Official Report 849KB pdf
Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection, and our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Dr Karen Campbell, parish minister of Marchmont St Giles in Edinburgh and national chaplain for the Royal British Legion Scotland.
Tonight, in the Usher hall, “Scotland’s Salute - A Tribute to VE-Day 80th Anniversary Concert” takes place. I will lead a time of remembrance, with an opportunity to take a minute of silence to remember the sacrifice of the second world war generation.
As I stand there tonight, one of the people I will remember is Ken, who was wounded at Monte Cassino. His unit went into a bombed-out building. Half of them went to one side and were immediately killed. Ken’s side survived, but Ken and some of his comrades were very badly wounded.
Ken was put on a stretcher, and they proceeded up the road. As each mortar came in, the stretcher bearers dropped him to the ground and dived into the gully at the side of the road. That went on several times, until Ken pointed out that they were heading towards the enemy—so they turned around, went back up the road and the whole palaver began again.
Soon, he was picked up by an American jeep and taken to a US field hospital, where he was given penicillin. He always said that he was one of the first Brits to get the drug, which we did not have at the time. It saved his life.
He was then shipped to a hospital in north Africa. One of the Queen Alexandra nurses there was Sadie, who helped to nurse him back to health. She was soon to leave Africa to travel with her unit through Sicily into Italy, and then France and Belgium. Like Ken, she would witness unimaginable suffering.
Sadie and Ken did not see each other for 50 years, before they became next-door neighbours in their retirement complex in my parish, each with their own stories and memories, and nightmares that never left.
Before Ken got home, for 10 weeks, his wife had a telegram that read “missing, presumed dead”. He used to say that that was why he did the shopping and the cooking—to make up for the hell that she went through.
Those who have experienced war rarely talk about its horrors. When they do, they might tell funny stories, with all the horrors in plain sight but hidden by other words. As I have said, Ken and Sadie went through the unimaginable, and their thoughts were first and foremost always with their loved ones.
They were both people of faith who found Christ’s love: wide and high and deep, unchanging and tender for the most broken and vulnerable, and so profound that it shaped them to be the people they were after the war.
This victory in Europe day, I give thanks for the men and women of faith and no faith who served and made this world a place of peace and opportunity for people like you and me to live in and be the people we are without fear. Today, we must recognise how precious peace is and work to make it happen each and every day.