A little mystery solved.

In my previous post I labeled a photo "The May, 1945 meeting of the Congregational Union of England and Wales in Westminster Chapel." This is what was written on the back side of the photo in my father's hand. But I wrote it with bewilderment because I didn't think my father could have been in London in May of 1945. He was stationed in France at that time. He had gone to London in June of 1944, when he was first sent overseas by the army, and before he was assigned to 1314 Engineers and sent to France. But that couldn't explain a photo taken in May of 1945. I puzzled over this for quite a while until I thought to look at his Chaplain's Journal for that time. There, on the page for "May, 1945," he had listed a few items in a small hand that I had never noticed before, and one of them was "attended the meeting of the Congregational Union of England and Wales." A couple of other items indicated that he had held a shipboard service of worship, and had visited another church in London. So he had gone to London from France. That seemed so unlikely - how could he just take off and go to London with a war going on? But then I thought to check his letters written at about that time, and in one written in April, I found a line in which he says that there was to be a. Chaplain's meeting in London in May. That made it all feasible. He didn't go on his own - it was official army business and he undoubtedly traveled in a group of Chaplains. My guess is that the Army command was anticipating the end of the war in Europe (VE Day was in fact May 8, 1945, so the European war ended just as this trip was getting underway) and they needed to gather the chaplains and tell them what to expect. So that was a big "A-Ha" moment for me. 

A page from my father's Chaplain's Journal: May, 1945

"Participated in service on ship   50 (com. = 30)

Addressed civ. go meeting at Essômes, 125.

Visited civilian service - Presby Wimbledon

        "   "            "            Cong'l - City Temple, London

Attended Cong'l. Union of Eng and Wales

Com (civ.) =. (26) - Monneaux"

There is a fair amount of information in these chaplain journals that I understand, but some I don't. Essômes and Monneaux seem to be villages near Chateaux-Thierry, where dad was based. What is bewildering is that the reference to a service on the ship seems to be out of chronological order. The other thing I am bewildered by is that the City Temple dad refers to was destroyed by incendiary bombs in the 1942 Blitz on London, so services could not have been held there in 1945.