Chapter One, Section IV
The adjutant of our Charleford Air Base was Wing Commander Horrie, a one-time world champion-racing cyclist. He happened to know Mr. Ashley Morrall, my pen friend's father. "Ash", as everyone called him, was an engineer who designed and manufactured" Ashmoor" cycles, and sold "Merlin Star" models made famous by Horrie:
With only a few days leave to my credit, time did not permit me to travel to Melbourne by regular troop train, but time or no time, I just had to see Ruth again. It was Horrie who "pulled the necessary strings" and recommended me for a seat on an air force transport plane that was going right through to Lamington Air Base, near Melbourne.
Halfway, at Archerfield Air Base, near Brisbane, our DC-3 "Dakota" landed to re-fuel. My heart started to pound as I thought of meeting the girl of my dreams in a few hours' time. All hopes, however, were dashed when we were ordered off the plane to make room for Gary Cooper, Carol Landis and their stage gear. These Hollywood personalities were special guests of the Air Force and, as top-ranking entertainers, had priority travel to Sydney.
The pilot of our plane thought that if we could get a commercial flight to Sydney, it would be possible to continue with him from there to Lamington, but time was heavily against us. Two of us caught a cab and made a frantic, mad dash from Archerfield to Eagle Farm Air Port, on the other side of Brisbane and just managed to get seats on a DC-2, which brought us to Sydney in time to welcome the famous film stars and reclaim our seats.
Three hours later I was in Melbourne. The leave was very short, giving me no time to beat around the bush. I was desperate to get to the point so, as soon as I saw Ruth, I blurted out, "Some day, I think I may ask you to marry me!". Tragically, there was no response whatsoever; I had blown it! "All that way for nothing," I kept repeating to myself, my mind on the five pounds it had cost me on that commercial flight from Brisbane to Sydney.
However, after the shock had worn off and I was able to reassess our relationship in a more rational manner, I realized that my last visit to Melbourne had not been a waste because we were still corresponding in a most romantic way. Several months would have to pass before I could return to Melbourne to "propose" in the proper manner. I realized that my first attempt had been a flop because I hadn't popped the vital question at all - I had simply made a statement. I resolved that, next time round, I'd do it the right way and when that time came, it worked.
My pen friend, Ruth, had now become my fiancée, but there were times during that stopover when I wondered if I had made the right decision. I had met Ruth outside the office where she worked in East Melbourne, intending to accompany her home to Balmoral, on the train. As was customary for many servicemen during the war, I never paid to travel on rail transport!
Being therefore about to pass in, illegally, a used ticket at the Flinders Street Railway Station, I was surprised when my fiancée checked me with the words, "You needn't think you can go out with ME if you want to travel without a ticket!" Phew! What had I struck? This was nothing less than dynamite! "But this is my right," I insisted. "Am I not risking my life for my country whenever I go on a test flight? I could even be killed in a crash, or any day I could be transferred to the battle front."
But my defence was to no avail; I had met my match! Ruth was adamant, so I bought a ticket. Later came the understanding that a Christian has no rights. I was to learn many more revealing things from this strange girl, her family and her church. It seems that we can campaign for the rights of others and, in fact, it is our Christian duty to do that, but we must never fight to achieve our own rights. Though it may seem a strange philosophy to many, but it confirmed all I had read in the Bible.
I also came to learn, at
least in theory, that a Christian has to surrender self completely and all
"rights" not only to one's possessions, but even to one's very own
life. This seemed a theology too hard to bear in one's own strength. Indeed,
soon, I was to learn that the Christian life of faith was never meant to be
lived in isolation. Spiritual Strength to walk the way of the Cross comes from
the Lord, but always in loving, humble relationships of togetherness with
people. This was the purpose for which the
Now the point to remember about the first rough encounter I had with my fiancée over that used ticket issue, is that in spite of my behaviour at the time, I was accepted; she never held anything against me. I was staggered. Later, I was to learn that this virtue is called Grace - accepting the unacceptable, loving the unlovely and forgiving the unforgivable.
It was during this eventful leave in Melbourne, that a noted Evangelist, Mr. E. C. Huntington, was holding a tent mission under the auspices of the church at Blackwood, a suburb near Balmoral. While I could not go along with all the conservative theology of this fiery preacher, who always seemed to be bathed in perspiration, he did challenge me to accept baptism and make a public commitment to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour.
