In these memoirs, undertaken at the request of Confreres, an attempt has been made to give a study as well as a record. An attempt not only to chronicle the thoughts and experiences of Novices and Scholastics, but also, in some measure, to give them their true perspective by inserting them into the rich and inclusive tradition of Catholic and Dehonian spirituality, to recapture the ethos of their environment. On these points it is difficult to avoid being excessively careful or irritatingly insistent. But the intention, however defective its execution, has been to make these memoirs a prolongation of the hopes and ideals of ‘all the friends so linked together’ of former years. Nor is it the intention to make another addition to ‘war literature’. The war in Europe, in many and various ways, had a profound effect on the lives of all who lived through it. Experiences at the Front and of the subsequent Military Occupation are of biographical and spiritual interest, and help to correct what might otherwise be a partial or misleading impression for prospective vocations.

Perhaps the Vocations-Formation Commission had these sentiments in mind when it asked for memoirs and recollections of the early years of this Province, especially of its first students in Belgium. Indeed they should surely be remembered, for in dangerous times they played their part; even if they cannot emulate Aeneas in his famous expression: "..... quorum magna pars fui"!

1934 was a year of relative calm in Europe, after a phase of tension and recurring crises, financial and political; when peace and co-operation among the great Powers seemed to be a practical objective.

It was against this background that Father M Kusters SCJ of the Dutch Province arrived in England on July 4th, with the intention of making enquiries regarding the possibility of bringing the Sacred Heart Fathers to England. Pleased with the result, he returned to Holland to seek further help.

But the Olympic Games, staged in Berlin, did provide recreation and excitement. Hitler used the Games as a grand opportunity to show off his new Order and did so in grandiloquent style. He was appalled, however, when black athlete Jesse Owens of the MDA won four gold medals! The high summer of the Third Reich was 1936, and the Olympiad staged in Berlin was the first Olympiad to take on a political character. Sadly it was not the last to do so.

In Britain the Abdication of the King, Edward VIII, caused widespread sorrow and regret.

But Fr Kusters returned to England in September; this time to stay. Viewing his character as a whole, it seems that the fundamental quality in it was courage - courage of a fine and generous type. When confronted with difficulties, with danger or labour, instead of hesitating or weakly compromising, he was rather braced to a new and more intense resolve to see the matter through. Give in, he would not. It was this courage too, supported by an unlimited faith and trust in God, that steeled him to hold fast to his purpose, no matter what difficulties or obstacles might arise.

He was able to view every new day as if it were filled with the hope and the impulse of a fresh beginning; he was undismayed by mistakes and their consequences.

Fr Kusters was anxious to recruit young men who, having completed their secondary studies or university course, would be ready to enter the Society of the Sacred Heart Fathers as Novices. All would have to be trained on the Continent. Fr Kusters had a fair measure of success. His first ‘recruit’ was Edward Bradshaw, who had already completed two years of philosophy and two of theology at Mill Hill. He entered the Novitiate of the Sacred Heart Fathers at Brugelette, Belgium, in September 1937, and on 31st March 1939 became the first Professed member of the new English Foundation.

In 1938 two more recruits entered the Novitiate, Patrick O’Sullivan and Patrick Collins.

1939 was, however, the most bountiful year. Six went to Brugelette, though not all at the same time. I Carter in January; J Clarkson in May; J Ryan and F Murray in September; J Hoban and G Jordan in November.

But personal memories, in War and Peace, can only be passing snapshots; one can only remember events that appeared significant at the time.

If, therefore, this proves a difficult story to tell, it may be pleaded in partial defence that the human mind is a difficult territory to explore, and that the world it inhabits does not always fit snugly into any other world. It must also be conceded that some sixty years later, after the events, the fitting is a hard one.

Nevertheless, they are memories of a vanished world, a world of youthful endeavour and youthful ideals, still vivid, often bright, sometimes dimly radiant, on memory’s pictured page.

To set that page into its historical context is the purpose of these notes.

They are, of necessity, a mixture of the eternal with the historical, the geographical and the human; and they are all subject to memory.

