The Wilderness

Edited & Published By IM DeRose

Copyright 2017 IM DeRose

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CH 01 Amsterdam

My mother, Wijnanda, was short and sturdy. Her round face was framed by coal black hair, lit by a smile, and punctuated with flashing dark eyes. She was born in 1885 in the town of Alkmaar, 30 miles north of Amsterdam, in Holland. Her parents owned a grocery store where she worked as a teenager, with her two brothers. Alkmaar is famous for its cheese market.

My mother was romantic. She loved to recite tragedies, and she would sing about storms at sea or far-away Jerusalem with a strong trembling voice. She welcomed visitors who filled our Amsterdam apartment with laughter. I know almost nothing about her background. She never spoke of family. Mother had olive skin, and in my youth I imagined her to be a high strung gypsy.

My father, Jacob, was a taciturn man by nature. He was born in 1880 about 23 kilometers south of Amsterdam; in the village of Sassenheim where they grow tulips. He was the youngest of five brothers and four sisters. People used to say that I looked like my father but acted like my mother.

In his youth, my father was a sculptor. I don’t know how he and his future wife met, but they got married in their late twenties. Maybe, as a struggling artist, he appealed to the young beauty. Eventually, my father had to give up sculpting. For the rest of his life, the family patriarch was a technical draftsman for a large company in Amsterdam which subcontracted for work in marble and granite.

My sister was born in 1910 in Amsterdam and named after our father. A brother soon followed in 1912 whose name derived from our mother. Tragically he died of meningitis while still an infant.

Then in 1915, it was my turn to visit this old world. My name came from an obscure uncle who had died in 1906. In later years I found a prayer card for him with my full name spelled out. I learned that my namesake had been a mountaineer in Switzerland.

My sister attended a school run by nuns who gave her piano lessons. I ended up going to a Christian-Brothers school where I received violin lessons from an old man in the neighborhood. The old maestro chewed on the stump of a dead cigar as he played the violin. I didn’t have much talent, and he told my brother, who loved music, that it was because I had no cigar.

We lived in a walkup apartment near the sluggish Amstel River. As a streetwise kid, I loved to roam through the old city streets and along the numerous canals. If I ran hard enough, I could keep up with the trolley cars and the barges on the river, occasionally passing the early automobiles. The Catholic Church was nearby, where my father was an usher, and my mother took care of the many flowers on the altar. Our family was devout and very Catholic.

I liked school but, my grades were so-so and my teachers soon discovered that in spite of doing my best, I had a poor memory. I was not concerned about this. I wanted to become a soldier until somebody told me they kill people, and then I wanted to be an explorer and discover places across the river.

I was a happy boy content with daydreaming about faraway places and great adventures. I read books by Jules Verne. My imaginary travels took me through the Rocky Mountains with Kari May and his Indian guide Winnetou in the Wild West of fabulous America - wherever that was.

During one summer vacation, my mother enrolled me in a summer camp on the outskirts of the city hoping to curtail my roaming. However, I promptly escaped through the barbed wire. During subsequent summer vacations, my parents rented a cabin by the sea where the adults supervised children playing on a stringy beach. We learned how to build sand castles. But I got away from the beaches too. I just wanted to do my own thing.

Missionary Vocation

I remember little from my early school years except for one important day which set the course for my life. I was in the sixth grade where a cassocked priest stood in front of our class. The priest had a round, florid, smiling face. The faithful and friendly round-faced priest had come to tell us about great adventures in faraway lands. His eyes twinkled like the North Star.

That woke me up. The ruddy-faced priest began to show us colored lantern slides. I saw virgin tropical lands sprawling out in front of my eyes; "some" said the priest, as he wistfully looked out the window beyond the horizon, "were completely unexplored."

“Thousands of pagans live there,” shouted the priest, his face turning beat red, “and they do not know Jesus!" he boomed, "Who wants to be a missionary?”

I practically jumped out of my seat with my hand thrust high. The now smiling priest nodded his head and counted hands. I had found my obsession, which would later be called my vocation. I was going to discover the unexplored interior of that mysterious island in the tropics which the red-faced priest called “New Guinea.” I resolved to baptize those misguided wild-eyed pagans. It is that simple when you are thirteen years old.

My mother was happy when I came running home shouting, “Ma, I am going to be a missionary.” My father remained silent. The priest came to our apartment, and before I knew it, he informed me that after the summer vacation, I would go to a particular school for missionaries.

All I was allowed to take with me were my clothes. So that summer I gave away all my toys to the boy in the apartment below us. I would have to wear long black stockings over my bare knees. My sister laughed and teased me saying I would never last in the seminary. Frequently boys trained for up to 13 years before qualifying to be an ordained missionary priest, ready to serve in foreign lands.

”The Coffin” in Soesterberg

In the fall of 1928, when I was 13 years old, my parents took me to a minor seminary at Soesterberg in the middle of Holland. It was a beautiful area with stately oak and pine trees standing like ancient sentinels arbitrarily stationed here and there about the countryside. In those days there were many such schools in Holland run by different Orders and Congregations which created stiff competition for recruits. As a result of high demand, the Orders and Congregations accepted candidates at younger and younger ages. I did not care where I would be accepted provided I eventually became a missionary.

Soon I discovered it was a German Congregation called “The Divine Word” or SVD for short. We were required to go through four different study houses and if all went well, would be ordained priests by 1941. The first of these study-houses was a three-story oblong structure which we dubbed "the coffin." There were 100 recruits housed in "the coffin" - all hoping to become missionaries. Ultimately less than one quarter would be chosen.

