THE DEVIL OF DELVILLE WOOD
Advent is
the season of hope, of looking forward. The wise men from the east looked
forward to … what? They were not sure. But it was worth journeying through
deserts and ‘cities hostile and towns unfriendly.’ There are times when hope grows
dim. The people of Gaza today are hemmed in on every side. They have no food,
no water, no medicine, no shelter, no future.
That is
today. But there were times even more terrible. Little more than a hundred
years ago, South African soldiers fought against the German army at Delville
Wood in France. A German officer described the scene afterwards as a ‘wasteland
of shattered trees, charred and burnt stumps, craters thick with mud and blood,
and corpses, corpses everywhere. In places they were piled four deep. Worst of
all was the lowing of the wounded. It sounded like cattle in a fair….’
One man who
survived Delville Wood died only in 1998 at the age of 101. He was Joe Samuels
and he told his story a year before he died. ‘All I can say is the whole thing
was terrible; there still aren’t words for it, even now. I know what happened
to some of my own pals, I saw it. I felt as if some of my life was gone too
then. That’s how I felt I can’t say I’ve ever really got over it, even up to
now… It’s too painful, it’s too bad to think about, even now.’
How can you
speak of hope to the men of Delville Wood? Isaiah puts it this way; ‘We were
all like people unclean, all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing. We
have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind. No one
invoked your name our roused himself to catch hold of you … And yet, Lord you
are our Father; we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hand.’
There are
moments of intense suffering which expose the raw withered awfulness some of
our fellow brothers and sisters suffer. And we must call to mind they have done
no wrong that would deserve their calamity. They are suffering for us. They
experience Gaza, Delville Wood or Golgotha for us. I cannot say, ‘I am glad I was
not, or am not, there.’ I am there - if I have an ounce of feeling. No one
lives, or dies, for themselves alone. We live and die as members of each other
– our own family, which we feel intensely, and the whole human family.
In the
depths of the worst that life can throw at us, we can still ‘rouse ourselves’
to catch hold of the One who said in his worst moment, ‘My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?’ 3
December 2023 Advent Sunday 1B Is
63:16 …64:8 1 Cor 1:3-9 Mk13:33-37
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