(DSS) Padre Says Farewell 1945

From “The Tartan Grenade” (no date but 1945)
Rev’d D.S. Stiven says Farewell:
I say farewell to you and thank you all --CO, Officers, WO’s, NCOs and men -- for giving me so many happy memories to take home with me. That's the booty I go home with and it will endure longer than loot.

As I told you in my last sermon, I came to serve you in the name of the Church and to commend to you the way of life which is called Christian. If I failed by example, let the blame be mine. If I have strengthened faith and given clearer vision, let the praise be Christ’s.

During the weeks or months you have still to spend in Germany, you may have dull moments and grow weary waiting for demob. Will you please remember then that you are there for a purpose and that something really positive is expected of you? I don’t care who you are, how high or low your rank, you have a part to play in restoring sanity and peace to the nations and in knitting up again the broken tangled, fabrics of social life amongst men. You're in Germany neither to have a good time nor to have a bad time. You’re there to be the living witnesses to a way of life which by the grace of God is essentially British, and for which better men than you or I have died.

And if, when your demob comes, you think you will have everything handed to you on a plate, you are much mistaken. Life will be hard: but life, I think, is meant to be hard whether in war or in peace. I know there are types who go all out to get the very best out of life, and who think that men are in the world only to be used by them. But, thank God, there are other types, who reverence life and regard their fellow men -- friends and foes (not “Frat”!) -
as people to be helped and served and loved.

Let me sum up in three sentences the things I’ve been trying to tell you in Kirk and Padre’s hours.
(1) Life is something infinitely more than a game of Grab (or even Poker!)
(2) A man’s life should not be judged by the amount of brass he has either in his pocket or his neck.
(3) The full life is the life which has learned the knack of emptying itself, (You yourselves have left sufficient little wooden crosses by the way to remind you of that forever.)
I set out to write you a letter: I have given you instead a sermon: but I’m not a bit ashamed of that. It really shows I think a lot of you. May God bless you all. Your Padre (honorary and pro --too short a-- tem.) DAVID STIVEN.