A Lesson from a WWI Chaplain: “Woodbine Willie”

In saying goodbye to a beloved friend (Judy Butler – who is doing quite well in Maryland), I met a new friend.  In downsizing to fit into her new retirement lodgings, she was leaving a considerable collection of books behind.  At her invitation, I had gone through them and selected a number that I would add to my library.  And then, when I arrived at her old California home with a group of Oak Park High School lacrosse players, we assisted her kind landlord by taking all the books – not just the two or three boxes I had originally chosen.

Those books sat in my overcrowded garage for weeks – in boxes, in stacks, singly balanced on power tools and bicycles… much to my wife’s chagrin they were everywhere!   And when I finally got around to going through them and determining which would go where, I met this new friend.  Judy had two books by someone I had never heard of before: “Woodbine Willie.”

That was not his real name.  He was born Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy in 1883 in an Irish ghetto called “Quarry Hill” in Leeds, England.  His parents were a poor parish minister and his wife.  Geoffrey himself went into the ministry and served as a chaplain to the English troops during World War I.  He saw the worst of the worst – being present even at the deadly Ypres Salient.  And he shared his soldier’s risks and suffering.

And he shared the ubiquitous soldier’s habit of the twentieth century – he smoked. Evidently, he smoked ” Will’s Wild Woodbines.” You have to love a pastor whose nickname is based on his favorite cigarette brand!

I am still getting to know this man and his literary remains, but one thing he shared really caught my attention.  He wrote a poem about the nickname his soldiers gave him, and it carries with it a solemn reminder of the essential focus of our ministries to those with whom we share this world.

They gave me this name like their nature,

Compacted of laughter and tears.

A sweet that was born of the bitter,

A joke that was torn from the years…

…Their name! Let me hear it – the symbol

Of unpaid – unpayable debt,

For the men to whom I owed God’s Peace

I put off with a cigarette. [1]


Can you imagine that scene from your favorite war movie?  The one where the grievously injured soldier is in pain and his buddy lights him a cigarette and kindly lays it on his dying comrade’s lips?  Now imagine the chaplain doing the same thing.  And missing his opportunity to share the gospel –to extend God’s own peace to the man who has been victimized by the wars of mankind.

There is a lesson for those of us who are engaged in the kind of Christian warfare that Paul describes in the last chapter of Ephesians.  We are to have our feet fitted with the gospel of peace – and we are to be bold ambassadors for Christ.  Do we often get too distracted by our good desires to meet people’s “felt needs?”   Do we spend our time handing out cigarettes and whatever else the folks around us feel and say that they need?  And are we distracted to the point that we completely miss the opportunities we might have had to give them what we truly owe them: the blessing for which we have been blessed? This blessing is nothing other than the good news that in Christ, God is reconciling people to himself.  Wounds might not be healed but sins can be forgiven.  The curtain will drop on our earthly lives – but eternal life is the gift of God to all who believe.  Dear Christian, make that simple message your stock in trade.  Make it your calling card.  Make it your passionate goal to distribute that promise and assurance as widely as you possibly can.  Do not let that debt go unpaid.

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas


[1] G.A. Studdert Kennedy, After War Is Faith Possible?” An Anthology, ed. By Walters, Kerry (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2008) front matter.

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