Story: In March 2004, I was in the second bookshop in Dymchurch rummaging through the books when I came across a second hand Jerusalem Bible.

As I opened the Bible up, a number of papers fell into my hand.

On one of them was written a story. It was obviously very meaningful to the previous owner, an elderly lady because she had specially typed it out on a piece of paper.

And she had written this:

The following lines were discovered on the dead body of an American soldier killed in action in North Africa, in 1944.

They were found by a corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps and were printed in a Tunis newspaper.

They found their way to Britain through the United States.

A friend of the writer of these lines, who was with him when they were written (and who survived the battle in which the writer was killed) said the soldier was a thoroughly wild character, but there were tears running down his face as he wrote these lines.

“Look, God, I have never spoken to you,

And now I want to say: “ How do you do?”.

You see, God, they told me you didn’t exist,

And I, like a fool, believed all this.

Last night, from a shell hole, I saw your sky,

And I figured then they had told me a lie.

I wonder, God, if you’d take my poor hand?

Somehow I feel you would understand.

Strange I had to come to this hellish place

Before I had time to see your face.

Wel1, I guess there isn’t much more to say:

But I’m glad, God, that I met you today

The zero hour will soon be here

But

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