By Ray Dupere

     On the morning of July 7, 2005, four Muslim fanatics struck the London transportation system with a surprise terrorist attack.  That same morning, after the attacks had occurred, I sent out one of my monthly missionary updates to my supporters back in the U.S., but without making any mention of the attacks at the time.  The reason for the omission is very simple.  Even though Avril and I were living less than 20 miles away in the London suburb of Watford (https://thedaysforward.com/the-beautiful-game-2003/ ), we simply had not yet heard about the attacks at the time, and like everyone else, they caught us by surprise!

     This is, of course, a prime aspect of any terrorist attack.  Classmates may remember from our study of Clausewitz’ ‘Principles of War’, Surprise is a major principle and probably a terrorist’s most favorite.  Even in those times when they don’t kill many people, they can still create fear and havoc. Through surprise, they can create the maximum shock value with the least amount of effort.

     Although I certainly could not have predicted that the attack would happen on Thursday (7 July 2005) at roughly 8:50am, I cannot actually say that they surprised me.  In April of that year, I had taught two one-day seminars to Sports Chaplains on Crisis/Trauma Response; and on both days, the discussion was never in the form of “if”, but “when”.  I had even commented that I was surprised that at that time the Western world had only seen one other attack (the Madrid train bombing in 2004) since 9/11.  So, it was only a matter of time before there would be another one.

     In my next monthly newsletter, I commented that it occurred to me that the terrorists had not really been using their heads.  Though the bombings were obviously well-planned and coordinated, they probably could have had a much greater effect if the four bombers had all been sent to four different cities, rather than one small section of London.  Imagine how great the concern throughout the UK would have been if they had gone to London, Leeds, Lancaster and Llenelli!  Yes, it’s a real place (pronounced Thanethlii), which actually serves to make my point.  Set a bomb off in a place you’ve never heard of, and then everyone begins to wonder who’s next.  Typically, it’s only those who live in and around the big cities who really have a need to be concerned.

     The fact that the attacks were probably suicide bombers, and were perpetrated by British born and bred Muslims really took everybody (especially Muslims) by surprise.  Though Oklahoma was the result of a born and bred American weirdo; we in the U.S. point to the fact that 9/11 was the result of foreign fanatics.  Soon after the London Bombings, we fairly quickly started to see the signs of a change in the mindset of British Muslims.  For a while anyway they began to talk about how home-grown terrorists were a problem for them to solve, and not just the authorities.  In a newspaper editorial even Prince Charles said that this must happen – the Muslim community throughout Britain can no longer make allowance for those who would preach and promote hatred and violence.  And on the morning news, I remember one of the talking heads, who was himself a Muslim, said that there seemed to be a sign of a real turning point on this issue in the UK.

     One thing that surprised me was that I actually ended up with two personal connections to the bombings – those being a man who was killed on one of the subway cars and a man from my church who was on another one of the trains but wasn’t physically hurt.  Most of us tend to live our lives with the belief that bad things never happen to us; they only happen to other people.  I don’t say that as a condemnation, but simply as a matter of fact.  And one further belief is that bad things don’t happen to people we know; they only happen to people we don’t know.  So, I was surprised to hear about the two men that I knew.

     Not long after the bombings I went to the funeral of James, the young man that I knew who was killed in the bombings.  He was a strong Christian and a keen fan of World Rally racing with a lot of contacts in the sport.  The morning of the bombings I actually had an email in my inbox arranging the time and place for lunch so we could talk more about how to introduce Sports Chaplaincy into World Rally.  At the funeral the Old Testament reading was from Psalm 139, in which verse 16, says, “… in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”  More and more I am struck by how much God is in control, and by how little we are actually in control.  It’s almost as if the whole of life is focused on this one thing.  We come into the world with no control whatsoever; and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to gain as much control as possible.  In the Western world our primary aim is to retire with total security.  And all the while God’s aim is to try and teach us that there can only be one Master.  So, we either come to the place where we accept that He is in control; or we fail to learn that, and we live life wrongly believing that we are our own master.  For a Christian, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism should have the opposite effect from the one desired.  It should drive us into the totally secure arms of Jesus.

     Also, not too long after the bombings I preached at St. James Road Baptist Church, which was the church we regularly attended when we lived in Watford.

 As it “happened”, I was scheduled to preach on John 21:1-25.  At the end of the message, I pointed out that Jesus tells Peter (v. 20-23) it is none of his business what happens to the Apostle John.  Peter’s only concern should be Jesus’ plan for him, not Jesus’ plan for John.  My point was that ultimately each of us is responsible to submit to God’s sovereign control over our own personal lives.  When we went to communion, I suggested that people might want to take the bread as symbolic of being thankful for God’s provision, and they might want to take the cup as being symbolic of their willingness to take whatever God sends their way as His sovereign will.  Afterwards, John, the other man I knew who was on one of the trains that was bombed, came up to speak to me.  The afternoon of the bombings, I had had a counseling session with him to help him work through some of the trauma that he had seen and experienced first-hand.  He said that he really appreciated what I had to say in my sermon.  He then said that he had chosen to take communion for the first time in eight years of attending the church.  You just never know how God might use the trials of life to draw us ever closer to him.  May God continue to do that for all of us as long as we have left.