The SCJ premises at Brugelette was a medieval castle, with square battlemented towers, rearing their heads above each other’s shoulders. It was in fact a vast towered enceinte with gate-houses, courts, arches, kitchens, cisterns, vaulted chambers and great halls. All of these buildings were in very good repair, a chain of stony splendour, but more were lived in; they were used as workshops, storerooms, stables, garages.

Two new wings, with conservatories, were added in the nineteenth century. Built in that rather haphazard fashion, sometimes described as "quaint", they were occupied by the Staff and Novices. Having its own well-cultivated fields, gardens and orchards, the Novitiate was largely self-supporting.

The Novices came mainly from Belgium and Luxembourg, but also from Holland and Italy, together with seven from England and Ireland for the new English foundation.

French was (by rule) the common language and the soutane the recognised dress.

The Novice master was Fr P Van Hommerich SCJ, a Dutchman, who had previously been Novice master at Asten. He came in 1938 to replace Fr M Mahait SJ, a Jesuit, who had been Novice Master at Brugelette for many years. He was now retired but still Spiritual Director and Confessor to the Novices. Fr Van Hommerich had made his own Novitiate under Fr André Prevot, one of the Founder’s early associates. He had many stories of Fr Prevot; his extraordinarily vivid realisation of the spiritual world, its inner meaning and motive power.

On 31st March 1940 Pat Collins was Professed. A day of rejoicing and encouragement for the British contingent at Brugelette. He was recalled to England and assigned to our parish at Redbourn.

During the previous night, heralded by widespread air attacks against airfields and communications, the German armed forces sprang forwards towards France across the frontiers of Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg. Long before daybreak a hundred and fifty miles of front were aflame.

Luxemburg was occupied in five hours; Holland in five days. Belgium cried aloud for help.

The high summer of 1940 was well nigh perfect; the kind of idyllic summer which seems to have vanished for ever. But the benign skies were flecked with vapour-trails which betrayed the agony of the times. For it was here - 20,000 feet above the countryside and the cities; in villages and towns; on the hills and in the plain - that the fate of nations hung in the balance while an incredulous world watched and waited.

On 13th May news of a most alarming nature began to come in. All the fortresses on the frontier, and all the fortified positions in North and South Belgium, had been penetrated. Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain and Malines were in German hands. The enemy was indeed at the gates; a mere fifty miles away.

But the Community celebrated Ike’s Profession in the traditional joyful manner.

On 15th May it was decided to evacuate the Novitiate. The seven candidates for the future English Province got transport as far as the French frontier; but the civilian lorry on which they travelled was not allowed into France. It took the Novices to Blogies, a house of the French SCJ Province, but on Belgian soil. The house was empty!

They were about to discover that once fear has taken possession of a great human mass, it is difficult to check; and even more difficult to reverse. The war had exploded into hideous reality.

There were some French soldiers around; also refugees. A Scots sentry at the main Crossroads stopped them: "Pas passer", he said, adding a Glasgow accent to his French. When he heard English voices and Irish accents he grinned: "OK go on, but ye’ll have to tak your chance. I canna guarantee anything further than yon corner"! ‘Yon corner’ was a mile further down the road. When one carries all one’s worldly goods in a large haversack on one’s back a mile is a long way, but that was only the beginning; a long train of events was in process.

On 17th May Brussels capitulated, after it had been blasted and scarred by aerial attacks with high explosive and incendiary bombs.

Thus, for the second time in a quarter of a century, an enemy flag flew over the Belgian capital. The enemy remained the same, only the symbol of its oppression had altered, its design from the eagle to the swastika.

It is not possible to tell this story without recording the milestones which we passed on our long foot-weary journey; Brugelette - Calais - Dunkerque - Brugelette. A journey from security to the jaws of death and back.

On 18th May we found ourselves within sight of the frontier, at Rhumes. Meanwhile darkness had come on, and we had to resign ourselves to an indefinite continuance of uncertainties. However we crossed the frontier without mishap, and slept that night in a barn.

It is easier to recall across the gulf of years the spasm of relief which swept over us, than it is to describe it. Members of the generation who experienced the Second World War, as adults, tend to look back on it as the most adventurous and crucial period of their lives. But we can only give our testimony according to the lights that we follow; and there is no comparison between reading about events afterwards, and living through them from hour to hour.

