Homecoming Sunday
Jamesville Christian Church
Jamesville, North Carolina
September 23, 1945
Cousin Walter, would you like another
helpin’ of barbeque?” Walter’s first cousin, Eva Gray Askew, was
already spooning a mound of the greasy pork concoction on his plate
before he could answer.
“I believe I will, Eva Gray. Thank you.”
“And here’s some black pepper and hot sauce,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Beautiful day for dinner on the grounds, ain’t it?” she said.
“The sun’s shining. The war’s over. The children are well,” he said.
“And I hope you’re doing well today, cousin. I’m sure Jessie would be glad you came to homecoming.”
“Last year was too hard, Eva Gray. It was just too soon after. You know.” He held back his emotions. “A fellow’s got to get out in public at some point though. And I don’t know how I’d have made it this last year without you and Ellie helping me with the children like you have.”
“Me and Ellie love them younguns’ like they were our own.”
“Speaking of Ellie, have you seen her?” he said.
“Not yet. But there are so many people out here, she’s probably politicking. You know how she is. I’m sure she’ll be here.”
Walter forked his barbeque and surveyed the crowd. No sign of Ellie. The gathering of two hundred or so neighbors, farmers, and townspeople seemed vibrant as they crammed down hundreds of fried drumsticks and swigged gallons of sweetened iced tea. They had reason to be happy. Japan had surrendered less than two month ago. Germany had fallen only a few months before. The war was finally over. Everyone seemed to have a bounce in their step. The backslapping seemed more frequent than in recent years. Amidst all the euphoria, Walter thought of Jessie. She was never far from his thoughts.
“Brother Walter!”
Walter looked up at his old pal, J.W. Barber, who was balancing a plate of baked beans and barbeque mounded as high as Mount Everest.
“How you doin’, ol’ boy?” Walter asked.
“Good to see ya today, Walter. That was some sermon, wasn’t it?”
“That’s the first time I can remember that we’ve had a Baptist come speak. Where’d they say he was from?” Walter asked.
“From Richmond, I believe. From the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Said he speaks German and has been over there evangalizin’ them Nazis.” Barber, a middle-aged, pot-bellied sort, shoved half a plateful of barbeque in his mouth in one swoop and launched into his next question with most of the stuff still lumped on the back of his tongue. “What would your granddaddy think about havin’ a Baptist speak at Jamesville Christian Church?”
Walter ignored the question. “Did you say he speaks German, J.W?”
Barber chewed a mouthful of barbeque and washed it down with sweetened iced tea. “That’s what they say.”
“Hmm.”
“So what would your granddaddy think?”
“Say it again, J.W.?”
Barber gulped down the rest of his iced tea. “What I said was what’d your granddaddy think about havin’ a Baptist speak at Jamesville Christian Church?”
“Granddaddy Baldy’d be happy to have ‘em as long as they preach the gospel. I guarantee it.”
“You reckon he’d-uh been happy with that sermon today?”
“I’m not sure, J.W.,” Walter said. “But that sermon struck close to home for me.”
“I thought about that, Walter. I mean, there you were just a year ago in the war uh-shootin’ Germans, and then this fellah comes in here and preaches a sermon ‘bout how we need to forgive ‘em and evangelize to ‘em. I was wonderin’ what you thought about that.”
“I think he’s right, J.W. That’s what the Bible says, best I can tell.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s just hard, you know, with all our boahs that was killed and then us uh-findin’ them concentration camps.”
“We killed a lot of their boahs too. I know that firsthand.”
“I’ll bet you do, Walter, with all them medals you won in the Army.”
“I was just doin’ my job,” Walter said. “Besides, it’s time to move on.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen, I’m Wayne Poplin.”
Walter turned around as the guest preacher from Richmond, in a spiffy pinstripe suit, extended his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Poplin. I’m Walter Brewer. This is my friend J.W. Barber.”
Poplin smiled and shook both of their hands, then focused his attention on Walter. “Your pastor tells me your grandfather gave the land for this church.”
“That’s true. He was converted during the War Between the States. When he came home, he felt led by the Spirit to build a church, so he donated all this land.”
“Speaking of war, I understand you fought with distinction for our country in France. I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your sacrifice.”
“Thank you,” Walter said.
Poplin put his hand on Walter’s back and moved in closer, speaking softly. “There’s something else I wanted to say to you.”
“What’s that?”
“Your pastor also shared with me about your wife. I wanted you to know how sorry I am and that we’re going to put you on our prayer list when I get back to Richmond.”
Walter felt his eyes welling up. “Thank you, Dr. Poplin.”
“Please, call me Wayne.”
“When do you have to be back in Richmond?”
