Family Lessons 138: Bayonet Training

On my study wall hangs a picture from the Great War of a young officer with a number of sergeants, below. They were based at Oswestry and it was their business to teach the art of bayonetting to new recruits. It features Great-great Uncle Harold, above, who had been a territorial soldier before the war, and was mobilised with others of the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment on 4th August, 1914. He survived several major battles, but he was back in England by 1917 or early 1918. Promoted to sergeant, he was tasked with training the new volunteers and conscripts, which the ever-increasing death toll daily demanded.

Perhaps it seems strange that an experienced veteran should be removed from the front line, a circumstance which surely assisted with his survival of the war (he lived until 1987). Yet he likely helped the British war effort more by teaching and instructing in comfortable Shropshire than fighting in boggy, bloody Belgium or grey, Northern France. Training others was a much greater service to King and Country than engaging in regular trench warfare with all the others. 

Pray therefore for those who train and teach pastors and church leaders. Lecturing in a seminary or Bible college may seem like an easy ride, an ivory tower of academia, away from the cut and thrust of an anti-Christian culture and the petty business of running churches. But if those who teach the teachers and train the pastors fail in their call, the whole church is likely to suffer.