A British Army Chaplain - Captain George Mulligan - came up. He had been in college in Ireland with Frank Murray! It was a happy and opportune meeting, for "parachutists" was a word on everyone’s lips; it was equivalent to ‘spies’ or ‘traitors’ and those accused by prejudiced, excitable, gesticulating French mobs were usually given short shrift.

It was this first incident - there were to be many others - that made us realise with awful force that no exercise of our own feeble wit could save us from the enemy, and that without the assistance of that Divine Power, which governs the eternal sequence of cause and effect, we could never succeed.

We prayed earnestly for help and guidance and our prayers were always swiftly and wonderfully answered.

Convoys of lorries, of tanks and guns, some French, some British, moving steadily towards the front. In this setting the troops came face to face with long columns of refugees making their way in the opposite direction. Cars; farm-carts; hand-barrows; prams laden with luggage; mattresses; household gear; crates of poultry; cyclists; pedestrians; set-faced men; harassed and weeping women; excited children. The Germans soon realised what a bonus these refugees were to their strategy; and from time to time machine-gunned and bombed the refugee columns, to add to the chaos and thus clog the roads for the advancing allied troops. Civilians and French soldiers lay huddled in every hollow beside the road. Human distress is always painful to witness. A refugee can acquire an instinct for sensing a situation almost unconsciously; an ability to "smell" confidence or defeatism or danger. All that week fear hung in the air. Many factors went to make it apparent. People talked tensely, their fear showing in their eyes; they were impatient, nervous, white-faced, suspicious. They accused innocent people of being "spies". The sound of distant gun-fire, the air battles that raged overhead, the convoys of ambulances crammed with wounded soldiers, the unknown numbers of the enemy, their refuted merciless ferocity; all added to the general alarm.

The world was shocked by the utter failure to grapple with the German armour which, with a few thousand vehicles, was compassing the entire destruction of mighty armies, and by the swift collapse of all Allied resistance once the fighting front had been pierced.

We, seven Novices, likewise pushed on towards the sea as steadfastly as our blistered feet would allow, hoping to reach Calais and there get a boat for England.

Our road took us through wooded hills where lay the road-blocks and underground fortifications soon to be abandoned by the French. A dejected French officer told us of terrible bombing by dive-bombers against which they had no guns; of tanks from whose armour the French anti-tank shells bounded off "comme les balles de tennis"!

A Belgian officer elaborated, "C’est bien simple et bien tragique", he went on, "we have come up against a new type of war; one we cannot deal with. These dive-bombers, these heavy tanks have changed warfare. Already the British and French are preparing to retreat. Worse still, at Dinant and Sedan a thousand German tanks are across the river Meuse, inside France." Just in front of us, across one field, long lines of khaki-clad French infantry, carrying light machine-guns and boxes of ammunition, as well as their rifles, were moving towards lorries waiting to evacuate them. At the rear was a young officer, map-case under one arm, field-telephone under the other; tears in his eyes, as if vainly seeking some cable to hold. An incurable gangrene had attacked the once-proud French Army.

Presently, a woman, her face pale with agitation came up to our little party. She was Dutch but had family in England; could she join our party and go with us; she was nearly hysterical.

We felt sorry for her but there was nothing we could do. A disaster of the first magnitude had fallen on Western Europe. We were living through the dramatic story of the world’s greatest ordeal. Nevertheless, to understand its impact one must first imagine the position; and then apply the time-scale of our own short lives.

Thus, nearly all changes were far less perceptible to those who lived through them from day to day, than appears when the salient features of the epoch are recalled. It may be, indeed, that an inner selective power leads to the continuous broadening of our thoughts.

On 21st May the Germans reached the sea at Abbeville despite desperate resistance. It was also on this day that our party of seven split up. A small army van in the charge of a young officer from Dublin drew up. He offered a lift but had room only for three. We decided the three to go should be I Carter (already professed), J Hoban and J Clarkson, both of whom were by this time physically and emotionally suffering severely from strain and fatigue.

