I’ve always loved my Uncle Jack. While, inadvertently, the world knew him as the one who invented the name ‘kiwifruit’ (NB: the fruit is called ‘kiwifruit’, not kiwi, because the ‘kiwi’ is a seriously unappetizing, inedible bird!), I knew him in a far more personal way.

When I entered university, Uncle Jack gave me a job—from 5-8am on Mondays and Thursdays—at the fruit & vegetable markets down on the Auckland waterfront. The money I earned enabled me to travel to the USA to see Barby (and to attend Urbana ’79 together) for five weeks, the only time we were together in almost five years. 

Then, when Barby visited New Zealand in 1981 and with me having eyes on theological training in the USA, we went together to the US Embassy, just off Queen St in Auckland city, to apply for my student visa. It was rejected. They wanted to know if I planned to marry Barby and then they wanted a guarantee that we’d not remain in the USA. Yikes. How does that work? She is an American citizen! This created quite the crisis for us. Later that same evening we were at a church prayer meeting to share our plans – at Uncle Jack’s home. He listened quietly with that warm cheshire smile of his, then took me aside quietly afterwards and said, “Leave it to me. I know the Ambassador. I’ll vouch for you.” Sure enough, later the next day, as we were travelling through Te Puke we received word that all was OK.

I could say more, much more, but one further thing will suffice. When Uncle Jack died we rounded up our young family and off we went to the funeral together, on Uncle Jack’s 90th birthday…

Uncle Jack is my mother’s eldest cousin. His mother and my grandmother are sisters.

After seeing action in Greece and Crete, he was captured by the Germans and became a POW in (modern day) Poland for four years. After he died, his grandson was helping his grandma go through things in the attic and they discovered Uncle Jack’s diary from the war. ‘It had never been discussed with the family’ (203). One thing led to another and earlier this year Jack’s Voice: A POW’s Diary & Letters – Stalag VIIIB 1941-1945 was published, with his eldest daughter, Mary, as the editor.

I was expecting to rush my way through the writings of someone I admire. But then I wasn’t expecting what God had in mind for me as I read this book… 

… I’ve been battling with helping to lead a ministry with a global reach, including numerous countries being wrecked by Covid-19, while living in the safety of New Zealand. And while it is not for me to even suggest parallels between World War II and these Covidian times of ours, there are ways in which God has used Jack’s Voice to buttress my spirit.

The Importance of Communication

The incessant focus of Jack’s Voice are the letters written and received. At one stage, for the seven long months after his capture, without knowing whether he was even alive and without either side receiving a single word, both sides kept writing lots of words. Amazing. And right through his 6 years and 179 days in the army, the letters flowed. People didn’t seem to give up. So many different ones kept writing, including my mother, Gwen, (about 9-14 years of age, at the time), whose letters I especially enjoyed. 

Without the immediacy of emails, texts and WhatsApp, letters tended to come in bunches. ‘I received nineteen letters yesterday’ (284). Far more the buffet, than today’s unrelenting snacking. While it is true, as the Bible tells us, that ‘man shall not live by bread alone, but by the word of God’, this man Jack discovered that the words of family and friends played their part as well. 

To communicate is to care. To care is to communicate. This is something which came into focus early in this covidian crisis. To keep finding ways to communicate is critical in continuing to care for people. 

The Beauty of Creation

‘Above my bed I have a little bunch of carnations and sweet peas from my garden’ (278). ‘Our flower garden is finished, but we are now reaping the harvest each day from our vegetable garden – tomatoes, onions, leeks and maize’ (280). ‘Starlings arrived last month, but no storks yet. First little white daisies and tiny bluebells. Sparrows nesting’ (292). ‘The year is racing along, and we are into May, the loveliest month here. Now the cherry trees are in blossom and saw my first swifts and heard the cuckoo last week’ (294). ‘Flower garden looking nice: zinnias just coming into their own, sweet peas a picture, nasturtiums and pansies. Carnations spoilt with rain, cosmos and asters nearly out’ (303).

These are the type of observations that seem to be on every page. Everywhere that Uncle Jack is, he lingers over creation and takes delight in it. At one point, his grandfather (and my great-grandfather) writes, ‘rejoice as much as ever in the beauty of nature’ (275). Engaging with creation – nurturing growth, observing life, synching with the seasons – sustained Jack as a POW. For him, creation is the landscape on which life and hope is written. It is still true.

One cluster of sentences is profound. ‘Saw peewits, sparrow hawks, seven storks circling together, cuckoos and plenty of swallows and martins this week. Fields bright with green grass. Casino fell yesterday. Lilac out this week. Apple trees a picture’ (296). Do you see what he is doing here? [NB: ‘Casino’ must be Monte Cassino]. News from the war is slipped into the bigger context of news about what God is doing in creation among the flowers and the birds, not the other way around!

What a way to live in and through a crisis, don’t you think? Covid has enabled me to be captured by a garden once again. It is a landscape on which life and hope is written. Not everyone is as blessed as I am and so, as I plant and nurture and water and transplant and delight, I am praying for life and hope to be written into the lives of friends and colleagues around the world.

