DAVID S. STIVEN C of S Huts Musselburgh Brotherhood

David Sime Stiven: Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens: Address to Musselburgh Brotherhood in 1952.

I have already spoken to you about the Church of Scotland Canteens. This afternoon I hope I wont bore you by returning once again to the same theme. It is work in which I am exceedingly interested and work which affords a tremendous opportunity to the Church.

Men who are now coming into middle age recall to me with obvious pleasure the fact that they met me behind a cup of tea somewhere in Holland or Germany in 1945. It wasn’t the fact that they met me that cheered them. It was that in a distant land when they were a bit browned off they met their minister. A book I’d commend to you in another connection is “They Found the Church There” [The armed forces discover Christian Missions: Henry P. Van Dusen/ New York: Charles Scribner's sons: 1945.] To be in a bit of a jam morally or physically or spiritually and to find the Church there is a great tonic as I know myself from my own experience in the forces as a young man.

As some of you know, last August I spent a holiday in Germany. My wife and I were eager to see a new grandson and seized the opportunity to go and spend a month with our daughter and her husband and her children in the delightful little town of Itzehoe. May I digress for a little? It may interest you to know something of the religious way of other people. My son in law is attached to a British Regiment stationed at Itzehoe in Schleswig-Holstein.

Our first Sunday we were at a loose end and went to worship in their Parish Church. My wife’s knowledge of German is nil and my own but scanty. But I was able to join in the whole worship and my wife knew what the sermon was about. Her chief feeling however was one of immense unhappiness. She had time to look about her during the service and was deeply affected by the sight along the whole of the North wall of the Church of great marble slabs containing name after name of German boys who had been killed in the 1914 war. It brought home to her more than anything else an idea of the utter meaninglessness of war and the pitiful tragedy of it.

Just in the same way, sometime before we left, there was a great Memorial Service in Hamburg for the 50,000 inhabitants of that city who had lost their lives in the air bombardments by ‘saturation bombing’. We understand that to this service the Mayor of Coventry had received an invitation - which he did not accept.

In Itzehoe we saw a little of the Lutheran Danish padre who like our padres had a padre’s hour with the troops. He told me something I didn’t know before, that every Sunday every minister in his Church preaches from the same text. He was very kind to us and made the Barracks Chapel available for our grandson’s baptism. In the service there participated, Scots and English (one of them R.C.) Danes and Germans. We had some difficulty in arranging hymns to be sung in English which were known to all, but found that all had the the same tune to ‘Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of Creation’ and ‘Now Thank we All Our God’.

The Padre also insisted that I should preface the sacrament with a short address on baptism. I came away from that service with a clearer knowledge of the Catholicity of the Church into which we are given membership through our Baptism.

The Hymn books. Doubtless you’ve been wondering how we all managed to sing the hymns - and join in the Lord’s Prayer in English. The Hymn Books were lent to us by the Church of Scotland Canteen in Hamburg. And that telling instance of how the Church of Scotland can look after its own even in the furthest corner of a distant land brings me back again to my subject.

The Sunday before that Saturday when my grandson was baptized, I had taken Service in the Church of Scotland Canteen. For Hamburg is one of seven centres in which the C of S is still ministering to the troops of The British Army of the Rhine.

The situation now is somewhat different from what it was when I was servant of the Church of Scotland Huts and Canteens Committee in 1945. Incidentally Major James Watt who was the Director in Germany after pushing his canteen right up the Western Desert and Italy is coming to see his old haunts in Musselburgh on 6 December when he will open our Sale of Work. He used to sing in Inveresk Church choir.

When I was there in 1945 it was solely to the troops that I ministered although by the time I left I could see see changes impending and the tremendous need for such work as the Huts were doing.
Now:- Troops still main concern
Army Disposal Board
other civilians
CHILDREN
wives of Germans
Germans............