In the seminary, we lived a very sheltered life, our days started at 5:00 AM and ended at 9:00 PM. The priests divided our schedule into periods of prayer, class, study, meals, and recreation. From the beginning, we dedicated ourselves completely to God. The word “world” took on a sinister meaning as time went on. When we went home for short vacations in the world, typically we felt alone and apart. Occasionally a classmate mysteriously disappeared, and in these instances, hushed rumors swirled of a seminarian lost to "the world."

We all wondered what he might have done. Of course, now I know that most seminarians left because of' "temptations" relating to the virtue of chastity. In these cases, the aspiring priest would be counseled strongly by their confessors to give up the cloth. Sex was not something talked about, and each seminarian must have thought that he was the only one who had problems.

I was rather naive about sex and felt its stirring as a nuisance. Often we were warned against “particular friendships.” I understood this to mean you should not have friends, and so I acted aloof. I had never heard of homosexuality before, and no one ever explained it to me.

Since the priests were not professional teachers, they gave us only the simplest introductions to mathematics and the sciences. We learned what priests knew best; Latin, Greek, French, German, English, and Dutch. We spent hundreds of hours memorizing grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Like playing scales on the piano without ever playing a tune, we hardly read anything in those languages and that without much understanding.

With my poor retentive memory, I had a hard time, especially with French which I flunked the second year. My Latin and Greek were not particularly good either. I had to repeat the second year and spent five years in the first study house. Despite my struggles, times were good, the future looked bright, and I was happy.

Return to Holland

To my dismay, disaster struck in April, and I had to return home. My mother was sick and dying. I was on a flight to Holland that night.

I arrived home unshaved, tired and distraught. In the tiny bedroom of our apartment, my father and sister sat staring vacantly at my mother lying motionless in bed. I held mother’s limp hand and called out, “Ma, I’m home. It’s me; I’m here….” Her eyes fluttered open, lighting on something stirring invisibly past my head, beyond the room. She didn’t recognize me. I joined my father and sister staring impassively.

That night and the next day we sat together in silence, taking turns holding mother's hand. When her doctor arrived in the evening, he told us, “I can make her conscious, but she will be in great pain. Do you wish me to do that?” Father whispered, “No.”

She died that night.

I had returned home too late. I would never hear my mother's voice again.

My usually reticent father fled to the dark dining room howling like a wounded animal, screaming, “Now I have lost everything!” My sister and I hurried after father and holding onto him we cried, “Pa! We are here we are here!”

He kept repeating, “I am not an egoist. I am not an egoist.” He never explained these words. Years later I realized that my father, who was never sick himself, had no use for doctors. He believed they were only out for the money. So he hadn’t allowed my mother to visit a doctor when she first became sick. By the time mother was finally allowed to see the doctor, it was already too late. My father was from a family of stubborn people, and I was one of them.

All I knew at the time was that she had died from stomach cancer. She was 49 years old. It was 1932, and I was a young man of 17. Throughout the funeral, I was in a daze and could not comprehend simple realities around me. The outer world felt distant, and it seemed surreal that streetcars clanged upon gray cobblestones, ships hooted along the listless brown river, and hollow laughter hung overhead like a wispy purple fog haunting the streets.

When it was all over, and I saw my father in such distress, I wondered if it would be better if I stayed home. I knew my sister was to be married soon to a schoolteacher. But my father insisted that I return to the seminary and continue my studies for the priesthood.

During the summer vacation, two of my classmates planned a bicycle trip through the Rhine area of Germany, and my father gave me permission to go with them. Hindenburg had just died, and Hitler’s brown shirts marched through the streets with muffled drums. We visited two study houses of our German Congregation and heard to our surprise that "der Volk" loved Hitler. It seemed odd because the seminary priests told us that Adolf Hitler was a dangerous man.

Uden

After the summer vacation, our class transferred to a larger study house in the southern town of Uden. Here we would receive high school instruction for the next two years. We had a different superior who liked me better. One of our teachers was the red-faced priest who recruited me back in Amsterdam. He noticed right away I was not the same happy-go-lucky young man. The death of my mother had affected me deeply, and I had acquired a serious, ambitious demeanor.

In my heart I wanted to prove how good I could be, seeking mother’s posthumous approval. I played to win and studied to succeed. School and sport became work – not fun and games. It was time to grow up.

Our studies remained much the same in the second year, and we cruised through the course work as seniors. Father Superior appointed me editor of the school’s literary publication, "Striving Youth."

I jumped at the opportunity and fiercely pursued this new opportunity to prove myself - although I didn’t know to what or to whom. The literary opportunity consumed most of my free time. Nights became sleepless, and during the day I practiced relentlessly on the soccer field. I paid the price for so much frantic activity. During morning prayers in the chapel, my eyelids drooped. I recited “Angeli Domini” with head nodding my prayer morphed into, “Angeli Domio.” In those moments I pricked myself with a needle to remain awake.

Graduation day came. My teachers praised me heartily, though I was mentally drained and ready for the wilds of New Guinea. I developed problems coping and drifted to my jungle dreams for refuge while I counted the days.

During the years I had spent in the seminary, my sister had married a schoolteacher and now lived in the south of Holland near the Belgian border. My father had moved to a boarding house in Amsterdam, run by a distant relative who was an instrument maker for the government.

