A GOLDEN THREAD.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 36, Issue 6, 1 September 1945, Page 13

A GOLDEN THREAD.

Eucharist m German Prison Camps. Through the uncharted wastes of captivity stretched the golden thread of Holy Eucharist for the Christian prisoner of war m Germany. In the bewildering, footsore days after capture/ and the lean months of readjustment m the first camp the steps of the meanest altar led straight to the heart of reality. , Many men found the presence of Christ there, some for the first time .m their lives. They came, not to altars decked with* the splendour of tradition, but furnished barely and unworthily, yet contrived with all the ingenuity of love. It was a poor best, but the best. The bareness of the table seemed only to enhance the glory of the Feast. In the great barracks where most officers found themselves m 194(X the garage became the church. It was a long T-shaped building, new and clean; with eight great double-doors down one side, and an attractive timber roof. At one end of the concrete floor was the wooden altar, set with candles,, crucifix and makeshift linen. The priests, of course, wore no vestments of any kind. They stood there m worn battle-dress — all- they had— with two army chalices and patens, wafers from the village pastor and Moselle from the canteen. Sunday by Sunday three hundred men knelt for their Communion. There was something splendid m their approach, "as naked/ to the King of Glory" : they possessed so little, yet received so much. Communions as m Catacombs. In the same camp, at that time, Mass for the men m the sick bay became an adventure like life m the early Church. Nobody was allowed m there; still less might a padre hold a service. So regularly, one of them used to slip m very early m the morning, and from a pool of candlelight m the middle of the dark ward would carry the Blessed Sacrament to the beds of those who had asked the night before to be roused. The rest slept on; and the priest departed through the wash-room doors before the^ first German orderly arrived to take the morning, temperatures. In another isolated ward the inhabitants were suffering ■ from scabies. It was a comfortless place, ill-lit and stuffy. There, like lost leprous souls, perforce unshaven and dabbed with foyil ointment, they stood m coarse nightshirts to receive their Communion.

That first Christmas, among 1200 officers and men, 500 communicants met at the Anglican altar alone. The days before had been joyously busy m preparation. "Padre, I. have not made by Communion for 27 years : how do I set about it?" So, greying colonel and boy, they got ready. There were first Communions, too. For the unconfirmed we had no bishop; but daily, round and round the courtyard, instruction went on, till the aspirant, being "ready and desirous to be confirmed," came pre^ pared to the Holy Sacrament. The Daily Sacrifice. Almost from the beginning a, small room was acquired as a weekday chapel. . The authorities, always fearful of any unsupervised priestly activity, permitted its use only "so long as no layman was present. So three Roman and 16 Anglican padres shared it; and every day their Masses were offered m this still centre of the spinning camp. From this beginning the daily Eucharist was maintained m one camp after another, as m the years that followed padres were moved or got themselves distributed. In .baroque castle chapel, m window embrasures above the ramparts' (for reredos an iron grille and the distant Bavarian alps), m chilly Nissen huts on the Rouen racecourse, where languished the victims of the first repatriation debacle, m the classroom of the Polish high school, wherever two or three could be gathered" together, there was offered the Holy Sacrament. •■'•■-• The wooden chapel, of one Stalag, where 900 Australians were the smallest national unit, served many differences of administrations, but the same Lord. The Serbian Orthodox liturgy, the French, and later the Italian Masses, the French Protestant services and the English Eucharist were said at the same altar. But of the Australians, nearly all were scattered over an area as big as Yorkshire, and their padre's visits could only be few and far between. Here the golden thread wore very thin. But the more tenuous it became the more vital seemed the responsibility which hung upon., it. Where men lived m uncongenial, never-changing routine, where freedom of spirit arid security of mind were the paramount needs, there the Blessed' Sacrament stood unassailed. Barbed wire melted when " the heavens opened. J. H. K. m the. "Church Times."