The Foundation of Spirituality

The letters from Uncle Jack’s mother are the highlight of the book for me, especially the way she signed-off her letters. While his father tends to be more about ‘keep your heart up – you will have great happiness in your life again. Work, reading and study with clean living will build up an asset worth more than millions of pounds’ (245, 255), there is something sweet and sure from his mother (whom I knew as Auntie Ethel).

Near the beginning…

Our own dear Jack, we have anxious hearts this past month. We await details of those who have suffered during April and pray you have been preserved. We thank God for you and ask for strength which comes from a quiet confidence in our heavenly father, peace in your heart and that you be a blessing to many. Goodnight my son and friend, Mother (163).

Our love to you precious son and true friend and may there be a way to bless many who need help. I commend you always to that friend who never changes. Try not to worry darling. Your own Mother (180).

In the middle…

We long for you to know that you are not forgotten … Hope you have flowers to enjoy, music to listen to and lovely scenery. Yesterday we took a walk around your trees and they are growing well. We all send love to our precious son and friend. ‘Nothing can separate us’ (215).

We do not forget you and pray you will be conscious of the power and comfort of the divine presence. Our love, Mother (301).

At the end…

We trust there will be many happy days in store for us and pray I may be all you could wish as a mother. Anyhow, we are all longing to see and love you. May you find joy in service for the one who has so graciously preserved you. My love always, Jack. Mother (353).

How beautiful is that?  It is so pure, so precious that any comment on it will tarnish it.

[Ten years ago, I posted A Mother’s Poem, written by Uncle Jack’s grandmother on the news of his mother’s younger brother (Edgar) losing his life at Gallipoli in World War I. It is the same spirituality, isn’t it? It reminds me also of the simple, sure spirituality of my own grandma (pictured here with her in 1963), Uncle Jack’s Auntie May. When the most eminent New Zealand biblical scholar of the twentieth century, a family friend, lost his wife to cancer, causing him to fall apart and write a book about it, my grandma was bemused by it all. Not for lack of compassion. No. It was more about how so great a scholar-leader could lose track of a simple faith in the ways of God in his life. I will never, ever forget it.]

This is also a time for a simple, trusting spirituality…

The Role of Friendship

Across from the Table of Contents page is written: ‘Men are great only as they are kind’ (Thomas Carlyle). That is a theme of Uncle Jack’s life, for sure. His life ‘radiated goodness’ (375). As his mother expressed in one letter, ‘You are ever in our thoughts and constantly remembered by friends. No boy ever had so many. The kindness is overwhelming. Everyone loves your sweetpeas and wall flowers…’ (201). This is typical. Not only are letters from home full of news from the garden, they are full of news about his friends. 

It is also true of his life in the army. Uncle Jack was ‘captured through kindness’ (185). It was when he delayed to help a friend (Bert May) in trouble in the evacuation from Crete that he was ‘picked up by the Germans’ (185). Years later, during one of those horrid Death Marches, plodding hundreds of miles in the heart of one of Europe’s coldest winters, knowing that if you dropped down or out, you’d be shot … it was this same Bert May who carried Uncle Jack – ‘how far and for how long, it is not known’ (319) – and ensured his safety and survival. 

Another friend was Bern, with whom Uncle Jack hatched plans to escape from Stalag VIIIB. They tried to escape at least once (and got caught), and contemplated it on many other occasions. ‘It was our duty to try and escape’ (240). Interesting, isn’t it? One wonders if the constant entertaining of the prospect of escaping, as appears to be the case, energized their lives with hope – and cemented a few friendships along the way. 

Being kind to others and to ourselves is another theme to emerge in this covidian crisis and wrapping it up in friendship remains a strategy for safety and survival.

The Liberation of Poetry

Uncle Jack’s writing has its own lyrical quality. For example, while in Egypt he wrote, ‘There is nothing to beat sleeping out … There is soft sand underneath, warm breezes from the desert, and above a wonderful ceiling of stars with the moon gliding gracefully through them’ (95). 

But he was also a poet. 

Spring in Europe starts in this way:

‘Tis a lovely thing when delicate spring struggles free from winter drear;

When one by one with the warmth of the sun the flowers and the birds appear.

‘Tis ever so nice when the snow and ice disappear in their final thaw;

When the grass is seen and trees turn green and the land is alive once more… (326-327).

Or, these few lines in the middle of a poem on the wild flowers of Europe: 

And so it is in all Europe’s lands,

In war and peace the same,

The wild flowers appear in their gentle bands

And cover earth’s scars and shame (349).

There are a number of pages with his poetry, mostly written on the ship which brought him back to New Zealand. But isn’t art, whether it be music or painting or literature or poetry, so valuable at these times? Whether it be those years of lock-ins (as it was for POWs like Uncle Jack), or our months of lock-downs (as it is for many people worldwide today), the arts help us to escape, to be liberated, if only in our imagination. Interestingly, in a few weeks we plan to publish some ‘poetry in a pandemic’ written by Wilfredo, an Argentinian friend and colleague.

Thanks, Uncle Jack, for the way your life continues to encourage and guide me.

nice chatting

Paul