Helvoirt

In September 1935, our class relocated to the third study house in the town of Helvoirt not far from Uden. There we would receive our first priest’s cassock, go through a tough year of novitiate and then study philosophy for two years. During those three years, we were not allowed to go home. Our novice master was a voluminous, humorless priest with a colorless face who never laughed in our presence. On the first day he announced, “In the coming year, you will be here only for your self-sanctification and for nothing else.” On that note, we started our months of painful introspection.

We received cassocks in a few days during a small ceremony, and then we began the 30-day Ignatian Retreat, during which we were not allowed to speak except with the novice master. Every day he delivered four long lectures in a monotone, while we took copious notes. In the chapel, we meditated on them.

After the first ten days, we were given one day off and were free to talk. Released for the moment from the mental tension we acted like fools, yelling and screaming outdoors, rolling on the grass, climbing small trees and wrestling with each other. I was sent to the dentist to have an infected tooth pulled.

For the next ten days, we took notes and prayed, trying to fathom the incomprehensible mysteries of our holy faith. I had found a small, beautiful photograph of a stormy ocean and while staring at it, my little soul tried to sense the immensity of the Divine. After 20 days we had another wild day off and then struggled wearily through the last ten days. I wondered, with some admiration, how the novice master tirelessly gave those dozens of long-winded talks.

After a full month, it was all over. I left with the feeling that I had been through boot camp, for which I was ill-prepared. Fortunately, the following months did not require as much soul searching, although the environment remained tense. We enjoyed a daily recreation period that allowed us to play field hockey with abandon in an empty lot every afternoon. We called our club “Semper Aliquid.” During this time, two of our classmates mysteriously disappeared. A vague rumor circulated that our missing classmates were "sick."

In the seventh month of the novitiate, I again began to have trouble falling asleep; often waking in the grip of nightmares. Then early the next morning, as we keeled for two hours in meditation, and again for Holy Mass, I fought to stay awake. As preparation for becoming a missionary, I was willing to endure this.

The novice master must have become aware that we were living under too much strain. As a distraction, he gave those of us who had complained an assignment. It consisted of typing, duplicating and binding a thesis he had written about the spiritual life. It was indeed a job for monks. It contained many learned Biblical quotes from saints and ancient masters of the inner life. It was a somber experience.

I began to develop a constant headache. A steely-vise gripped my head. During one of the weekly private sessions which we all had with our novice master, I mentioned my pain to the novice master, but he said, we must bear such things stoically with a spirit of sacrifice according to God’s will. I wondered why God invoked His will only when things went badly but never when things went well?

At the end of this tough novitiate, the priest introduced us to the dreadful task of the “scrutinium.” The novice master assigned us with the unpleasant task to write down all the negative traits for each of our classmates. We were not allowed to mention any of our classmate's virtues.

The unsmiling novice master burdened our conscience in the fearful presence of God. He ended by saying, “You must name each classmate, and also, you must indicate with a simple yes or no if he should receive the priestly ordination.”

“It is our rule,” the novice master continued, “that if one receives three responses of 'no,' he will have to leave without recourse.”

In total silence, we wrote under mounting pressure. I shall never forget my anguish.

A week later we each received a neatly typed paper which contained our accumulated sins, faults, and idiosyncrasies, anonymously revealed. We were forbidden to show each other the results, and after we had read them, they were returned to the novice master immediately. I remember how accurate mine was! I was lazy; I was moody and showed little respect for pious devotions. Also, I was judgmental. I received one “no” from among my 23 classmates.

We were relieved when this last ordeal was over until we discovered that one popular classmate had received three “no” responses! The whole class was aghast. Convinced there was an error; we tried to fix it. The novice master even allowed us to write a letter to the Head Superior of the Congregation in Rome. But it was useless. Then one morning our blackballed classmate's seat in class was empty. Eventually, our departed classmate eventually became a parish priest, as did the two others who had left for “health” reasons.

During the second year in this study house, we referred to the novice master only as "Father Superior;" he also became my confessor. Father Superior began to prepare us for the great day of “Profession” when we would take the temporary vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty and officially become members of the Congregation. Invitations were sent out to all our parents.My father came with an uncle and aunt to witness as we kneeled at the altar before the exposed Blessed Sacrament. We took the oath with our right hand on the open Bible.

It was a happy day. It felt like we had stood for years in front of the closed door to paradise which had finally opened and now we were members of a great family forever. It was nine years since we had begun our long journey under the guidance of the priests of the Congregation. We looked forward to the next two years in the study of philosophy and Hebrew.

I liked philosophy better than the eternal memorizing of languages because once I grasped the logic of a system; I could retain it more easily. Otherwise, the administration had not changed very much; the novice master’s thesis was still not finished, it remained to be typed and bound.

My headache got worse as the months went by. Finally, the superior became concerned and asked me what I thought might improve my health. I pleaded with the Father Superior, “Please, let me have some more sleep.” But he could not permit this as it was against the rules. However, I was told to take hot and cold showers one after the other, and at mealtime, I was given extra portions because I had also lost weight.

It was sometime after the winter that the superior asked us to write a short paper about last year’s novitiate and how we had benefited from it. We thought then that he needed some input for his book on the spiritual life.

Seizing the opportunity, I titled my paper, Angels, Men, and Missionaries. With all the fervor of my fevered mind, I attacked the conscious separation of these three by the system of the novice master. Intuition told me this had made some of us stressed. You just cannot overemphasize the one and neglect the other. It was against that ancient saying, “Mens sana in corpore sano.”

I had to read my paper out loud to the class. A hush came over the room. Upon finishing the reading, I looked up and saw the hard, unsmiling face of the superior and knew I was in trouble. He did not say a word.

