The Pied Piper
Bill Bingham offers a personal reflection on the referendum
In 1957 I received a small brown envelope that contained my call-up papers to join the British army as a national serviceman. I was eighteen years of age. After some training I was sent to Bavaria to intercept Communist military transmissions. It was very interesting work, especially since we knew that ‘the enemy’ was doing exactly the same thing to us! Bavaria is a most beautiful part of Germany and it amazed me to think that Adolf Hitler had once managed to persuade this very ‘Catholic’ region to follow his cruel and insane ideas.
In the little village near our barracks there was a war memorial containing a list of names of the local men who had fallen in both of humanity’s futile world wars. Germans cry, too. During my time in the army I went on several NATO military exercises. For an eighteen-year-old these ‘war games’ were really pretty exciting and the power of NATO was displayed for the world to see – which, of course, was the ‘sabre rattling’ point.
I was caught up in the drama of it all until one day when things profoundly changed for me. The penny dropped and I had my very own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. No voices were heard, and no light shone down from heaven, but a lesson was learned over sixty years ago that has remained with me ever since.
We were camped on a ridge overlooking the little town of Hamelin, once made famous in the fairytale of the Pied Piper. The valley below had been one of the main advance routes into Germany through which the allies made their final ‘push’ into the ‘Fatherland’ during the second world war.
One Sunday morning I was taking a walk through the woods in which we were camped when, suddenly, I came across a small cemetery. The graveyard was very neat and tidy and obviously well cared for. A small sign above the entrance read Der Sechs Soldaten (‘The Six Soldiers’). I quietly entered the burial ground and there I found a small inscription, which gave an explanation as to why the cemetery was there, and who it was that was buried in these very still and silent woods.
These were the graves of six young German soldiers who had bravely defended their homeland with a field gun at the behest of Adolf Hitler. The oldest of these young boys was sixteen years of age. Suddenly, the story of the Pied Piper was no longer a fairytale. The reality was that the dreaded piper had once again visited the little town of Hamelin, and had repeated his plan to carry the children away with him. Adolf Hitler, of course, had played the part of the dreaded musician in this modern version of the dreadful story.
I am so deeply saddened by the Brexit vote. One key purpose of the EU is to try to avoid the mistakes of the past. The development of Europe is intended to create a peaceful democratic society in which all citizens can aspire to live in peace and harmony with their neighbours. Instead, it appears that Britain has now chosen to turn its back on the project altogether.
Our current prime minister (a vicar’s daughter) tells us she would be prepared to use Trident, which could lead to millions of people being killed. This causes me to wonder which particular gospel her father preached from? It doesn’t seem to be any that I have so far read, and I have carefully studied them all.
Today, many contemporary Quakers have some serious reservations about the content of the Bible; however, Christianity (just like Buddhism) warns human beings about their inherent tendency for self-destructive behaviour and delusions.
If thine eye offends thee, then pluck it out!
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