GOING TO CHURCH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 May 1942, Page 4

GOING TO CHURCH

WHAT HAPPENS AT DOVER ENEMY DEFIED. CONGREGATION STANDS FIRM. “Among the little houses which nestle at the foot of "the white cliffs of Dover, where one of the folds in the rolling Downs slopes gently down to the sea, stands a square-towered flint church with a little Kentish steeple and a gilded weather vane. It is the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, the nearest English parish church to the German lines,” said Mr Holt in a 8.8. C. broadcast. " i “Some of the trees in its quiet churchyard have been torn by shellfire and have taken on that tortured and anguished appearance so familiar to those of you who fought ’in the last war and saw the battlefields of Flanders,” he continued. “It’s windows have been blasted —not by bombs mind you but by artillery fire, for this church is within range of the German big guns. Time after time we hear the news that the German heavy guns have fired salvos shaking the Kentish coast. What is happening to this little parish church —the outpost of the free world?

“Today I’ve attended a service there. But first I’ll tell you something about the church. It dates back to 1203. Its peal of eight bells have rung in many 'historic events —though at one time it paid a forfeit of two shillings for failing to ring on the arrival of Henry VIII, the King who gave the church to Dover. When Charles II landed at Dover on the Restoration he was met on the beach by General Monk and they went into the church to give thanks foi’ his safe coming. An English king is buried there—King Stephen, who died at sea. Its bells rang a muffled peal for Nurse Cavell as her body passed through Dover on its way to London. But nothing in history can compare with the grandeur of the experience which the church is passing through today. “It has been shelled during Evensong, machine-gunned during other services, it had its Easter service disturbed by terrific cannonade. Now there’s a book there, after a sort of lodger, but it has columns ruled for the services held and so on. Items such as these appear in the remarks columns: ‘Today’—this was one Sunday in June, 1940—‘a smell of burning was noticed during the service. It was afterwards found that it was coming from Boulogne’—and again ‘Shortbombardment during service. Very disturbed night.’ And ‘Christmas Eve, shelling.’ Another recent entry runs: ' ‘Mayor and Corporation attended divine service. Machine-gunned from air.’ And another: ‘Church damaged by gunfire from the French coast.’ It reads like the log of a ship on a perilous voyage. You can reconstruct the events from it. Page after page it goes on. On one occasion machinegun bullets came in through a stained glass window—which pictured ‘The Good Samaritan’—and embedded themselves in a pillar eighteen inches from, the heads of the choir girls during service. The congregation didn’t stir, but stood firm, and as the service went on the noise of battle died away. Well, I sometimes hear religious folk scoffed at, but one could hardly call such church-goers as these spineless, senile or soft. “The vicar has conducted burial services in the churchyard while shrapnel has been falling into the shrubbery, read from the Bible about death while death reached ardund and above him. ‘O death where is thy sting’. During the last week he has buried a local engine driver who had been shot on the footplate of his locomotive by a Messerschmitt. Weddings, baptisms and burials go on as usual at this front line church. There was a christening there this afternoon at half-past three. It is a common sight to see ;perambulators standing outside the door of the church although they are liable to be hit by fifteen-inch shells .which may fall at any time during the night or day without warning. And at the doorway is one of the Government notices concerning evacuation headed grimly in red letters ‘Dangers of Invasion.’ The vicarage has been smashed up and the vicar is 'now 'living in h little cottage with an old blind parishioner and her daughter. The early 'registers and other old documents Of the •church have been buried for safety,”