A few days later the superior sent me to the doctor in town. During the examination, the doctor tested my reflexes by knocking on my knee with a little hammer. I began to tremble from top to bottom as if a wound up string suddenly uncoiled itself. I could not control myself. My mind seemed to separate from my body, and from somewhere above I looked down upon myself. The doctor hurried away for a glass of water and a pill. After I had calmed down, he asked me about my insomnia and headaches, listening carefully. Then he let me go, without a diagnosis or a prescription. At the seminary, the superior did not say anything either, and I wondered, “What now?”

A suspenseful week went by, and then late one evening the superior called me to his room. The room was dim, and in his hand, the superior held a report. “Ludo,” he began softly, “I have received the report from the doctor, and I regret to say, but the news is not so good. The doctor says that you could have a severe nervous breakdown if you remain with us.” “You have,” he writes, “an unyielding independent nature, unsuitable for the regimented community life of our congregation.” The superior ended with “You would be better off as an independent parish priest.”

The superior then went on to add, “I have watched you these last years and have also come to the conclusion that would be the solution to your problems. But I also realize that you might have to give up your dream of becoming a missionary because a parish priest never travels to the missions.”

He continued, “After thinking this over in prayer I must agree with the doctor, and I believe that you know it yourself since you wrote that paper the other day. This situation is a very concerning, and I find myself in an awkward position because not only am I your superior but also your confessor and friend. As your superior, it is my duty to take care of your health and keep you here as a professed member of our Congregation. As your confessor, I would say that you have an innocent soul, far from perfect and perhaps a bit too naive.”

The superior then informed me, “As a friend, I must counsel you to do some earnest soul-searching. I recommend that you to take the advice of the doctor, who like me, thinks you would be in better health if you become a simple parish priest. You will have a great deal more freedom than in a congregation. As your friend, therefore, I urge you to leave us by your free will because if you stay, you may well remain sickly all your life. I am sure you do not want that to happen. Go now to the chapel and pray that the Holy Spirit may guide you. Return to me in three days and let me know what you have decided.”

Stunned I went to the dark chapel and prayed my heart out. For three more days, I tortured myself, but finally, with a pounding headache, I returned to the superior. With tears in my eyes, I told the superior that I was willing to leave. I kneeled before the superior who then offered me blessings. My father came to get me. He hardly spoke, and in my old street clothes, carrying a cardboard suitcase, we walked away in silence. It was 1937, and I was 22 years old. I had been away from the “world” for nine years.

CH 02 Seminary in Belgium; WWII Erupts

My father did not live in Amsterdam anymore but had returned to his birthplace in the tulip fields. There in the home of his married older sister, he lived in a tiny room under the slanting roof of the attic. It was so small that the bed was folded up during the day, but my father said that he liked to live in small places. Papa kept it spotless and took the train and trolley to his job in Amsterdam every day.

My aunt, uncle and their two teenage sons occupied the house's bedrooms. My unexpected return created a problem, but finally, a makeshift bed was set up for me in another part of the attic. Sadly I realized that I no longer had a home.

A steely-vise continued to grip my head, and I walked around like a zombie. My aunt who thought she knew what my real problem was, teased me about the maids who helped out in my uncle's bakery.

My aunt would tease, “How do you like this one?” and, “This one is made just for you.” The girls would accidentally brush against me or come upstairs where I sat in my father’s room. The maids pretended to do some cleaning while breathing down my neck. I remained silent, aloof, and sad during these times.

My aunts and uncles persistently tried to discourage my desire to become a priest and missionary. There had never been a clergyman in the family. All my uncles were tradesmen.

“We are Catholics on roller skates,” laughed my uncle the shoemaker.

My father remained silent. I never knew what he thought.

At least now I could sleep as long and often as I wanted. Sometimes I did so for ten to twelve hours at a time. Afterward, I felt less tense, so I figured there must be a cure.

At the same time, the world looked strange to me and dangerous. For years I had been warned about its temptations. Hardly ever had I looked in a newspaper, listened to the radio or heard the rough talk of grownups I did not know what had transpired on the world scene during the last years. I knew that people used money but never had any in my pocket. I did not know how to shop, nor did I realize the value of money, because I had never earned any.

My father must have realized that the rowdy bakery was no place for me to recuperate, and he arranged for me to stay with my sister who had married a schoolteacher. They lived in the south of Holland close to the Belgian border. My sister and her husband had two young children in a small house. My sister's house had a tiny slanting room in the attic, and that is where I made my little nest. Like my father, I do not mind small places.

After a while, I heard that several former seminary students I had known were now studying at the University of Louvain in Belgium. I found the courage to write Toni who was one of my old schoolmates. His answer came quickly, “Sure! Come by the end of August. The philosophy courses start in September.”

Belgium

I told my father about going to Belgium. I knew he did not like it at all because three of his brothers and a sister had died overseas. Nevertheless, he paid the tuition and gave me some money which I managed to live on frugally. Before I realized it, I had become the proverbial poor student. Toni, who had also studied for the priesthood at the same Congregation, told me that he still hoped to become a missionary, and had been looking for another seminary, but so far no luck.

I enrolled in philosophy classes were in French, and I had a hard time understanding the language. Belgium is a bilingual country. Typically they speak Flemish or Dutch in the north. In southern Belgium, Walloon or French is the language of choice. The dichotomy in preferences creates endless domestic quarrels. Louvain, for example, is a Flemish town, but the university is Walloon. So it was no surprise that the so-called Flemish question was hotly disputed.