We all felt this incident was an answer to prayer (Et pariter, de die in diem, sic nos servavit Deus!).

The remaining four: P O’Sullivan, J Ryan, F Murray and G Jordan pushed on towards Dunkirk-Calais; still more than eighty kilometres away. People smiled, telling us the Germans would be there before us! But we kept going.

We reached St Omer. The town was being fortified - with sand-bags!! - for the expected German onslaught. We pressed on, footsore and weary, towards Calais. French soldiers were lying by the road, asleep; their rifles beside them. A fierce air-battle was raging overhead. Many planes, allied and enemy, were shot down. We spent the night in a hayshed, with other refugees, including a party of Americans who gave us some supper.

Next day, Thursday 23rd May, we encountered German troops in some numbers. Some on motor-cycle combinations and some in armoured cars, but still clearly only reconnaissance or skirmishing parties. Presently three German tanks came up, collected the French soldiers’ rifles and broke them under the tanks. The men were made prisoners-of-war and compelled to run alongside. They seemed quite unpeturbed!

Some distance ahead, however, there was a skirmish. We could hear machine-guns and anti-tank guns in rapid fire. We went on into Ardres where we saw a few hundred British prisoners. It may have been they who engaged the Germans in the skirmish!

We were very tired but we kept going; there was no other choice. We slept that night in a shed.

The advancing Germans, however, did not interfere with the civilian population or with the refugees. They stormed on towards Dunkirk. We followed! We therefore had the unique experience of following in the wake of the British army as it retreated to Dunkirk and, a few days later, in the wake of the German army as it advanced on Dunkirk. It passed through towns and villages without opposition.

After some miles, however, hearing that Dunkirk was surrounded, we diverted towards Calais, in the now forlorn hope of finding a ship. We followed the main road.

About fifteen miles from Calais we found that we had "overtaken" a long line of German tanks. They were halted all along the road and were "at ease". The crews were seated on the turrets; every man with a bottle of excellent French wine.

There were no longer any refugees to be seen; but we four kept on.

One German, between gulps of wine, asked us who we were and where we were going? He offered the bottle and we each had a gulp. We told him we were students on our way to England. He laughed: "We will be going to England in a few days; stay here and come with us"!

We joined in the laughter; but kept going!

"Advance Friends"! That was all, no demand for identification; but then, perhaps, our accents were identification enough!

They brought us in to their ‘outpost’, a large Forge with about thirty men. They gave us tea, with bread and sausages, and a packet of ten ‘Woodbines’ each. They had no idea of a Panzer Division a few miles down the road! The Sergeant remarked they had spare rifles: "Why not take one each and join us?"

As with the German a few hours previously, we laughed off the invitation. Non-combatants have no right to carry arms, and although unarmed ourselves, we were still in the company of armed men who were actually holding a front-line redoubt. If the Germans arrived, and they could at any moment, we might find ourselves in trouble.

Although the German armour was halted, the war went on. Attacks from the air never ceased. Artillery shelling; scout cars and motor-cycle squads ranging everywhere; roads full of transport and supplies.

The British at Calais were astounded at our adventures. They told us that they themselves expected to be made prisoners-of-war. They would not be evacuated, and they advised us to leave, at least before daybreak. We went outside.

The horizon was bright with gun-flashes. We spent that night in a large cellar, with a few score refugees, and next morning very early set out in the direction of Dunkirk.

He ordered the Admiralty to establish a "Small Vessels Pool" and collect every vessel they could lay their hands on. Throughout these days the British Forces were fighting a delaying action, as they retreated steadily seawards; the small vessels would be used to lift them off the beaches. These vessels came in all shapes and sizes: fishing boats; cockle boats; luxury yachts; cabin-cruisers; river-barges and even rowing dinghies. They were told to assemble at Sheerness and at Ramsgate. From these ports they would proceed towards Dunkirk in the lee of larger ships. All this we learned later.

On the German side there seemed to be no real idea of what was happening. Nor did there seem to be any clear plan for the final subjugation of the defenders of the perimeter on the coast around Dunkirk. A result the enemy’s overwhelming superiority could have brought about with little trouble. The main road to Dunkirk was already cut and the secondary roads filled with retiring troops, long trains of transport, and many thousands of refugees.