These churches' concept of baptism inspired me. I found that there is nothing magical in the water and the ordinance, being reserved for Believers, has no relevance apart from faith. Paradoxically, I discovered that Baptism, in its deepest reality, actually has nothing to do with water, which is but the outward expression of the inward experience. We are "baptised into Christ" as a spiritual experience - immersed into Him, lost in Him, obsessed by Him, totally captivated by Him - as we surrender self and let Him fill us with Himself.
The outworking of all
this is in human relationships. When the baptismal candidate is raised from the
water, he or she is raised as a mere 'babe' in Christ and, from then on, the
whole Christian life is one of learning or - "discipleship" - in this
family or church of loving, caring, forgiving and gracious people. Such a
family I found in the Balmoral Christian
Before going on to my
next posting, in South Australia, to take further electrical training at what
is now the Institute of Technology of the Adelaide University, my home church
at Balmoral gave me a letter of introduction to the Adelaide Grote Street
Chapter One, Section V
During the months that followed, in further electrical training, I had time to reflect on what God had in store for me. Surely He had a purposeful plan because certain major events in my life seemed to confirm a definite pattern. No longer did I consider that initial meeting with Ruth to be a coincidence. Now I saw it as intentional, if not miraculous. But I had real difficulty in driving from my mind Calvinistic concepts of "selection" and "election". I could never bring myself to believe that we are programmed to function like bees and ants. We are not mere puppets to dance when He pulls the strings.
There was that crash of bomber No. 205. Often, I had asked myself why I had been "spared". It was the only plane in which I had flown on such a short test flight and I am alive today because the impatient crew couldn't wait to test the plane more thoroughly. If God's nature is as we see it in Christ, how could He allow four men to be "sacrificed" in the crash of "205" just for the sake of one for whom He had a special Plan? I was in a spiritual dilemma.
While trying to reconcile my divergent points of view and come up with a theological rationale that would put my mind at rest, I was saddened to find, within one section of the church, a rigid attitude that dismissed "205" as no problem at all because it was "fore-ordained" by a god who was a sort of monster. Certainly, He was not the God I saw in Jesus Christ, who said, "He who has seen me, has seen the Father."
There were other events, too, that troubled me. One happened at Evington Air Base where I had been checking the electrical bomb-dropping systems on a Fairey Battle. This light bomber monoplane looked a little like the "Hurricane" and, in fact, was powered by the same Rolls Royce Merlin engine. It carried, along with other armaments, four two hundred and fifty pound bombs, suspended on racks which were hydraulically retracted into the wings to reduce wind resistance. When the bombs had been fully lifted, metal doors closed under them to form part of the wings' lower surface.
My work required lowering the bomb racks and standing on a stool to carefully insert my head, face forward, between the rack and the wing cross-member. Once my chin was above the level of the rack, I could turn my head slowly so that it faced outward. My chin could then rest on the top of the rack. By the light of an inspection lamp, I began to test the wiring circuit when I heard another technician working above me in the cabin.
He had been doing repairs to the landing gear of this plane, which was jacked up to allow retraction. He had no authority to work on any other systems but, for some unknown reason, started to meddle in areas beyond his jurisdiction. Had he been checking the undercarriage hydraulic gear, in the usual way, with an externally fitted electric pump, I would not be here today to tell this story. Instead, he chose to use the pilot's emergency hand pump to work the wheels up and down.
Before I could warn anyone, I felt the bomb retraction system pulsating and occasionally the rack under my chin moved slightly upward, threatening to crush my skull into the roof of the bomb bay. With all my strength, I successfully managed to pull down on the rack, thus transferring the differential pressure to the other three racks. I actually heard one on the other side of the plane clunk into position and the two bomb-bay doors slam shut.
There was no way I could escape in a hurry because, pulling down on the rack made it impossible for me to turn my head to withdraw it. I kicked and screamed to attract attention, but all to no avail. There was another dull thud and the second rack reached the end of its travel while the stupid executioner above, for no apparent reason, continued to pump away. I was utterly terrified. "Two more to go," I thought, "and then I'll be decapitated. What a messy way to die!"
The hanger was so filled with the noise of whining electric drills, pneumatic riveting hammers and engines being revved up, that there seemed to be no way at all of my screams being heard. By this time, with two racks in position, my rack was getting extra pressure and I was not able to find sufficient strength to hold it down. Slowly it started to move me up, lifting me by the chin. With what energy I had left, I tried to kick the stool from under me to attract attention.