Wild marches, held by Flemish students, filled the narrow streets because they demanded their right to a Flemish university. As Dutchmen, we sided with the Flemish, of course. I found myself yelling with the rest and quickly adapted to student life. Sleep came readily, and my headaches subsided, but for the rest of my life, my head would periodically return to the steely-vise.

After a few months, I rented an apartment, reputed to be the cheapest in all Louvain. I only saw Toni occasionally. One day, in the spring of 1939, Toni came looking for me on the street, with the big news; he was accepted in an intriguing institution. He made it sound rather mysterious and would not elaborate any further. When he came to take me to see the seminary, I did not take it very seriously.

On a hill overlooking the city, across from an ancient Dominican monastery, Toni proudly showed me his newly found seminary. It was an old rundown villa surrounded by a large disorderly and overgrown garden. The doors stood agape, and as we wandered in, I saw a bald cassocked priest with the stump of a cigar in his mouth. Toni introduced me to the Superior, Father Boland, who was called "Vicar," and sometimes "Cat."

Vicar gave me a rather soft handshake but a warm smile. The bags under his gray eyes complimented the arches of his eyebrows. His nose was large and hooked, and once in awhile, he gave a nervous sniff. With a few words in French, he made me feel welcome.

The conversation was short as I stuttered and mumbled in broken French about missionaries, bishops, seminaries and New Guinea until he began to laugh and shake his head.

Initially, I thought a muddleheaded would-be adventurer such as myself would put the old Vicar off. However, after a few more words in rapid-fire French, which Toni translated, Vicar explained, “We are not such an adventurous kind of missionary. But if you are willing to learn, you may stay with us for the last weeks of this school year so that we might get know you better. Meanwhile, Toni will show you around today.”

During the next visit I was invited to stay for dinner and got acquainted with the rest of the seminary; besides priests, there were ten seminarians, all French-speaking Walloons. They were a wild and joyous bunch who looked like scarecrows in their old, ill-fitting cassocks, under from which, sprouted hobnailed boots. Most of them were former scout leaders. Like the Vicar, they came from eastern Belgium not far from the Walloons near the German border.

In June I was invited to be their guest for an undetermined period. Nobody asked me about my life before I came to Belgium and I did not mention my nine years in the German Congregation and especially not my trouble with chronic headaches. I assumed Toni already informed all concerned about my infirmities and shortcomings.

The seminary here was quite the opposite of what I experienced in Holland. Here there were no sermons. No conferences to take notes at, no bells to order you from here to there. I kept wondering if this was a bona fide seminary, especially when one day my philosophy professor said laughingly, “So I hear that the old fox got you in his snare.”

Of course, there was Holy Mass each morning. After a hasty breakfast, we raced down the hill on bicycles, to our classes. The older seminarians took theology at the Jesuit College, and I took philosophy from the Higher Institute for Philosophy at the University. We rushed home for an excellent dinner prepared by a friendly Walloon couple who also did most of the housekeeping. In the afternoon there were often also classes, so really there was not much time left for conferences or sermons.

However, in the evening after supper, it was practically a holy custom for all of us to come together in the large office of the Vicar. Attendance was not mandatory, but absence was unacceptable. The Vicar sat at his desk in a comfortable chair smoking his cigar. Some of us found seats, but the rest just sat on the floor and talked, talked, talked. I had great difficulty understanding the other's rapid French, especially when they all shouted at the same time. When they burst out laughing, I did too, not knowing why.

As the weeks went by I slowly began to understand that the Vicar had very subtle ways of steering the conversation to subjects that had a bearing on our spiritual outlook or our future missionary work. He never imposed his views but rather let us convince ourselves. Vicar often chose to take a more subtle approach. Once I heard him tell how, as a young assistant pastor, he was in charge of the parish bulletin. Vicar found out that hardly anybody read it. So he gave the unread paper to the butcher and told him to use them to wrap customer’s meat. It was only then readership significantly increased.

It was by this indirect method that I became aware of the Society of Auxiliary Priests (SAM). I hoped to join one day. Its members were known as the “Samists.”

Society of Auxiliary Priests (SAM)

SAM started in China in about 1930. At that time there were several thousand Chinese priests in the service of Western bishops. It is the purpose of missionary work to create indigenous Catholic Churches. A young Belgian minister by the name of Vincent Lebbe began to insist that there should also be Chinese Catholic bishops who ruled their territories or dioceses with Chinese priests. Father Lebbe's proposal sounded entirely reasonable. Influenced, however, by the spirit of colonialism, many Western missionaries found the proposal entirely premature and out of line. The young Lebbe soon found himself placed on a ship by his superiors and headed back to Europe.

With great determination, Lebbe persistently presented his proposal to the attention of the Vatican at every opportunity. Eventually, the Church received Father Lebbe's proposition with so much accord that in 1935 six Chinese priests were made bishops at home and given canonical territories in China. It soon became apparent that the Chinese bishops needed help to become fully self-sufficient - especially financially.

The Chinese Bishops lacked connections with the long established Catholic churches in Europe and elsewhere. Nor could the new Bishops obtain missionaries to help them out, because most clergies belonged to Orders of Congregation. According to church custom, western missionaries would have been required to pledge obedience to the Chinese bishop, which was not something they were willing to do.

Father Lebbe, who was still in Belgium heard about the new problems and contacted his friend Father Boland (the Vicar), who at that time was a well-known youth leader. One thing led to another, and finally, with the blessings of the Vatican, a new Society was organized with the purpose of bringing young men to the priesthood and then offering them to Chinese bishops to work under their sole authority.