Whatever the reason, it was obvious they had no full appreciation of the scope and success of the evacuation. The German High Command halted its advance for four days, 23rd - 27th May. This allowed 338,000 Allied soldiers to embark for England at Dunkirk, and other ports and points along the coast. No agreed explanation for this episode has ever been forthcoming. Yet in spite of all, the vast movement was carried through with almost the precision of a parade and, although not wholly without loss, such casualties and delays as did occur, mostly to small craft in tow, had no appreciable effect on events. The entire network of defence was keyed to the highest pitch of activity.

It would be the greater part of six long years before a friendly ship could come again to Calais. On 27th May, by noon, the final action had already begun. At this time we were not far from Dunkirk; we had reached the place where the giant supermarket, so patronised by British tourists and holiday-makers, now stands.

There we were stopped by a German sentry and told we could not enter Dunkirk or proceed further towards the sea. The reasons were obvious enough. In the town and around the harbour the struggle raged with unprecedented ferocity.

The Allies were still trying to hold back the enemy forces now attacking on all sides their rapidly diminishing enclave.

A thick pall of black smoke from the burning oil depot covered the entire area. But the progress of the evacuation was watched with anxious eyes and growing hope. The sea was calm. To and fro, between the shore and the ships, plied the little boats, gathering men from the beaches or picking them out of the water.

We learned much later that I Carter, J Clarkson and J Hoban had been taken on board a hospital ship, and reached England safely.

As for King Leopold’s much maligned decision to surrender, perhaps from his vantage point as Commander-in-Chief at the Front, he could see that his forces were not only outnumbered but also outwitted; like their Allies they had prepared for the wrong kind of war!

Although the Belgian people once again accepted conquest, and bowed in what then seemed a new destiny, yet ever must the name of King Leopold be honoured in the land for which he and his gallant grenadiers fought indomitably to the end.

The vision of an army marching towards its end embarrasses the mind, which draws back from contemplating the scene. The death-struggle of an army, and with it the civilization which it underpinned, is no more pleasant to behold than that of flesh and blood.

It was now evident to any observer that the French front had been successfully penetrated everywhere, and the advance into the hinterland was proceeding rapidly, meeting little or no resistance. Our course took us in the opposite direction, towards Belgium. The roads over which we passed had changed as many times as the number of days the campaign had lasted. Their aspect had altered in the same way as scenery changes the stage.

An idyll, lying picturesquely at rest among broad fields of maize and groves of sunflowers, had suddenly become angry and a challenge to open battle.

Shell-holes and bomb-craters everywhere, fields littered with the debris left by the thousands who had recently slept there. Who could count the men and women, military and civilian, on whom these roads inflicted physical agony; or the vehicles which came to grief through their impassability; or the draught animals and farm animals which died in the onslaught?

A world was at our feet as fragile as our clay.

In part this may have been due to the fact that the retreating Allies had failed to provide obstacles to armoured advance. We came across road-blocks that had never been manned, and gun-positions, with guns that had never been fired; their neat stacks of ammunition still in place! Only in a few places was there any attempt at resistance.

One such place was Bailleul, not far from the Belgian frontier. The town was in ruins and the countryside all around littered with burned-out cars and lorries. Damaged tanks and gun-carriers; great quantities of ammunition; soldiers’ packs and broken rifles everywhere. It seemed as if the men had thrown them aside in their efforts to escape and avoid capture.

Here too, all around lay the spilled gear of war; the endless "footgear of battle"! Gas masks, guns, telephones, helmets, cars and trucks, weapons ... All, however, did not escape. We offered prayers at some thirty graves, each marked by a rifle stuck in the ground, with a helmet stuck on top of the rifle. The helmets were French!

We came across a derailed supply-train still loaded with army rations. We asked the German guards if we could have some. They told us to take as much as we wanted. This we did. The rations were French!

We crossed the frontier into Belgium at Neuve Eglise on Sunday 2nd June and attended Mass in the village church.