“Not until Wednesday. I was planning on driving back this afternoon. Why?”
“Could I ask you a favor?”
“Anything,” Poplin said.
“I heard you’re fluent in German.”
Poplin smiled. “Enough to get by, I suppose. I’ve been over there trying to establish a Southern Baptist presence in Bonn. Why do you ask?”
“The first night I was in France, on D-Day, there was a young French woman who was working with the Resistance. She and her family helped me in an attack on a German communications station in Normandy. Since I had been separated from my unit and was deep behind enemy lines, she took me to a barn for safety that night. Just after sunrise, there was a firefight outside the barn between some American paratroopers and a German patrol. Our side won, and I joined up with the American unit. But before I left, she handed me an envelope, but I didn’t open it until recently. In fact, I hadn’t thought much about it with my wife dying. I discovered that there’s a letter of some sort written in German. I was wondering if you could come over later today and translate the letter for me.”
“I’d be glad to. Where do you live?”
“In that big white house over there.”
“Right next door to the church?”
“That’s the one,” Walter said.
“Is four o’clock good?”
“That would be fine.”
Walter, Ellie, and Eva Gray were sitting in a semi-circle under the big pecan tree in the backyard when Wayne Poplin walked over from the church at four o’clock.
“This looks like a home where children are happy,” Poplin said with a smile as he extended his hand to Walter.
“Jamesville is a place for cousins,” Walter said. “At homecoming, at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas, you see cousins and all their friends running around picking grapes or playing Cowboys and Indians.”
“Children are the most precious commodity God gives us. How many of these are yours, Walter?”
“Four are mine; the other two are just like mine. Wayne, this is my sister-in-law, Ellie. She lives in Plymouth, and the other two belong to her.”
“Nice to meet you, Ellie.”
“And this is my grown-up cousin, Eva Gray Askew. We used to run around the farm and throw pecans at one another when we were little. Now she lives across the street with her husband. She and Ellie have helped me this year more than they know.”
“Sometimes God puts people into our lives in seasons of sorrow to give us comfort. It sounds like these ladies have done that for your family, Walter,” Poplin said.
“I agree. I’ve been lucky from that standpoint.”
“It’s not a matter of luck, my brother. Nothing ever is.”
“I believe that,” Walter said. “Lucky was a poor word choice.”
“So, I understand you have a letter you want me to translate?”
“I’ve got it right here.”
Poplin sat down and began studying the letter. After a couple of minutes, he looked at Walter.
“Walter, can you tell me again how you came into possession of this?”
Walter recounted the story.
Poplin unfolded the letter and began.
June 3, 1944
Dear Ingrid,
By the time you get this letter, if you ever get it, the war will probably be over. All signs are pointing to the end, and the signs point to a defeat for Germany. I sense that I may never live to see you again.
It is hard to believe that three years have passed since I last saw you and my precious two daughters. It is my deepest prayer that somehow, someday, this letter will find its way to you, for there are some very deep and important truths I wish to impart to you.
Nearly two years ago, in August of 1942, I was stationed in North Africa with General Rommel. Word came that the British and the Canadians launched an attack on the little town of Dieppe in northern France. Our forces beat them back that day, but Rommel wanted a battlefield assessment from his personal staff, so he sent me to investigate.
I flew from Africa to France as the general ordered. I had seen dozens of battle scenes before, but this one was different somehow. There were hundreds of bodies lying by the sea and on the beaches. Both German and British bodies. Only the seagulls mourned for the dead.
We were most interested in the British dead. They were part of a new special forces unit that concerned Rommel. I ordered my men to comb their bodies thoroughly for weapons, papers, or anything else that would give us a clue about this new unit.
Soon after the search began, one of my men shouted that a dead Brit had some sort of manual written in German. I rushed over to see what the excitement was about. He handed me the manual. It was small, about the size of the palm of my hand.
At first, I thought it was part of a psychological ploy to distract our troops with religious propaganda. I wanted to know where the sergeant found the manual. He pointed to a body sprawled face-down in a pile of other bodies. I ordered him to turn the dead man over so I could see a name tag.
What I saw instead was his eyes. They were staring directly at me. This dead corpse was peering into me. It was like he was alive. His eyes were locked with mine, challenging my soul. The name on his name tag was McCloud. I have seen thousands of dead men, but none had ever made me shiver like this one.
I looked away. I opened the manual, and my eyes fell upon these words:
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of Men.’
I closed the manual and told my men to look for others. There were none.
Procedure called for me to place the manual into our evidence bag and discuss it in my report to Rommel. Instead, I stuffed it, along with the man’s dog tag, into my uniform and took them back to Africa with me that night. This was the first time in my career I blatantly defied military procedure. I could have been shot for this.