Like St. Paul, who was Greek with the Greeks, and Roman with the Romans, these young enthusiasts vowed to become Chinese with the Chinese. Under Chinese authority, they would assist in adapting the Holy Gospel to the ancient culture of China, instead of the teachings of Jesus in Western form.

I began to understand that my romantic ideas about the missionary life had been rather naïve. Slowly my dreams of exploring the interior of New Guinea transformed and became all about the virtue of adaptation. Here in Belgium with the Walloons, I was given an excellent opportunity to practice that virtue. French became my second language, and I never spoke Dutch again while with the Walloons, not even with Toni. It was not easy, but I thought that if I could not become Walloon with the Walloons, how would I ever be Chinese with the Chinese?

Trek from Louvain Belgium to Rome Italy

After the exams in philosophy were over and the three-month summer vacation began, the seminary was closed, and everybody went home. I had no real home anymore and for a while wondered what to do. I got the bright idea to try to walk the 900 miles to Rome, practicing my French along the way. The Vicar encouraged my endeavor, and through his contacts with a bevy of local scouts, they loaned me a backpack, a pup tent, a tiny Primus stove, and a mummy sleeping bag.

First I took my father on a two week trip through Belgium where I introduced him to the Vicar and showed him my new seminary. After that, I continued alone on my “stunt” as my father called it, but he had given me enough money to purchase my daily loaf of bread for the next hundred days.

I took with me only minimal clothing which included: a pair of khaki shorts, one shirt, and a short jacket, two pairs of woolen knee stockings, and a pair of low-top hobnailed boots. It turned out to be a beautiful, enjoyable trip. I found much joy in the freedom of feeling the hard road under my boots, the sun on my face and the beauty of the panorama surrounding me. The effect of traveling, once again, brought on merciful fatigue each night in my little tent.

It happened on one of those quiet tree lined roads in France as I strode along. Suddenly the steely-band around my head was released, and for the first time in more than three years, my headache vanished. I was walking along the sharp edge of sustained presence. Past and future had fallen away. Nature provided a hidden cure which I was not going to forget.

Coming from Holland, and born below sea level, I was amazed as the snowy peaks of the Alps loomed up before my unrefined eyes in unbelievable splendor. On the St. Gotthard Pass I left the highway and climbed a humongous gray mass of boulders to the summit where I stood entranced. When I returned to the roadway, I discovered that in my excitement I had lost my wristwatch.

I walked for two days, in the heat of the sun, through the valley of the Po River towards the sea near Genoa. There was only a small pebble beach. It was high noon when I plunged in the cool seawater, and then lay down on my back and, exhausted, fell asleep. An hour later I woke up in sun burnt agony and crawled in the shade of some bushes to set up my pup tent. There I remained for two days without food or water trying to sleep off a high fitful fever that grew out of my blistered body. Hunger and thirst drove me back to the highway. A vendor stood there with a handcart full of golden peaches. I bought one pound, and as I had no way to carry them, I ate them all right there and then. The fruity feast made me very sick indeed.

Finally, hiking along the west coast of Italy, I reached Rome on August 26, 1939. The Eternal City was quiet, but already the nations of Europe were mobilizing at the threat of Hitler and Mussolini. I found a place to stay in a schoolhouse where the brother guardian only asked me to pay for one meal and who showed me, Rome, from St. Peter to down in the catacombs.

Breakout of WWII

On September 1, Hitler’s storm troopers marched into Poland, and suddenly the uneasy peace was shattered. The Romans didn't show much excitement except when they grabbed for their newspapers. “Well,” said the kind, hospitable brother, “I don’t mind if you stay here a few more days, but not for the whole war!” So I had my shoes re-nailed and left for Holland on September 3.

The highway stretched empty away to the horizon. Gasoline rationing was in effect, and traffic became sparse. I walked on and on, as each passing day morphed endlessly into the next. Before long I threw my worn socks away and marched on with bare feet in my hobnailed shoes. A daily loaf of bread was all I could afford, thankfully the grapes were ripe, and I ate them by the handful.

Sometimes farmers coming back from the fields took me for a German and invited me to their farmhouse for the great supper, and then they would insist I sleep in the warm barn because the nights were already cold in the Apennine Mountains. I would hand them my watch for their peace of mind. Seldom have I been as charmed by the land as I walked my easy 30-35 miles per day. I felt perfectly healthy with only the hint of a slight headache.

By the end of September, I stood on the high Brenner Pass, the border between Italy and Austria. Stern German border officials in Hitler’s NSDAP uniforms took one look at my Dutch passport and handed it back with the words, “You do not have the necessary visa to enter Austria.”

I was forced to return to the nearest Dutch consulate located in Milano. It was a tough hike over the Foothill Mountains from valley to valley. I arrived burned by the sun and worn out. The Consul provided me with a German visa and loaned me enough money to buy a train ticket back to Holland. And so after 62 days, I was reunited with my father on October 9, 1939. Thin and worn out as I was, he was not impressed when I told him my story. My aunt made me eat a large bowl of fatty soup, immediately, that made me sick. My father muttered, “That is what you get from these stunts.”

The outbreak of the war had postponed the opening of seminary school. As luck would have it, the evening I knocked on the door of the villa was the same day the Academy reopened. Also, courses at the University and the Jesuit College had resumed.

I had hoped to begin the three years of theology courses, but the Vicar told me I should first serve one year of probation as all the others had done. My probationary period would take place in the village of Banneux high up the forested hills of the Ardennes.

