Thoughtful Moments.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 20, 27 October 1944, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments.

(Supplied by the Wliakatn

AIR ACE WINS THROUGH By the Rev. H. M.D., R.A.F. Werner Moelders Colonel in the Luftwaffe, was credited with 115 victories in single combat. In liis long career of six years as fighterpilot he had fought over Spain, France Britain, the and finally Russia. His country had honoured him with the highest decoration bestowed on her brave men —the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Diamonds. He was a wizard in the air. He was also a tough customer— ruthless fearless terrifying in the relentless drive of his purpose. From school days he had been taught that his profession would be and he had learnt his lesson well. His God was his religion war, as Frischauer tells us. His prayers were Nazi songs in which Germany's enemies were consigned to destruction. His "Bible" was "Mein Kampf." Death had no terror for him. This was the conception of life and death that Nazi teachers had given Werner Moelders. First at school and then from his officer's when, he put on uniform lie had heard the same doctrine. Hitler could do no wrong; and so long as he had faith in the Fuehrer he could not fail. Wherever the Panzers blazed their flaming trails of death and destruction Werner Moelders and his comrades darkened the skies overhead. In their leisure hours they danced in the churches of countries they had bombed into surrender, or jeered at the priests being driven off to concentration camps. And presently they came to Russia. Through the. summer months they swept forward as irresistibly as ever pursuing the retreating Soviet forces over their blackened desolated countryside. The tally of Moelders' victims lengthened j and his arrogance daily increased.

A fiendish sense of power gripped him when he sat at the controls of his Messersclimitt and felt his finger rest on the. gun trigger.

In the summer skies he was still unconquerable; but when the winter came the dreadful numbing Rusian winter that locked the land in ice and froze the. skies M.oelders began to dread his daily patrols. The cold was something beyond imagination. It. deadened his senses, his. fingers almost froze to the controls; and his plane once, so swift and responsive no- longer obeyed his -commands, ice formed on the wings bearing him down. The con- '. . . trols froze into frightening rigidity. Then came the day when two Hurricanes dived on him out of a clear sky and with a damaged engine lie turned and ran for it. With his throttle wide open he screamed over the empty-snow-covered wastes with the British fighters in hot pursuit. He threw him'self. about the sky in a vain attempt to shake them off but still the tracer bullets fol-i lowed him, Hashing by his cockpit and eating into his machine. And for the first lime in liis life. Werner Moelders knew what it meant to be afraid. If he had died there, his secret would have, gone with him. His comrades would have presumed

lie Ministers' Association).

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

that lie met his end fearlessly, glorying in Ills sacrifice for his beloved Fuehrer. But by a miracle. Moelders escaped. By one of those million-' torone chances he cheated death and struggled back to his base. When lie climbed from his riddled plane lie was .shaken to his depths and ashamed of himself for his cowardice. In those terrible moments when his life hung in the balance lie had almost unconsciously whispered a few words: "God, God Almighty in Heaven, help me out of this. You alone can save me!'' Back in his own quarters Moelders shut himself up. He wanted to be alone. Often in the last year or two doubts had entered hrs mind about the Nazi creed; doubts which he had tried to stifle and rationalise but which had refused to be banished for long had now stormed the clta'del of his soul and captured it. The faith of earlier years was coming back. His thoughts carried him to his childhood home in the German town for years now he had ridiculed and rejected; lii's prayers at his mother's knee the local priest who often visited his parents his early enthusiasm and Christian leadership among boys of his own age, lii.s faith in God. Was it true that faith in Hitler and Nazi-ism could sustain him? Could lie. have survived tiie dreadful danger out there in the Russian sky if he had not found again his faith in God? To Moelders the tough Nazi came the realisation that only God had saved him. He wrote down his thoughts in a letter to the.Stettin parson t and felt, relieved from an inexplicable strain now that the. nightmare of Nazism had disappeared from liis mind. As lie left his billet and met Ills comrades Moelders the. Nazi war hero, became the missionary. It was not easy to talk to his friends about God. Moelders knew what to expect from them —the cynical laughter of youths Avho.se God was Hitler, who believed in the Luftwaffe and regarded themselves as the supreme creatures in tlll's Avorld of war. carefully, Moelders guided the conversation in the. mess to the dangerous subject. He was prepared to meet sneers, to face ridicule and contempt. Hardly had he admitted however, what moved his heart when a .strange silence fell over the crowded room. One after anotehr the men turned their faces to hide their emotion. They looked at each other from under their lids, frantically trying to discover what wa's in the other fellow's mind. Moelders. 'knew them. He saw that every one. of them had experienced his own fear in the air and that every one of them had been taught faith by his grimmest experience. He could sense how these boys were a.sliamed of their emotions how they clung to a Nazi world in which faith in God a sign of contemptible weakness how they had hidden what, they had felt all along* One. after another many of them admitted to him that they too had been praying silently secretly; that only their faith had given them strength, and that ofteii } when they were alone and in mortal danger they had cursed Hitler and his Nazis who had robbed them of their faith.