German visitors

A message came into the village church website. A man called Harald Spitzer was leading a group of German visitors from Lower Saxony. He asked if they could visit the village church. I went along, mainly to get a photograph or two of the visitors. Two of the local people then showed the group Gunther Anton's stained glass windows, which had been given to the church following the second world war, when Gunther, a POW held in Somerset, returned in 1948 to his home in what had become West Germany.

The group was larger than we had expected and were happy to pose for a photo. It was impressive to see the significance of their visit, and the shared history which lay behind it. Nick recalled the times when Gunther had been with villagers in the local pub, in spite of the fact that he was held in a POW camp. (It was easy enough for him to walk through a carefully opened hole in the fence which surrounded the camp in Yeovil.) It was this camaraderie which led to him later devoting over two decades of his life in giving the village church a set of stained glass windows, as a sign of reconciliation.