Banneux is a small isolated village on a high plateau south of Liege and only a few miles from the German border. It was believed by many that the Blessed Virgin had appeared there to a girl named Mariette Beco in the 1930’s. Miss Beco's family had moved to France and the Vicar, who knew them well, was asked to look after their home and the little outdoor chapel which pious pilgrims lovingly sponsored. The Vicar concluded this was an excellent opportunity to use the empty house for a missionary exposition and to explain the particular purpose of his Society to passing pilgrims.

One of the priests of the Society, Father Bourguignon, worked at the sanctified house in Banneux and, as it turned out, Father Bourguignon would also be my novice master. I was rather apprehensive and feared a repetition of the novitiate in Holland, but I needed not to worry because, Father Bou, as we called him for short, was a very fine priest and treated me like a friend.

We worked on the expo all fall and winter. During the Christmas vacation, several seminarians came from Louvain to give a helping hand. At last, we completed our project. On May 1 the exposition was opened with the solemn blessing of the Bishop of Liege and a cup of Chinese tea. We expected many pilgrims to arrive in the coming months.

It was on May 10, while I was serving at the Holy Mass of my novice master in the little outdoor chapel, that I heard yelling in the distance. Looking down the dusty road, I saw two Belgian soldiers on bicycles racing towards us, screaming, “The Germans are coming!”

After Mass, Father ordered me to leave for Louvain immediately. I hurried away on my old bicycle because the German border was only a few miles away. In the distance, I heard an ominous rumble. I pushed harder and harder until the chain snapped. I left the bike behind in a small garage. Laughing nervously, the garage mechanic said, “It will be ready after the war.”

Traffic crowded the main highway to Louvain streaming west like a colony of soldier ants. I climbed onto a cattle truck packed with people. Yelling excitedly over the roar of the old truck’s engine, fellow passengers pointed at airplanes flying high in the sky. The truck swerved around craters in the pavement, where bombs had recently exploded. The highway became more and more crowded. Just a hundred meters away we saw an airplane crash and burn fiercely in a field. Soldiers with flat helmets lined along a ditch next to the road where they laid behind machine guns with faces pale and motionless. A greenish-gray Renault R35 tank stood partially camouflaged peering out from a gaping hole punched through the side of a nearby barn.

I found the Vicar sitting alone stationed upon a stoop jutting from a doorway leading into the cavernous old villa. I told him the novice master had sent me back to Louvain and presently asked the Vicar for some guidance. He informed me that all the seminarians had been sent home for the time being, “You should go back to Holland,” he said, “but if that is impossible, at least stay out of harm’s way. May the good Lord protect us all!”

I departed, bewildered and apprehensive. In town, I met my friend, Jeff, who is also from Holland. Ready to leave, neatly dressed as always, with a briefcase under his arm he urged, “I know friends who live on a farm out of town. We can wait it out there and later try to make our way back to Holland.”

The streets were eerily silent, crowded with people anxiously wondering about dazed and confused. As the town receded behind, we presently found ourselves strolling nervously through fields what were once rolling green fields. Ominous looking munitions plants spontaneously erupted out of blackened earth with random nefarious intent. A low rumble of cannons firing in the distance shattered the silence. Violent, angry volleys of large artillery crashed into the surrounding countryside like a faceless demon intent on pummeling the earth into oblivion.

Just before nightfall, we reached the farmhouse sheltered behind pale green early spring trees. Refugees and rumors strained the old farmhouse to capacity. Older people scattered throughout the throng of humanity remembered the horrors of World War I vividly and feared the worst.

The heavyset Flemish farmer made us welcome. “You are safe here,” he said with a half-smile. A radio blared frantically in the background. Crowding around, we heard that German troops not only had invaded Belgium but Holland as well. It was the infamous “Blitzkrieg” which rolled over our country, almost unopposed and as fast as the infantry could march. A Belgian radio announcer repeatedly advised, “Beware of disguised German paratroopers who have landed during the night.” That evening a dozen or more people huddled together in a big barn. We slept fitfully and comfortably as we could, given the circumstances.

Morning arrived abruptly, without consequence yet tension hung in the air like an ominous gray fog. Looking around nervously, we dressed and gathered our belongings. Jeff insistently pointed out to me a sunken road, which cut a trench that slithered through the open fields. We entered the cut and lay against its damp brown wall of soil, peering over the low parapet for any sign of danger. We could clearly see a long procession of trees standing rigidly like soldiers at attention, bordering the highway to Liege. The pastoral landscape sprawled peacefully ahead perhaps silently anticipating the next aerial barrage to descend from the steely blue skies overhead.

After dinner, Jeff and I returned to our hidden trench. A few small planes circled menacingly above us like young vultures seeking out a meal of convenience. A horse-drawn wagon lumbered unsteadily up the sunken road. A local farmer stood in the open; his pinched face was ruddy and hard as a Roman brick. The brick-faced peasant glared at us as he passed. Jeff and I made way for the farmer and his wagon without hesitation. We squinted into the distance looking for scarlet flashes of war on the violet horizon.

In the distance, a small, loose formation of single planes waltzed lazily over unseen targets, playing staccato melodies performed by a 50 caliber machine gun orchestra raging in fortissimo, while sadistically serenading its frantic audience with a composition of lethal projectiles. Suddenly, a plane swung out heading directly towards our farmhouse. Simultaneously, a large black Citron, equipped with producer gas apparatus, sporting painted out slit headlamps, came roaring down the sunken road billowing thick clouds of black smoke, while kicking up mud and dust in its wake.

