Over 5,000 British priests and pastors served as army chaplains or padres during the First World War. Their job was to provide spiritual guidance for the soldiers and to boost the morale of the men at the front. The grim realities of the job included scenes they hardly could have imagined.
Often
stationed just behind the lines at first aid posts and casualty clearing
stations, padres ministered to wounded and dying men. In a war in which bodies were often torn
apart or abandoned in No Man's Land, padres assisted in retrieving and
identifying soldiers' remains and giving them burial. They frequently had to deliver news of men's
death to their comrades-in-arms, and theirs was the gut-wrenching duty of
providing solace to men who had deserted and were to be shot by their fellow
soldiers at dawn. The BBC webpage "Why did chaplains end up on the front line
in WW1?"
tells more of their stories.
Geoffrey
Studdert Kennedy was not only a padre, but a poet. His poem "Lighten our Darkness," shares
the struggles of a man wrestling with his faith and his God in the midst of
war.
Lighten
our Darkness
Lighten
our darkness, Lord, in bygone years,
Oft have I prayed and thought on childish fears,
Glad in my heart that, when the day was dead,
God's four white angels watched about my bed.
Lighten our darkness! Kneeling in the mud,
My hands still wet and warm with human blood,
Oft have I prayed it! Perils of this night!
Sorrow of soldiers! Mercy, give us light.
Lighten our darkness! Black upon the mind
Questions and doubts, so many paths that wind,
Worlds of blind sorrow crying out for sight.
Peace, where is Peace? Lord Jesus, give us light.
Lighten our darkness! Stumbling to the end,
Millions of mortals feeling for a friend,
Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?
Flame through the darkness, Lord, and give us Light.
--Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy
Oft have I prayed and thought on childish fears,
Glad in my heart that, when the day was dead,
God's four white angels watched about my bed.
Lighten our darkness! Kneeling in the mud,
My hands still wet and warm with human blood,
Oft have I prayed it! Perils of this night!
Sorrow of soldiers! Mercy, give us light.
Lighten our darkness! Black upon the mind
Questions and doubts, so many paths that wind,
Worlds of blind sorrow crying out for sight.
Peace, where is Peace? Lord Jesus, give us light.
Lighten our darkness! Stumbling to the end,
Millions of mortals feeling for a friend,
Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?
Flame through the darkness, Lord, and give us Light.
--Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy
The
poem begins with a memory: in
"bygone years," when he was safe at home and in his
bed, a man remembers praying for God's light in response to his "childish fears." The second stanza repeats the
prayer, but this time an exclamation point marks the desperate urgency and need
in his very different current circumstances:
"Lighten our darkness!"
Three more exclamation points in the stanza communicate the mental
anguish that prompts his call to God.
He
kneels in prayer, not at his own comfortable bedside, but rather in mud on a
battlefield, his hands "still wet and warm with human blood." In the muck and gore of the Western Front, in
the darkness and dangers of the night, he calls out to God, simply naming him "Mercy."
The
third stanza again repeats the prayer for light. Darker than the terrors of the battlefield,
however, are the bleak, internal struggles of the mind. The man's "Questions and doubts"
are likened to the maze-like paths of the trench system that are estimated to
have stretched for over 25,000 miles if laid end-to-end. Like the zig-zagging trenches that are shored
up with dead bodies and are full of misery and fear, the man's doubts are
life-threatening. From the blackness of
his thoughts, "Worlds of blind sorrow" cry out for sight. Each dead man encapsulates a world of his own
-- a home, a family, friends, dreams -- and the padre carries with him worlds
and worlds of grief that have blinded him with tears and with the inability to
see past the losses.
He begs
the question "Peace, where is Peace?" No answer is given, and so he
again prays for light, this time addressing Jesus directly. It is as if the speaker knows that an end to
the fighting is nowhere in sight, but if light can be given, he can endure the
war. Light signifies both hope and
vision: he prays for insights that will
reveal that the war has purpose or meaning.
The
last stanza extends that prayer: it is not just one man who struggles, but
"millions of mortals feeling for a friend" in the darkness. The double sense of the word "feeling"
suggests both emotional attachment and a blind man's reaching out to find the
way.
In the
poem's last line, however, the seeker turns from a plea for
meaning to a prayer for Presence. The
man asks God to "Flame through the darkness," an image that recalls
the pillar of fire that embodied the holy presence of God that led the Moses
and the Israelites in their wanderings through the desert. Like Moses, it is as if the supplicant
relinquishes his need for answers and control, saying "If Your Presence
does not go with us, do not bring us up from here" (Exodus 33:14). Even though he may "stumble to the end,"
it is possible to move forward if God's flame, whether pillar of fire or candle
light, is there with him.
Studdert Kennedy
is one of the best-known and loved chaplains of the First World War. Nicknamed
"Woodbine Willie" because he shared cigarettes of that name with soldiers,
he was known for his humble willingness to simply stand alongside the fighting
men and do what he could to lessen their suffering. Further details of his life and service can
be found here and here.
When
he died on March 8, 1929, as his body lay in state in Liverpool, over 1,700
mourners paid their respects in a single day.
Studdert Kennedy once wrote, "Nobody worries about Christ as long
as he can be shut up in churches. He is
quite safe there. But there is always
trouble if you try to let him out."
Studdert Kennedy loved a dangerous God that he wrestled with on
the battlefields of the First World War.
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