The words of the hymn of my choice were written in 1869 by John Ernest Bode, vicar of Castle Camps from 1860 until his death in 1874 [and whose photo is attached]. Castle Camps is in Cambridgeshire and sits on the tripoint of Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex. The hymn was written to mark the confirmation of all three of Bode’s children; for me, as a soldier, it has provided guidance and strength when circumstances have caused me to question my own faith. Bode’s words were set to music in 1881, 7 years after Bode’s death, by Arthur Mann, organist and choirmaster of King’s College Cambridge. Subsequently the hymn became so popular at confirmation services that bishops appealed to congregations to desist from choosing it.
That hymn is ‘O Jesus I Have Promised’.
I first donned military uniform in 1974, albeit as a CCF cadet at Repton School in Derbyshire. I was a chorister in the school choir and learned intimately this hymn, together with a hymn set to music by a previous choirmaster at my school, Hubert Parry, ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’. The elderly among us will smile with recognition at my mention of wearing khaki serge battle dress, Shirt KF, puttees and ammunition boots; training on Sten guns, Bren guns and the Lee Enfield .303 rifle.
My headmaster at Repton was John Gammell, a giant of a man in all ways, a graduate of Trinity College who lost a leg on the first day of the Battle of Anzio and was subsequently awarded The Military Cross by his father, General Sir James Gammell. Inspired by him and by my father, a GP who served as an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was awarded a Mention in Despatches whilst on active duty in Malaya, in 1979 I joined the grown-up army. One of the subjects under discussion when I was in training was ‘Reaction to Effective Enemy Fire’. This conversation took place when I was at the area of a rifle range called ‘the butts’, where we as a team put the targets up and down as our colleagues shot at them. I asked our Staff Sergeant, a veteran of Northern Ireland, what it was like to be under effective enemy fire. He replied, “imagine getting up over the mantle right now and charging toward the twelve lads at the 100m point, with their aiming and firing directly at you.”
Many years later, I found myself for the first time coming under effective enemy fire, and the experience was exactly as my Staff Sergeant had described it. In the first stanza of the hymn are the lines “I shall not fear the battle if thou art by my side, nor wander from the pathway if thou art by my side.” The effectiveness of a well-trained, well-equipped soldier on the battlefield hinges on three elements: Body, Mind and Spirit, encapsulated by the Royal Army Physical Training Corps motto ‘Mens Sana in Corpore Sano’ (a sound mind in a sound body). Our PT Instructors ensure our bodies are in good shape, whether we like their methods or not, and Her Majesty’s Armed Forces place much emphasis on what we call ‘the moral component of fighting power’ . . . the assurance that every serviceman and woman feels that they are doing the right thing, and that they have the support of the public.
In 1995 I deployed on my first operational tour, to Bosnia, and had the misfortune of witnessing some truly inhumane behaviour by all sides, including the dumping of pigs’ carcasses in the houses of Muslim families who had earlier dfled the area, and the placing of booby-trap explosives inside children’s toys. Although the BBC steadfastly claimed the Serbs were the baddies, my own experiences vouch that all sides were equally depraved. In the middle of my tour, a BBC reporter interviewed my Commander, then Brigadier, later Lord, Dannett - an officer of strong Christian faith. He was asked by the reporter how could he reconcile being a Christian with being in The Armed Forces. His reply was simple . . . he said, “Can you imagine a British Army devoid of Christian beliefs?”. Nor wander from the pathway if thou art by my side.
The greatest strain upon my own Christian resolution was in 2009, when my Brigade was deployed in Afghanistan and I was part of the Rear Party at Catterick, in Yorkshire. In a six-month period it befell me to attend 73 repatriations of our dead at RAF Lyneham, and 73 subsequent funerals around the UK, at many of which this hymn was sung, and the words of the final verse will ensure the memory of those soldiers who gave their lives will not diminish: ‘O let me see Thy footmarks, and in them plant mine own; my hope to follow duly is in Thy strength alone. O guide me, call me, draw me: uphold me to the end; and then to rest receive me, my saviour and my friend.’
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