Ernest Gordon (1)

 

Angus McGillivary

 

In a Japanese prison camp in Thailand during WWII:

 

“He’s dead.”

 

“Dead? How?”

 

For a moment Dusty could not speak. I could see that he was deeply moved. I wondered why, for he could scarcely have known McGillivray.

 

“It’s hard to say. He was strong. In fact, he was one of those you’d expect would be the last to die. But then I suppose he needn’t have died.”

 

“Then why did he?”

 

Dusty sat down on my bed.

 

“It has to do with Angus’s mucker,” he began, ‘who became very ill.”

 

It was the custom among the Argylls for every man to have a ‘mucker’ – that is, a pal or friend with whom he shared or ‘mucked in’ everything he had.

 

“It seemed pretty certain to everyone,” Dusty continued, “that the mucker was going to die. Certain, that is, to everyone but Angus. He made up his mind that his mucker would live. Someone had stolen his mucker’s blanket. Angus gave him his own. Every meal-time Angus would show up to draw his ration. But he didn’t eat it. He would bring it round to give to his friend. Stood over him, he did, and made him eat it. Going hungry was hard on Angus, mind you, because he was a big man, with a big frame.”

 

As Dusty talked on, I could see it all happening – Angus drawing on his strength through his will and depleting his own body to make his friend live.

 

“His mates noticed that Angus had taken to slipping out of the camp at night,” Dusty went on. “These excursions could have only one purpose. He was visiting the Thai villages. It was taken for granted that he had joined the black-marketeers! Angus, of all people! This shocked the others, for he was known as a man of high principles."

 

As men died in the camp, it became possible for others to come into possession of objects of some value – watches, shirts, shorts, knives and so on. These were highly prized by the Thais, who would gladly pay for them in their paper money known as bahts’, worth about one-and-sixpence each. Or they would barter for the goods, offering medicine or duck eggs.

 

“Although Angus’s mates thought that he was trying to make a bit of money for himself, they didn’t begrudge it to him,” said Dusty. “Perhaps you can guess the end of the story. The mucker got better. Then Angus collapsed. Just pitched on his face and died.”

 

“And what did the docs say caused it?” I asked.

 

“Starvation,” answered Dusty, “complicated by exhaustion.”

 

“And all for his friend?”

 

Dusty sat in stillness.

 

(Excerpted from To End All Wars, by Ernest Gordon, Zondervan, pages 99 – 100).

 

Ernest Gordon, a British officer and a Scot, had been given up for dead in the POW camp, but Dusty and others were determined to nurture him back to life. Gordon entered the camp not believing in God, that would change. Gordon would later come to the US and become the dean of chapel at Princeton, serving at Princeton from 1954 until 1981.

 

The Bridge Over the River Kwai (movie and book) is a fictionalized account of the railroad of death, Gordon’s To End All Wars (published earlier under other titles) is the true story, a story from which we can learn much. (Believe me when I say that Gordon’s book is far better and deeper and moving than the movie by the same name.)

 

The prisoners became subhuman, stealing from one another, unfeeling toward one another, driven by hate and despair. In the few, however, there was sacrificial love, and in the midst of hell, love prevailed – there was, as Gordon writes, a “miracle on the River Kwai.”

 

The prisoners became a community of love, serving one another, caring for one another, seeking Christ, serving Christ, and ultimately offering water, food, and aid to wounded and defeated Japanese soldiers. Jesus Christ transcended their suffering, He transcended war.

 

Love makes no sense. The Cross of Christ makes no sense. When Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” we respond, “Yeah but.” When Jesus says, “Lay down your life,” we reply, “Yeah but.”

 

During a conversation with Dusty, Ernest asked, “Why doesn’t He [God] do something, instead of sitting quiescently on a great big white throne in the no-place called heaven?”

 

Gordon writes, Dusty considered for a moment. Then he said, “Maybe He does…maybe He does…but we can’t see everything He is doing now. Maybe our vision isn’t very good at this point, for here we see in a glass darkly.”

 

Then Dusty quoted from a poem by Ernest Howard Crosby:

 

No one could tell me where my soul might be;

I sought for God, but God eluded me;

I sought my brother out and found all three –

My soul, my God, and all humanity.

 

“We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister” (1 John 4:19 – 21).

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren” (1 John 3:16)

 

Ernest and Dusty saw Jesus Christ in Angus McGillivray, what do others see in our congregations?

 

In me?

 

In you?