Known unto God
Recently, along with Steve and Sandra, Gill and I made a short visit to some of the cemeteries and museums in France and Belgium commemorating World War 1. For Steve, this was especially poignant as we were able to visit the graves of 2 of his uncles. As it turned out when we visited the grave of his Uncle Joseph Piggott we found that we were there exactly 95 years later to the day on which he had died at the age of 24, 11th April 1917. The site was near where the battle of Arras was fought in April 1917 and as we crossed the area known as the Vimy Ridge the gentle farmlands gave little clue to the horrors that the soldiers of the day would have experienced.
As we moved on to Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium we were able to stand under the Menin Gate, memorial to 54,000 British soldiers with no known grave as the local fire service buglers played the last post at the 8pm ceremony. They have done this every evening since 1928 as a lasting tribute to the fallen. At the Tyne Cot cemetery nearby as in all the others we visited there were many graves marked for unknown soldiers each with the inscription ‘Known unto God’. We will never know how many of those soldiers died without believing on the Lord Jesus but history records that many did turn to him on the eve of
battle.
It was just a few days after we returned that we heard the sad news that our dear friend Gerald Flatauer had been taken ill and then passed away whilst returning from a trip to see the tulips in Holland. Gerald was much loved by everyone and in his simple way showed us all how his life was changed through coming to know Jesus as his personal Saviour during these last few years of his life. Gerald, who was born a German Jew, lived for many years with the horrors of his childhood experience in a concentration camp with his mother from the age of 8 years old. When I first met Gerald in 2004 he still held a real fear of anything to do with Germany for fear of being taken again.
After his conversion, it seemed as if some of those fears were eased and that at least part of his lifetime’s burden was lifted.
Perhaps it was, after all, fitting that he died in Holland, midway between his country of birth and the country where he found sanctuary and ultimately new life.
Gerald, like many of those soldiers was able to ‘put your trust in the light while you have it so that you may become sons of the light’. (John 12:36)
Stuart Beadle
May 2012
Comments on this entry are closed.