SIR – My father George Henry Powis Benbow, a native of Shelsley Beauchamp, near Worcester, enlisted in the Worcestershire Regiment in 1915, aged 15 years.
He served on the Western Front until the end of the war being wounded twice and gassed. He joined the Worcestershire Constabulary on release and died at Severn Stoke in 1974.
He brought home a simple wooden crucifix bearing the words in German For God and Fatherland which he found on the battlefield – a gift from a Christian family to a soldier of the Kaiser’s Army setting out to war.
This passed to the family and we were pleased when the vicar and churchwardens of Shelsley Beauchamp church accepted it as a gift and allowed it to be installed suitably inscribed in the church next to the memorial to the dead of two world wars.
Over the years when I have visited Shelsley Beauchamp church I’ve thought of my grandmother praying for the safe return of her son, my father, and at the same time thought of the German family praying to the same God for the safe return of their loved one.
To Christian families on different sides praying to the same God in the war to end all wars. To be followed in 1939 by another war – and so we continue.
What a waste.
F G A BENBOW,
Ross-on-Wye.
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