I know now the thoughts that race through the mind of a dying man, just before he breathes his last. Loved ones are the first who come to mind, those nearest and dearest. You think of the times you disappointed them and what you would have done with your life had it been guided by a different set of circumstances. I am amazed at the rapidity with which the brain works as, like a computer, it recalls thousands of thoughts and memories all in a few seconds.
While agonizing in this way with my head in a torture chamber, it all stopped. Whether or not someone heard my screams, or saw my legs kicking wildly, I never was to know. The whole thing was hushed up and it never was revealed just who that person was who had my very life in his hands. My guess is that he was not one of the "lower ranks" who would have been seriously disciplined for such a misdemeanour. Sweating profusely, I withdrew my head and rested up a while, suffering from shock. There were other such close shaves, which I shall not mention; suffice it to say that at times, it seemed as though my life had been "spared" by a series of miracles. At one stage I even thought that maybe God was trying to "teach" me certain things through such traumatic experiences and yet, later, when I came to understand God in the light of Jesus Christ, I couldn't see how He would subject people to such stress just to get His point across. And so the months in Adelaide were spent reminiscing, trying, with my limited theological perception, to evaluate whether or not all these climactic events in my life were part of a hitherto unrevealed purpose God had for me in the future.
The time spent in Adelaide also covered preparations for marriage, however, before I was to taste the delights of the long-awaited nuptials, I was transferred to a B-24 "Liberator" bomber base at Thornville, a small town in southern N. S. W.. A week before leave was due for the wedding, the Medical Officer told me to report for my "shots" - cholera, typhoid, smallpox and tetanus. My first reaction to this was that it could mean only one thing -- an overseas posting. My heart sank. The Authorities seemed to be totally unconcerned about the injustice of submitting me to all those injections only a week before marriage.
On the eventful day, I
felt as sick as a dog and, as we were leaving the Balmoral
In order not to distract the attention of our friends who were all busy kissing and photographing the beautiful bride, I quickly ran to the bridal car and tried to cough up the rosebud. Tragically, it refused to budge and I found myself unable to take in enough air to force it out. Frantically, I gasped for air, but all to no avail. "This is the end," I thought. As I began to black out, I visualized people reading in the next day's newspapers,
"Airman dies from losing breath on his wedding day ! "
I remember seeing crowds around the bride but none could find the groom who, by this time, was too weak and distraught to call for help. However, thanks to my brother, who saw my predicament and successfully bashed me heavily on the back to expel the offending bud, I am alive today to tell this story.
Twenty-five years later, as guests of a U. S. Mennonite missionary group in India, Ruth and I were being honoured on the occasion of our "Silver Wedding." As part of the Anniversary speech I was asked to deliver, I had to tell something about our honeymoon. Traditionally, Mennonite folk, being rather religious and conservative, are seldom amused by trivial jokes. On this occasion, however, they nearly raised the roof with laughter when, in complete innocence, I mentioned spending the whole of my honeymoon in bed !
I shall never forget the first week we spent together. Ruth had the difficult and embarrassing task of trying to convince all the other guests in the vacation lodge that illness from inoculations was the real reason for my non-appearance !
Chapter One, Section VI
A few months after the wedding, I was transferred to Lamington Air Base, near Melbourne. This was to be my last posting before discharge and it was so close to Balmoral that I could commute back and forth each day. My work at Lamington was mainly on Dakota transports and an occasional Liberator Bomber but I also spent some time on a famous Avro York. This unique four-engine transport was of a special design that used the same wings, power units and landing-gear as the Lancaster bomber but it had twice the cubic capacity as the parent plane made famous by the R.A.F. "Pathfinders."
This particular plane, which was specially acquired for the Governor General's flight, also had served in the return of allied prisoners of war who had been held by the Japanese in Singapore. I considered it a real privilege and an honour to be selected as one of the maintenance crewmembers that travelled with the Governor General, The Duke of Gloucester, on one of his tours. Unfortunately, we could not travel with this distinguished royal person in his luxurious VIP plane, but rather in an old Avro Anson, along with all our tools and servicing gear. Never mind; it was real fun and, on such tours, we were granted many privileges.
