Rev. Stanley Davies

THE STORY OF A FAMOUS CROSS AND A VERY REMARKABLE ARMY CHAPLAIN

Displayed in Gloucester Cathedral is a small beautifully carved cross made from grey Korean stone. It is a Celtic cross because its maker was a Cornishman by the name of Colonel James Carne, V.C., of the 1st Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, known as the Glorious Glosters.

The story starts way back in 195l during the Korean War and the battle of the Imjin River.

Colonel Carne and his regiment, in fact, in total 370 British & Americans, were captured by the Chinese military forces and forced to march over 600 gruelling miles crossing the shallows of the Imjin river, exhausted in the terrible heat, malnourished, with swollen & bleeding feet, & carrying the wounded on stretchers. It took over 6 months to reach the first of the P.O.W. Camps.

Among the captured were four Army chaplains, three American and one British . The British one was the Rev. Stanley Davies, who was the only Chaplain to survive this terrible war. Rev. Davies refers to this period of his life as his parish behind barbed wire ! When Rev. Stanley Davies returned from captivity from Korea in 1953 he was honoured with an MBE and resumed his duties as a regimental chaplain.

However, what is more interesting to us here in our small Cotswold village, is that on his retirement from the Army, Rev. Stanley Davies became Rector of Uley with Owlpen & Nympsfield and served our community for almost 12 years until his retirement in 1984. He was immensely popular, respected, and well-liked.

Rev. Stanley Davies had a remarkable life. His book entitled IN SPITE OF DUNGEONS was published in 1976 and tells graphically of his life as a prisoner of war and the story of the stone cross in Gloucester Cathedral.

Rev. Davies was a P.O.W. of the Chinese for over two & a half years, remaining with the sick & injured, he pointed out that the medical doctors captured were not officially allowed to treat the wounded in the camp, or visit the makeshift hospital. However, Rev Davies was given a pass every Sunday afternoon to visit the camp hospital to visit the sick for half an hour on each occasion. Also, the Red Cross were never allowed by the Chinese to engage with the prisoners, so he said they were deprived of any religious vessels, the best he could do for a chalice was a green tin mug marked with a black cross. Rev. Davies states that during his time in captivity, he baptised six prisoners in the camp, the details were set out on strips of cigarette papers and several of these were actually smuggled out of captivity.

Colonel Carne was in the Officers Camp, known as Camp 2. On the afternoon of January 28th 1952, Rev. Davies said he was sitting with a small group of British Officers when they were summoned to the Chinese Headquarters, some of the prisoners, including Colonel Carne, were accused of “subversive activities” and this resulted in the beginning of Colonel Carne's nineteen months of solitary confinement.

Of course, these are only snippets of Rev. Stanley Davies's indescribable ordeal at the Battle of the Imjin River in Korea, endured by hundreds of his captured colleagues, but back to the story of the unique stone cross. It is a Celtic Cross as already mentioned and it was carved by Colonel Carne during his years in captivity. His tools consisted of a couple of nails and a primitive hammer. He would sit day after day rubbing smooth the sides of the cross on the concrete steps of the Korean schoolhouse in which he was imprisoned. It was used in the camp's religious services gracing the crude altar in the drab lecture room, with a temperature well below zero, with portraits of Lenin, Stalin & Mao Tse-tung gazing down.

In October 1952 without any warning, the Chinese split Camp 2 into two separate compounds, a mile or so apart. Rev.Davies just had time to entrust Colonel Carne's cross to Tony Preston, a young Gloster subaltern, for safe keeping. It was eventually smuggled out of the camp at the end of the war and it is because of Rev. Davies's foresight, and you must remember the indescribable conditions under which these brave men were all living, that we have this symbol of hope with us today.

Colonel James Carne's cross stands some 10” high, rising sturdily from its rough-hewn plinth. The arms of the cross at the top of the small column are embraced ,after the manner of a Cornish cross, by a circle of stone. Now, in Gloucester Cathedral, this sturdy symbol of redemption & endurance carved from Korean stone will find a resting place for centuries to come.