I stood up to wave the Citron to a stop while pointing at the incoming plane with obvious concern on my face. The car, however, showed no inclination of stopping. As the auto approached, one of its doors swung open. I tried to jump out of the way, but there was precious little room to maneuver around in the trench. As the powerful vehicle passed me, the door caught my entire left side and plowed me to the ground. Angry more than hurt I pulled myself up and saw hostile soldiers armed with rifles tumble out of the car. An officer, pistol in hand, rushed up to us. We raised our hands as he snapped at us in French.

“Who are you?” He demanded.

“We are Dutch students from the university, sir.” We answered meekly.

“Show me your papers!” the soldier spat out angrily.

“They are in my pocket, sir.” I did not dare to lower my hands.

“Cover me!” growled the officer at one of his men. A sweating soldier stepped out and pushed the barrel of his gun against my ribcage. Slowly the officer let his pistol glide into its holster, and then he stuck his hand in my jacket, pulling out my billfold.

Fear engulfed us as we awaited the verdict. Two soldiers had their rifles aimed at Jeff's torso, and two trained their weapons on my face. The officer stood aside fingering through my papers. Finally, he looked up and with a faint smile said to nobody in particular, “Looks all right!”

The tense, determined soldiers lowered their rifles slowly. “Look, boys,” the officer said a little more friendly, “you better return to Louvain because you are too suspicious in the countryside. We received a report from a farmer that he had seen two German paratroopers around here. You could easily get shot by mistake!”

Jeff and I walked back to the farmhouse, shaken but relieved, we set out for Louvain an hour before sunset. Bloody red, the sun sank slowly into ancient mysteries cloaked within a nebulous western sky as night sprawled upon us. It was a short walk through familiar dark fields. However, we must have looked over our shoulders a dozen times during that brief stroll. The expectation of being accosted by angry armed soldiers accompanied each anxious glance over our shoulders as we made our way back to town.

Jeff and I had just reached the outskirts of town when we saw several warplanes flying in formation heading in our direction. “Here they come, Jeff!” I shouted, and we both ran towards a small section of meadow, throwing ourselves flat upon the wet grass. I looked up and saw several planes banking and coasting down in single file at a deep slant. Suddenly, heavy artillery opened up in a furious cannonade just east of our position, concealed in a stand of mature pines. A cluster of luminous tracers sailed up to the planes, which had released a rosary of bombs.

The sky above us shrieked with an unearthly howl. The din grew louder as the fiery craft, a wounded Phoenix, hurtled downwards. The earth shook with thunderclaps beneath my belly as bombs rained down on the once peaceful terra firma. I cringed with fear and clung to faith, as I waited to get hit. During my moment in the foxhole, curious as it may sound, a single thought flashed through my mind, “Now I will never be a missionary.”

Miraculously the deluge of destruction passed over, leaving Jeff and me unscathed. Slowly we stood up bewildered at the jagged ruins of nearby houses which only moments before stood hearth and home to hearty country folk. Grey and black smoke, tinged with orange flames, drifted upwards.

We decided against going into town but instead sought refuge in the countryside. Eventually, we reached the oak forest south of Louvain by traveling over plowed fields pockmarked by bomb craters and following a winding labyrinth of dirt trails. From there we joined the thousands who, in a universal panic, had left their homes.

Nearly half of Belgium was fleeing according to local estimates. A small squadron of Stukas skillfully herded the exodus by periodically dropping screaming bombs at the rear in random intervals so as to relentlessly propel the human herd of refugees forward. Panic soon prevailed because thousands of cars clogged the roads up ahead impeding the seething throng of humanity who were now trapped - threatened from the rear and blocked at the front.

Mattresses covered many vehicles which frequently had painted-out headlights except for a narrow slit, like luminous cat eyes peering out from beneath the soft mound of cushions. These refugees became the human shield, behind which the Nazi war machine rolled on unhindered traveling 20 or so kilometers each day. Jeff was furious. He did not want to run away, and yet we could not stay.

In those early days, we were questioned twice by soldiers, probably because people overheard us speak Dutch in the Walloon part of Belgium and mistook us for Germans. Each time the soldiers let us go without incident after checking our papers.

Traveling by truck, bus and on foot, we arrived in the French city of Abbeville, not far from Dunkirk, on May 12th. Once settled we slept among the hundreds of other refugees who were fortunate enough to secure a place in the towns school building. Many more unfortunates were forced to mill about outside in the streets and mingle with English soldiers.

The next morning we stumbled on a railroad station. A long train filled with young men stood ready to leave. A uniformed man noticed us. “Did you get your tickets?” he asked anxiously. “Not yet,” answered Jeff. Without explanation or further inquiry, the man prepared two fares, then abruptly pushed us into one of the crowded compartments. With horns blaring our locomotive shuddered, then reluctantly departed the station.

For two days and nights, the train made its way, haltingly, through lush green farmlands south of Abbeville. At every stop, often in open country, French soldiers stood guard outside, prohibiting anybody from leaving the train. Bread, water, and salami were handed out to the passengers three times a day. It

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Eusebie Gherman
Bildmaterialien: Eusebie Gherman
Lektorat: Eusebie Gherman
Übersetzung: N/A
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 28.07.2017
ISBN: 978-3-7438-2510-9

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Widmung:
This book is dedicated to Jen Sidri whose clear vision and steadfast faith fired the beacon which shined the light upon Fr Ludo's incredible journey.