Often I flew on B-24 Liberator test flights around Port Philip Bay when I would request the pilots to fly over Balmoral Beach. By phone, I notified Ruth in advance that I was coming so that she could wave to me from below. Those phone calls, while costing me not a few pennies, must have saved the Air Force an awful lot of toilet paper!
With the war now over, I felt ready for discharge and, at last, was beginning to feel that those years in uniform had not really been a waste of time. I had gained in technical experience, made many friends and through them had found the best of all friends - Jesus Christ. I had married a loving woman and had sensed a need to go to some place, somewhere in the world, to make a positive, non-violent contribution to help alleviate the sufferings of less fortunate people. The Air Force had helped me find my vocation in life. Now I knew where I had to go - to an undeveloped place that had NOTHING; well, nothing of what we consider to be essential to live a normal life in a Western society.
In spite of the clarity of this Calling, I still was confused by a theological dilemma and felt the need for more study to get my thoughts untangled. For a year, following discharge from the Air Force, I worked for the firm of E. A. Maddison & Co. as an electrical fitter / armature winder and enrolled as a correspondence course student of the McGilvery Theological College.
The Minister of the
Blackwood
After about a month of
preparation, I felt more or less confident to deliver my short testimony. All I
could say was that Jesus Christ had opened my eyes to see myself, as I really
am - a very unworthy person, yet one with real potential. In spite of all my
shortcomings, Christ, through the
Pastor John continued to encourage me and suggested that, after a month or so, I should give another talk of a little longer duration - say, ten minutes. And so it was that this kind minister urged me on progressively until, though still with much fear and trepidation, I could hold my own in the pulpit for a full twenty minutes.
It was the Blackwood
At the same time, the
electrical firm employing me had planned to promote me to the position of Sales
Manager. We learned this through Ruth's father who often bought goods from E.
A. Maddison & Co.. Always, I have been known for doing crazy things and, in
the eyes of some, nothing could be more crazy than to forfeit the prospects of
a good job promotion to study theology. In retrospect, entering seminary to
train for the Christian Ministry, was one of the best decisions I ever made.
But credit has to be given where it is due, and much of the inspiration I
received to study for the Ministry, came from Ruth, her family and a number of
Balmoral
In February 1947, I was enrolled at McGilvery to commence a four-year course. The years I spent there were among the happiest of my life. The ministry of the College Principal, Lyall Williams, whom we affectionately called "The Chief', had a profound influence on my life and helped to give me Strength without which I surely would have been crushed in the years that were to follow. Ruth stood by me loyally in those college years and, without her help, I wouldn't have made it. Let her share some of her own thoughts.
Chapter One, Section ***VII
When I was a small girl, an interesting thing happened which may have had a bearing on my future life. It occurred such a long time ago that I cannot remember all the details of the meeting I attended on a very wet night. I can recall neither the name of the missionary lady, nor the details of her message, but there was one thing about the meeting I shall never forget. We were all seated in a circle around the speaker, who, at the end of her address, presented me with a pie, the smallest Indian coin at the time. There used to be twelve pies to an anna and sixteen annas to one rupee. When you realize that one rupee equals about ten Australian cents, it is clear that a pie was a very small amount. The missionary lady chose me to receive this tiny coin because I was the youngest in the meeting.
Following that event, right through my early childhood and teen years, I had apprehensions that some day, I would end up in India. I never intended to go there; in fact, I was adamant that I would never be a missionary to India. After all, I was just an ordinary office girl with no special training as a doctor, nurse or teacher, which would qualify me for overseas service. I liked home too much to want to leave it for service abroad. Besides that, there was much service to do at home, even within my own family, which always was busy in every form of church activity.
My family was so engrossed in the ministry of the church that I also resolved never to marry a minister. That too, was one of my real fears. "Fancy being a minister's wife," I thought. "Imagine having to run all those meetings and meet all those people! If, in my own family, I can be so busy in the church, what would it be like to be the 'lady of the manse'? No; never would I get involved with a minister." But, as Keith has already said, I didn't marry a minister, but an electrical fitter in the Air Force.
Following the start of Keith's training for the ministry, there was another incident in my life, which may be worth mentioning -a very strange encounter. I was walking up Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, on my way to the dentist, when a man approached me. Never before, had I seen this man, which makes me wonder why he chose me, pressing something into my hand with the words, "I have to give you this." That was all he said; then he was on his way. When I looked in my hand, I saw another little Indian pie! An omen, perhaps...?
