The Revd Stuart Turner CF, Army Chaplain to the Defence School of Communications and Information Systems at Blandford Garrison, reflects on the centenary of the death of the Revd Theodore Bayley Hardy VC DSO MC, who died of wounds in France on 18 October 1918, less than a month before the armistice.
He says: ‘Although the Revd Theodore Bayley Hardy VC DSO MC became one of the most highly-decorated non-combatants of the Great War, this former school master was described by one of his pupils as, “the last person you would expect to win a VC”. In 1914, Hardy was a quiet, unassuming 51-year-old vicar from the Cumbrian fells. He applied to serve as a chaplain but was rejected several times due to his considerable age. Hardy was eventually accepted into service after the war took its toll on the younger generation of chaplains, especially during the slaughter of the Battle of the Somme.
Wounded. In the Head
The United Reformed Church General Secretary, has joined six churches and Christian organisations to speak out in support of Tracey Crouch, MP for Chatham and Aylesford, following her resignation as the minister responsible for gambling on 1 November 2018.
Each remembering a grandfather who fought in, and survived, the 1916 battle of the Somme on opposing sides, friends the Revd David Pickering, Moderator of the United Reformed Church National Synod of Scotland and Pfarrer Martin Henninger, Minister of the Lutherkirche in Frankenthal, travelled to the Somme together and then wrote jointly to a future generation:
Colleagues gathered for cake and heartfelt speeches at the United Reformed Church’s (URC) London office, on 2 November, to say a fond farewell to Gill Nichol, Head of Communications.
