Starting with an old photograph

Just a quick note during these dull and drizzly days.

Alison and I were talking about the origins of the first Student Cross pilgrimage and she said that she had looked at a close-up ‘photo of the first Student Cross Pilgrims taken in 1948. Her earlier viewings of the ‘photos had been of small, blurry pictures but this had been taken for a newspaper and was obviously a publicity picture (or, rather, a picture staged by the group at the request of a photographer). Why did she know this? Well the group were walking over one of the London bridges (looks like London Bridge, actually) and that is something that never happens on any of the Student Cross routes. The first walkers left from the Catholic Church in Ely Place, Holborn and walked north. Subsequent pilgrimages did this until they set off from the Catholic Chaplaincy at Moore House in South Kensington and headed up, by tube, to Epping.

So, anyway, she was telling me that she looked at the group in all of the detail offered by such a picture and she noticed that the leader was wearing a pin stripe suit. It looked a bit odd, but it all made sense. Just after the war clothing continued to be rationed for a good few years, so an old suit was a good choice rather than you trying to buy something new. Of course, most of the pilgrims at the beginning were ex-service men so a number of them also wore fatigues left over from their days in the services.

The other things that were noticeable were the orderly way they seemed to be walking together (marching?) behind the cross and the youthfulness of so many of them. When you think what some of these young men had gone through it is somehow not surprising to me that they were willing to take up the cross and walk with it.

It made me think of the experience of walking with the cross at that time. They would have walked through some of the most damaged parts of central London and then into a section of the rest of London that was either grim because of the bombing or simply because of the deep impoverishment suffered y it since Victorian times. Farringdon and Smithfield, Clerkenwell, Old Street, Shoreditch, Kingsland Road, Dalston, Stoke Newington, Shacklewell, Stamford Hill, Tottenham, Edmonton and so on… Slums and dereliction, impoverishment and disruption … and through it all came these ex-servicemen marching along with a blooming great wooden cross singing hymns and saying the Rosary as they went!

It must have been quite a thing to behold.

It also makes me think of those who walked across war-torn Europe just a short time before them on the peace march to Vezelay. I see them in my mind, marching along those quiet Burgundian lanes that wind their way through the forests and vineyards to that ancient hill top village and I imagine hearing the sound of their feet rumbling below their song as they march along and emerge out of the heavy morning mist to see for the first time the basilica spot lit by a warm golden sun. I can only imagine what drove them to join the march – what had they seen, what had they experienced - and it helps me focus on the reasons why Alison and I are planning our own pilgrimage.

Yes, It’s good to look carefully at the past and see how the signs of the times then drove them to their actions and to remind ourselves that it is the signs of the times that should motivate our thinking today.