On a grey June day in 1941 the British troopship Anselm set sail from Liverpool en route to the Gold Coast in West Africa. It was at the height of the submarine war. But the Anselm, because of engine trouble, had missed its convoy and was travelling alone. On board were 1300 Allied airmen. At 5 am on July 5^th the Anselm was hit by two torpedoes amidships. She sank in 22 minutes. And that might have been the end of the story. Except that in the months and years that followed survivors began to tell of the heroism of an air force chaplain. Six years later, one of them, a staff sergeant, wrote to a London newspaper about it, eliciting hundreds of letters from other survivors.

                Apparently, after the torpedoes struck there was panic on board and utter confusion in the early dark. Unskilled hands tried to launch the lifeboats, so that some got stuck and other landed upside down in the water. Forty-two-year-old RAF chaplain Cecil Pugh, who had been in the sickbay, came up in his dressing gown and according to one survivor ‘seemed to be everywhere at once’. Because he was not thinking of himself, one account says, his presence calmed the panic. The rest of the lifeboats were lowered safely but there were still many without a place. The chaplain went round the ship encouraging men to jump to safety. One man, hesitating on the deck, says he felt a hand on his shoulder and a voice in his ear which said, ‘Go with God’ and he lived to tell the tale.

                Finally Cecil Pugh heard that a number of injured men were trapped in the hold where the torpedoes had hit. There was no hope of getting them out. He spoke to a group of marines who were standing round the open hatchway leading to the hold. He asked them to tie a rope round him and lower him in. The sergeant in charge refused, ‘If you go down there, Padre,’ he said, ‘You’ll never get out.’

Pugh, who was senior in rank, ordered him to do it. ‘My faith in God,’ he said, ‘is greater than my fear of death. I must be where the men are.’ They lowered him into the hold which was already awash with water. Their last sight, before they themselves jumped for safety, was of the chaplain up to his shoulders in water praying with his men.

                When the story was investigated by the Air Ministry and all the facts were brought to life, King George VI award Cecil Pugh the George Cross, Britain’s highest civilian award for bravery. The citation read, ‘He had every opportunity of saving his own life but, without regard to his own safety and in the best tradition of the service and of a Christian minister, he gave up his life for others.’

                When his widow first heard the story, she said, ‘It was so like him. In a crisis he would do what he had always learned to do – listen to God and then obey,’ and that, she said to her children, ‘is what we must do.’

                Their son, Geoffrey, made a decision soon after the war to deliberately hand over his life to God on his knees, a decision, he told me, which ‘has been an anchor ever since’. The fact that this was the way his father lived made a huge difference: ‘It had been our parents’ practice to seek God’s daily direction and to write down they thoughts they had. It was a practice they taught us.’

                Two years ago on Remembrance Day Geoffrey delivered a sermon in Chester Cathedral in which he described his father’s action and went on, ‘Although since 1945 we have been spared a world war, war has nonetheless scarred every continent in every decade since and it continues to do so. Hunger, greed, fear and pride, become drivers of national policy with consequences with which we are only too familiar. But God can change human nature. It is what Jesus came to show and to teach us. His aim was to do God’s work. It can become our aim. Peace is not just an idea, it is people becoming different, people like us becoming obedient.’

                At the RAF Memorial in Runnymede stone panels record the names of of more than 20,000 airmen who lost their lives in the Second World War and have no known graves. One man has been accorded a unique privilege, and the manner of his heroic death has been set out in full. As an article in the Daily Express wrote, ‘This man never guided a bomber to the target area, or blasted an enemy fighter from the air – indeed he had never raised his hand in anger to anyone or anything in his life. He was a minister of God, Squadron Leader the Rev Herbert Cecil Pugh.’

                I would add that hearing this story when I was a teenager, 58 years ago, was an important influence in my life.

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