Jimmy Poland

The first Sunday of every month my parents have a rosary group at our house. For those who don’t know the rosary is a Roman Catholic prayer with the use of prayer beads. It’s a small group, just my family and three others who used to go to our church before it was demolished: Mary Smith, Cathy and her father Jimmy Poland. After the prayer meeting we usually have a cup of tea and a chat, and sometimes I stay for this, even though I don’t say much. Conversation usually flows freely but sometimes it can be a bit difficult. Mary is a nice old lady but tends to talk over people and this can be annoying, especially to poor Jimmy. I don’t think she is aware of this, so desperate is she to have some social interaction. Jimmy is 91 years old and his hearing is not very good, so that does not help. And there is also the generation gap to contend with. A few months ago, however, the conversation turned out to be very interesting. I’m not sure exactly how but we began talking about the Second World War. We knew that Jimmy had been a soldier during the war so we asked him a few questions and he seemed happy to talk about it. He was there at Dunkirk, which is a port in northern France, and in 1940 British troops were cut off and encircled by the advancing German army. He remembers the ships coming from the English coast to save the stranded troops and recalls the feeling and sound of bullets flying around him, of men falling right, left and centre and dead bodies washing up on the shore. His regiment was the Argyle and Southern Highlanders and a small group of the survivors were pinned down behind a sand dune, unable to advance or retreat due to the intense gunfire. Eventually he manages to get off the beach but so many of his regiment had been killed or wounded in action that the remaining few joined the Black Watch. After D-Day in 1944 he was part of the second wave of troops that tackled pockets of German resistance. Probably the most poignant part of his story was when his regiment liberated the concentration camp of Belsen. It must have been a surreal, horrific sight to behold 60,000 poor emaciated Jews on the brink of death. The reaction of the soldiers was to give them something to eat, chocolate mostly, but for some medical reason their bodies could not handle this sudden digestion of solid food and they would simply fall over and die. Fortunately a medic came on the scene and ordered the soldiers to stop giving the survivors any food. They were hooked up to intravenous drips which their bodies were able to accept. Jimmy was very matter of fact about everything but it was fascinating to hear about it from someone who was actually there and was part of these historic events.

Super Mario

I played football on Saturday with some of my cousins and uncles. Just before kick off my cousin Brendan pulled me aside to tell me a funny story. His parish priest had organized a fancy dress party for Halloween. To get into the spirit of things he decided to dress up as superman, complete with red underpants on the outside. After the party he was relaxing in the parish house when he heard the doorbell. Looking through the spyglass he saw Archbishop Mario Conti on the doorstep. What to do? I'm assuming that he was not able to slink away unnoticed and avoid the embarassing situation. I would like to have seen the look on Conti's face when the door was opened by Fr. Superman. It could have been worse, he could have dressed up as a woman. How would you explain that to your Archbishop? The moral of the story? God has a sense of humour, and hopefully so do Archbishops.