ran to his small stone church and began grimly tugging on the bell-rope. The church bell rang out. It was the signal he had arranged with the villagers to sound the alarm if the dam was attacked. Hopefully it would alert people so that they could escape to higher ground and be saved from the deluge.

In the event it is not certain how many were warned in time. In the darkness the bell tolled out its warning. Then, as the dam broke, the sound of the bell was muffled by the noise of the thunderous flood of water, which began to race down the valley towards Himmelpforten. Father Berkenkopf must have heard the mighty torrent coming, but out of love for the people, it seems he was still pulling at the bell when the flood suddenly swept in, crushing the church and the village and rolling the debris far down the valley.

The attempts of this priest to save the people in the path of the on-rushing catastrophe provide a vivid picture of the work of the gospel ministry. Along with John the Baptist and many other great servants of God, the preacher’s principal calling is to warn men and women to ‘flee from the coming wrath’ (Luke 3.7).

A British spy

An American soldier

A German pastor

John Benton

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