The grapes of wrath
Bill Bingham believes in putting labels aside
The Bavarian regiment in which Adolf Hitler served in world war one was first engaged by the Black Watch near the village of Langemark on the road to Ypres. The Black Watch were regular troops of the British army and could fire their Lee Enfield rifles at the rate of twenty-five to thirty rounds per minute. The professional Scottish soldiers held their lines, although outnumbered ten to one by the advancing Germans. The members of the Sixteenth Bavarian Reserve Regiment were conscripts and could only manage to fire ten rounds per minute. At one stage there were ten rows of young German soldiers lying dead on the battlefield.
Adolf Hitler (a member of the Sixteenth Bavarian Reserve Regiment) and his comrades believed they had been facing machine gun fire. Langemark later became known as the village of ‘Der Kinder Mort’ (the murdered children). The Sixteenth Bavarian Regiment lost 2,500 of its original complement of 3,000 men. After this action, Adolf Hitler was promoted to ‘messenger runner’ (he never was a corporal), and he was thought to have no leadership skills whatsoever.
However, ‘messenger runner’ was considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the trenches of world war one. Hitler won the Iron Cross Second Class for his bravery, and was known as ‘Lucky Adolf’ by his comrades, until he was wounded in the thigh. At the battle of the Somme, Hitler was also temporarily blinded in a British gas attack, and was subsequently awarded the Iron Cross First Class for his devotion to duty. The lieutenant who recommended him for this award was Jewish. These are the events that helped to shape the life of the ‘Fuhrer’ and which caused him to seek bitter revenge later in life.
It should be noted that his sadistic father regularly beat Adolf when he was a child. Hitler was especially devoted to his mother, however, and the doctor who attended frau Hitler on her deathbed said he had never witnessed anyone more distraught than Adolf when his mother died. The doctor concerned was also Jewish.
Today we are witnessing ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ all across the globe, and I am beginning to wonder if we will ever learn. Isn’t it about time that we woke up to reality and put all our ‘labels’ aside? There is a very good reason why we should make every effort to establish ‘Peace and Goodwill’. We are each of us the children of the Creation, and our planet is worth saving simply because it is our home. It is we ourselves who are the cause of our sufferings, and it doesn’t have to be this way. So, what of God in this situation? Well, He is tramping out the vintage – but it seems very clear to me that He can only complete His primary objective with mankind’s willing cooperation.
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