Muxworthy's Musings

I imagine that a lot of you like me grew up hearing first-hand accounts of wars from relatives that had lived through them. Some of the stories were funny, some sad and some miraculous. Some of you reading this will have seen conflict first hand, I myself have not and only possess a poor understanding of such things and in a lot of ways have no idea of what I am talking about when compared with the experiences of a combat veteran. I am happy to admit that I don’t know because I wasn’t there. Some years ago I did some research into a family member who was killed in 1918 in France. Again I had grown up with various versions of what happened all containing the grain of truth that he was killed, everything else was implausible. What I actually discovered about the death of Sgt David Howell Evans of 14 th Battalion Welsh Regiment was sadder than I could imagine. Put simply he was killed by friendly fire on 10 th May 1918, as his and another battalion of the regiment were advancing on a ...

My Dad used to be a pipe smoker and gave it up after having a bad chest cold. The one thing that I recall quite clearly was the tobacco he used, and I recall the three varieties he favoured, there was Condor Long Cut, Condor Ready Rubbed and Clan – mainly because he sent me to the shop to get them (despite me being well underage). He always kept it in a leather pouch that was down the side of his seat in the front room. For some bizarre reason I occasionally took to opening the pouch up and smelling the contents inside and I must admit the aroma was something I found quite nice. Then one day I must have taken leave of my senses, probably after hearing that people chewed tobacco. I reasoned that if people chewed it and it smelt nice then it would probably taste nice too. For once the fact that we have a sense of smell to tell us whether something is fit to put in your mouth proved wrong! I picked out some of the tobacco and placed it in my mouth and began to chew! Well, the chewing didn...

2 Corinthians 1 v3-11: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might...