In anticipation of the Highlands Historical Society Annual General Meeting next Saturday, November 25, in the sanctuary at Highlands United Church, we are reprinting the following article, as originally written by Dave Cooper for the 1992 Vol 3 No 2 Fall edition of our newsletter.
The Story of a Window
Stained glass collected from the ruins of the Second World War became a memorial
In a shell hole in France almost 50 years ago, Rev. Dr. T.R. Davies of the Highlands United Church was giving his ninth service of a long day.
Attendance was nearly 100 per cent. “Men don’t have to be compelled to go to church in the present circumstances,” he wrote in his personal diary.
In the shell hole, 30 men sat and there was still plenty of room.
“I walked around the rim and it took me 45 steps to get around. It was almost 12 feet deep so that we could stand up and still be concealed” from the German gunners.
“The lads called it their ‘Rosebowl’, and had it fixed up for the service before I arrived. The last service of the day was one to be remembered because of the manner in which the lads sang ‘Abide with me.’”
The day before, Davies had visited a church in the Normandy town of Carpriquet [sic] that had been almost completely wrecked. Amidst the rubble, he tried to imagine what it must have been like before the shells hit. Someone had been there before him, and attempted to restore the altar.
“The base was there with the carved figure of a lamb. Above this there was a cross (with the image of Christ blown off) … the shattered figure had been gathered up and placed on the pedestal at the foot of the cross. I knew that someone with a sense of value had visited the place and had performed this act of reverence.”
Later he discovered it was soldiers from his own regiment, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Winnipeg.
Davies felt in this simple act “there was hope for the world when there are people who recognize that some things have to be preserved.”
The day after his shell hole service, Davies and the troops passed through the ruin of Caen and moved south along the Orne River. The fighting was terrible, and hundreds of wounded men were evacuated. Hundreds of others were killed.
To find solitude, Davies wandered into the deserted village of Fleury-Sur-Orne. The walls of the local church were still standing. As he ambled through the partly ruined building, thinking about the destruction of war and two friends who had been killed earlier that day, Davies bent down to pick up a small square piece of orange colored glass.
It wasn’t a souvenir, he wrote. Just a token of remembrance.
Later, he returned to his blanket by the roadside. The next day, a patrol found seven German soldiers hiding in the balcony of the Fleury-Sur-Orne church, where they had hidden to let the war pass by. They had let Davies pass as well.
At the end of July, 1944, the Allied advance was largely halted by vicious fighting. Davies spent his days in the sad task of burying the dead. He began picking up fragments of glass from local churches, and inscribing them with the names of those he buried.
“The practice had to be discontinued because the number of names was usually too great to write in as small a space as my glass provided.”
Davies suffered a wound in the field, and was treated near the front line by a medical officer and friend.
“I was his last patient. Shortly afterwards a shell landed and Harry Marnatz passed to his reward.”
Davies later found a little rosette of glass in tribute to Marnatz, “whose chief fault was that he always established his regimental aid post as close as he could to the area where the lads were fighting.”
On his way to hospital in England, the truck carrying Davies’ luggage – and collection of glass – was blown up.
When Davies returned to the regiment at Christmas, he was handed his package of glass. A soldier had searched for it in the debris of the explosion and kept it for him.
By early 1945, the Germans had been pushed back through Holland. Davies collected fragments to remind him of the bitter fighting through Arnhem and Groningen.
At Frasselt, in the Reichwald Forest close by the upper reaches of the Seigfried Line, Davies found a piece of glass with the picture of an animal. At Cleve, he picked up a lovely rosette.
“The name of Cleve if [sic] known to us because of Anne of Cleves…It is not improbable that sunshine filtered through some of this very glass and fell upon the face of Anne before she set out to become the bride of an English king,” he wrote.
The struggle for control of a key hill at Calcar [sic] followed, and the regiment’s commanding officer, Lt.-Col. E.P. Thompson, was killed. The fighting continued as the Allies entered Germany, and the last phase of the war.
Davies brought the glass home and gave it to his congregation. They had it made into a memorial window which adorns the front of the church.
He said at the time that the memorial window “emphasized three essential principles.”
Much of the glass was very old and steeped in history.
“We need to be reminded that wisdom did not begin with us.”
All the glass came from outside Canada, and he said that should remind us that we are a very young country, with much to learn from Europe.
Thirdly, Davies said the glass can represent “the sad fragments of men (and women) whose graves are in foreign lands.”
Seventeen members of the Highlands United Church lost their lives during the war.
The window was officially dedicated by Lt.-Gov. J.C. Bowlen [sic] on Remembrance Day Sunday, November 7, 1948.
This year, the United Church will present an audio-visual version of the story of the window on Nov. 8, and dedicate a special booklet. Guests of honor will be Rev. Davies’ wife and son, both from Toronto, and his brother from Red Deer.
Rev. Dr. Davies died in October, 1987.
Highlands Historical Society 