That night, alone in my quarters, I opened the book again. On the inside cover, there was a note. It was from the dead man. It was written in German. Here is what he wrote:
‘To the one who finds this book. Today our governments are enemies. As a result of this, we find ourselves as soldiers fulfilling our duties on the opposite sides of a war. But right now, there is another war going on. It is a war of far greater significance than the war between Britain and Germany. This war of which I speak is a war for your soul. I don’t know your name, but I have prayed that you and I will be on the same side in that war, that we will be soldiers for the living Christ. I prayed this in life, and I pray this for you even in death. Read this book. It is your battle plan for victory. May God have mercy on you – Darwin McCloud.’
This message tormented me somehow. As an intelligence officer, I was proud of my ability to sort through data, to figure things out and make reports. But in this case, I was perplexed. I could not understand the message from the dead man or the book we found on him.
What was the purpose behind this ploy?, I wondered. An insatiable curiosity grasped me. All through the night, I read it, wondering about this dead British commando and why I, of all the soldiers in the German Army, had found this book.
As the hours passed and dawn approached, I read something in his manual which brought chills to my body and sweat to my forehead. I was reminded of something horrible I had done. Something I must now tell you about.
Do you remember Fall of 1938? I was attending all those Party meetings in the evenings. Do you remember the night of November ninth? You had planned a special meal for me and had apple strudel for dessert and the girls were all excited to have a meal with their papa.
But instead, I came down the stairs dressed in black and rushed off to a Party meeting. That night, I was given a difficult assignment. It was an assignment which would prove or disprove my loyalty to the Party. Some Jewish boy had shot a German ambassador in Paris, and the Party was determined to retaliate. All over Germany, attacks were planned against Jewish homes and businesses.
My mission was to help burn a synagogue and terrorize the home of the Jewish rabbi. I did not feel good about this. I would have preferred to attack a military target, but I wanted to show my loyalty.
That night, as my comrades gassed the synagogue, I rushed across the street to the rabbi’s home and hurled a brick through the front window. I was only trying to scare and intimidate the Jews. But the loud screams I heard from inside paralyzed me. I could not move. I froze and stood just outside the front window. Inside, I saw a mother and father crouched on the floor over their little girl. The child was unconscious with blood gushing from her temple. As the mother sobbed and wailed, the father looked up. His eyes locked with mine.
With the synagogue burning at my back, my comrades called me back to the truck. But I could not move. The father rushed out into the front yard where I was standing. He had a large knife in his hand. I watched him charge me in slow motion.
I could feel nothing but the hot flames of the burning synagogue behind me. To me, these were the flames at the gates of hell, for that was what I deserved for what I had done to this little girl.
As the rabbi raised the knife over his head preparing to plunge it into my heart, I heard a burst of rifle fire. The rabbi slumped over, bleeding from his stomach. My comrades screamed that they would shoot me also unless I came. Like a coward, I sprinted back to the truck and we escaped into the night.
My comrades wanted to celebrate for what we had done. We popped open beers in the back of the truck. But I did not feel like drinking. The men sensed I was feeling guilty. They admonished me not to show any remorse because they said the Jews had started this fight by assassinating our ambassador. They said that remorse might be construed as a sign of weakness and disloyalty to the Party. So I drank several beers and tried to forget about it.
But I could not forget the little girl with the red curly locks. I began to have nightmares. As I lay in our bed, I saw the little girl’s face in my dreams. She did not have blood gushing from her brain. Instead, she had a sweet and innocent countenance. In my dreams, she would smile at me, but she never said anything. I would wake up in cold sweats. But at least when I woke up, she was gone.
Then one night, not long before I entered the Army, I was dreaming about her again. I rose up in bed in a cold sweat as usual. But this time, she was not gone. She was standing there at the foot of our bed. As I shook and trembled, she smiled and spoke for the first time. It was a short and strange message. She said, ‘Read the book, before it’s too late.’
I demanded, ‘What book do you want me to read?’
When you woke up and asked me who I was talking to, she was gone. I never had nightmares about her again. But I have carried the guilt of my actions and the mystery of her message in my heart all these years.
The night when I got back from Dieppe, reading this manual of McCloud’s, I saw a message which unveiled the mystery. The passage stated, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”
It was at that moment I understood the message from this little Jewish girl.
She was telling me to read McCloud’s book before it was too late. It was as if she foresaw the future and knew the book would fall into my hands at Dieppe.
I could hardly sleep for several weeks. Each night, I stayed awake until nearly dawn, reading and searching. The book had a magnetic hold over me I cannot explain in words.