The way Keith and I met is a story that has been told many times. Keith has related most of the details, but what he did not mention is that it was really one of my idiosyncrasies which drew us together. Always, I have been blamed by my family for raising issues that have no relevance to a particular conversation. On that eventful day of our first meeting, bridges and ships' rivets could not have been further from my conversation with Peggy and Keith. Why I decided to mention what holds the "Queen Mary" together, or the quantity of paint required to cover the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I do not know, but they were the vital words. These "irrelevant matters" served to change the course of my life. Keith tells me that they convinced him that I was a girl of real substance and not obsessed by such trivial matters as film stars and the latest movies!
Keith's four years spent in training for the ministry were happy times for us both. We had our problems, but the blessings were far greater and included the arrival of our second son, Paul, during the final year. Our first son, Robert, already had arrived on the scene before Keith entered College. It was during his student ministry, that my "fate" was sealed. My mother had been asked by the Mission Band of our home church at Balmoral, to prepare a paper on the work of the British Gospel Mission, in India. Why this particular Mission? It so happened that a Mr. & Mrs. Carmitage, of the Gospel Mission's Leicester (Eng.) church, had visited friends at Balmoral and stimulated an interest in this challenging new mission field. This was a rather difficult assignment for my mother, because so few articles about this small British organization had appeared in Australian publications. She hunted everywhere for any scrap of information, but with no success.
Because Keith had access to the College library, she asked him to see what was on the shelves. While searching through the volumes, with little success, he was approached by one of the College lecturers, Ralph Perry, who offered to help. Keith explained what he wanted and Mr. Perry replied, "Why don't you contact my brother, Penry? He and his wife established that field in the early part of the century." Accordingly, Keith phoned Mr. Penry Perry, requesting information "When can you go?", came the quavering voice of this near-deaf, eighty year old former missionary. "I don't want to go," Keith replied. "I only want some information." For the second time, came the same question, "When can you go?" Keith yelled louder into the phone to make it clear that he had no desire of becoming a missionary but only wanted some facts to help his mother-in-law write a paper. Again, the same enquiry, "When can you go?"
It was clear that this poor old man could not understand over the phone, so Keith asked him to hang up and told him he'd be down to see him on his motorcycle. After thirty minutes, Keith arrived at Parkside to find Mr. Perry leaning over the front fence with a handful of literature. It appeared that he had been requested by the British Gospel Mission to keep a lookout for potential candidates to staff the undeveloped Surgapam District of Madhya Pradesh, in India. This was a particularly difficult and dangerous field, involving pioneering from scratch, and the British Gospel Mission had been unable to find recruits of their own.
In the literature given to Keith was an article by missionary, Lionel Burton, written in a little magazine called "Open Channels", on the front cover of which was the picture of a little thatch-roof hut, very much like the ones Keith had seen earlier on the Air Force cinema screens and in his night-mares. Truly, this seemed to be the open door for which Keith had been waiting. That little hut was a miraculous, pictorial representation of an impossible dream come true. It was all so very, unreal - a Divine intervention?
He read of this hitherto untouched area being opened for the first time to any form of Christian service. It was the very type of place for which he had been longing - totally undeveloped in every sense of the word. This was it; he had been hooked and his Calling was so sure and challenging that, during his nine-mile ride from Parkside to Balmoral, he called me three times from public phones!
Each time he called, I insisted that he should come home first so that, together, we might talk the matter over. How my heart sank! Had I not determined never to go to India? Thinking the matter through, I realized that this had been my destiny all along and who was I to fight against it? Finally, I resigned myself to going along with Keith's crazy idea. Anyway, it looked as though it was all in God's Plan. However, there was one issue about which I was adamant: Keith had to complete his course at McGilvery and be ordained to the ministry.
This time, my will prevailed and he had enough sense to heed my demands so that we did not sail for India until January 1951. Meanwhile, our British colleagues-to-be, the Russells and Burtons, had entered Surgapam from Palamghat District, on the Bihar side, a few days earlier, on New Year's Day. A month later, with our two children, Robert aged four years and Paul aged only seven months, Keith and I reached Bombay to begin a ministry with Christ that was to keep us in India for twenty-five years, to experience the unfolding of an Impossible Dream.