One night in late September, as I was reading a chapter in the book called “Romans,” I discovered a verse I did not understand. It said ‘the wages of sin is death.’ I started to think about what this meant. As I was thinking, I remembered what I had done to this little girl and that her father had been shot because of me. Even worse, I remembered neglecting you and our daughters, all for the sake of my career. As I thought about these things, a deep feeling of guilt descended on me.
With a burden so heavy I could not bear, I stopped reading. I wished that the rabbi had plunged the knife into my heart that night.
My soul felt twisted like wrecked metal, smoking and burning on a battlefield in the wake of a military slaughter. I wondered, with all the death I had seen, why my life had been spared. I could not bear the guilt. I wanted to be a corpse in a heap of dead bodies with buzzards picking at my flesh. That is what I deserved.
I was ready to stop—to end it all right there. The book had been sent to torment me for my past, to remind me that eternal death was my destiny. I looked at the table beside my bed. There was an unopened bottle of vodka that had been brought back from the Russian Front. I looked at my pistol.
The vodka would make this easier. On the other hand, I deserved to feel the bullet rip through my skull as my brains splattered all over the wall. After all, I had caused so much pain. Why should I not feel the pain of this girl and her father as I died?
For what seemed like an hour, my eyes shifted between the vodka and the pistol. Finally, I got up and put on my dress uniform. I adjusted all the medals I had received as Rommel’s aide. I downed a swig of vodka. A little bit seemed the gentlemanly thing to do. As it burned my throat, I cocked my pistol. I put its cold, steel barrel up to my head. With my fingers on the trigger, I closed my eyes and began a countdown.
Five, four, three, two.
As I reached one, she spoke to me again. Her voice startled me so much that I nearly pulled the trigger. Six years had passed since I had seen her at the foot of our bed. Her message was the same one that haunted me all these years.
“Read the book, before it is too late.”
I looked and saw no one. For a moment, I thought it was the vodka talking. With the gun still at my head, I spoke to an empty room.
“The book has caused me nothing but torment,” I said. “It reminds me of what I did to you and your father.”
The voice came back. “Don’t stop reading. Your sins are forgiven.”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
She did not respond.
“What is your name? What do you mean, my sins are forgiven?”
There was only silence.
I laid the pistol on the table beside my bed. If this little girl told me to keep reading, I supposed I owed her at least that much before I shot myself.
I sat on the bed and picked up the book. I returned to the place on the page where I had left off. I again read that “the wages of sin is death.” Then I saw the next part of the sentence. It said “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I closed my eyes and thought about this. As I wondered what this meant, I saw in my mind an image of Jesus hanging on the cross. His body was writhing in agony. His face winced in excruciating pain.
With my eyes still closed, I heard her voice for the last time. She said, “Do you see Him? He is taking the punishment for what you did to me and for what you did to my father and mother. All your guilt is heaped on Him. He wants to bear all your burdens. Let Him. He loves you.”
I never believed in miracles before, but one happened at that moment. It was like an invisible hand came down from Heaven and lifted a ton of weight from my heart. The oppressive conviction that had driven me to the brink of suicide was gone.
I fell on my knees in the presence of a Holy God. The living author of McCloud’s book had made His presence known to me. This book was not merely a historical account, nor was it a psychological ploy by British Special Forces. It was living, like a two-edged sword, and its author is alive.
That night in Africa, Christ called me, a worthless murderer, unto himself. He used an enemy soldier and a little girl I probably murdered to draw me to Him. I am so unworthy of His Grace.
I tell you this for selfish reasons. I believe in my heart that I shall never see you and our daughters alive on this earth again. I want so much to be with the three of you again.
Therefore, I now implore you, my dearest Ingrid, to heed the message that was brought to me by the little Jewish girl. Read the book before it’s too late. Get to know its living author. Ask Him to reveal these truths to you, and teach them to our daughters.
It is my prayer that somehow, someway, this letter will make its way to you, and that the four of us will be reunited in Heaven.
Good-bye my love.
I will love you always,
Heinrick
Poplin folded the letter as Ellie and Eva Gray dabbed their eyes. For a few moments, no one said a word. The foursome sat speechless, listening to the sparrows chirping in the tops of the pecan trees.
“I have never encountered anything like this before,” Poplin said.
“And this is the man I shot,” Walter said.
“Walter, I don’t know how you’re going to do this, but somehow this letter needs to find its way to that widow,” Poplin said.
“But I’m the one who shot her husband,” Walter said. “And besides, how would I find her? Is there an address anywhere on the letter?”
“There’s no address.”
“Then what can I do?”
“When I get back to Richmond, I’ll ask some folks at the Foreign Mission Board if they have any ideas. But Germany is in shambles right now. Barring a miracle, I’m afraid that finding this lady will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. We will pray God opens the door.”