Remembering Ray’s friend, James, a young man killed in the terrorist attack on the Tube in London: A church deacon from Bretton in Peterborough, Mr. Adams was a deeply Christian man. The mortgage adviser was caught in the Piccadilly Line blast while on his way to work in the Strand. He called his mother from King’s Cross to let her know he had arrived in London safely and was about to board the Tube. His parents said: “James was a deeply loved son and brother, who lived and loved life to the full.” Rest in Peace.

In a previous essay on The Days Forward about what West Point meant to me, I stated that not counting obvious things like the birth of my kids, there were three events in my life that I count as being both profound and life-changing.  I went on to say that in chronological order the first was attending and graduating from West Point.  The second was meeting my wife, Avril, my Firstie Year at West Point, and the third was coming to know Jesus Christ as my Savior.  But there was also a fourth event that was quite significant that preceded everything else in my life; and that was being born an Army brat on December 26, 1946, in a Quonset Hut which was part of the hospital at Fort Benning, Georgia.  So, in some respects, the Army is more a part of who I am than just about anything else in my life.  I was born into the Army, I was schooled by the Army, I met my wife on an Army base, I have 21 years of Army service, and even today the bulk of my retirement is funded by the Army.  For me, almost everything that it means to be an American was first learned in the Army.  I learned respect for the flag every evening at 5:30pm when everything stopped for a couple of minutes while the flag was taken down.  I’m sure I probably learned the Pledge of Allegiance and the Stars Spangled Banner in an Army grade school.  My Cub Scout and Boy Scout and Explorer leaders were all either an Army wife or an enlisted man or NCO or Officer in the Army.  Even my clergy growing up were all Army Chaplains, and almost all my childhood memories of a religious nature happened in a chapel on an Army base somewhere in the world.  My conservative values were certainly forged in the Army.  Before I ever set foot on West Point the Army had already given me a sense of duty, honor and country.  And when I die and the final words at my funeral are said, Taps will be played, a 21-gun salute will be given, the flag that covered my coffin will be presented to a loved one, and a military cemetery will become my final resting place.  What does the Army mean to me?  Everything!  So, of course, I would like to be a part of saying “Happy 250^th Birthday” to the United States Army!

     For lack of any better ideas, when I resigned my commission a year after coming back from Vietnam, my wife and I decided to try out life in the Green Mountain State of Vermont.  When we first started to work on implementing our plan Avril imagined herself as a high school choir director and I a high school math or science teacher.  Half of our plan worked out perfectly when she became the choir director at Hartford High School in White River Junction, Vermont.  The other half of the vision had me standing in front of five classes a day in our middle school teaching fifth grade math.  Life doesn’t always work out quite as you might imagine.

     Even though the 125 or so 11-year-old kids were not highly stimulating, I still enjoyed working with them none-the-less.  I especially enjoyed working with the kids in my one class of over-achievers.  We ended up working through the required textbook by the end of February, so I had to ad-lib for the remainder of the year.  It was actually quite fun to try all kinds of new ideas out on them, all of which they excelled at and enjoyed.  Interestingly, years later I found out that one of my absolute brightest students, a young Hispanic girl, graduated from West Point with the Class of 1985.

     Though I enjoyed working with my students, the kids I ended up spending the most time with were the students in my wife’s various choirs and ensembles.  After my teaching day was done, I would wander over to the high school and hang out with them as my wife finished up the day working with different kids on songs or duets or whatever might be happening at the time.  Being a young couple in our late twenties with no kids of our own, quite a few of the teens enjoyed spending time with us … and we with them.

     While all of this was happening, we were also getting more and more involved with a little Baptist church that we had discovered while driving around with our realtor looking for a house.  And as part of that increasing involvement, we became quite avid helpers with the church youth group.  Almost all the kids in the youth group went to the high school my wife taught at, and several were even in her choir.  So, our first year of teaching was spent learning our jobs, and growing in our faith, and doing typical high school teacher and youth group leader type stuff.

     Towards the end of our first year, we began to become quite strong in our desire to want to live our lives as fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  To that end we became quite burdened with a desire to share our faith with the teens that we were routinely interacting with on a daily basis.  So, during the summer between our first and second year we began to plan for a special event that we would hold at our house the first week of school in September.

     When the designated Saturday arrived, we ended up with about 25 teens over at our house where we plied them with hot dogs and hamburgers and everything a teen could want to eat.  The mealtime was then followed by a time of sharing and singing of songs.  Avril and I and some of our youth group kids shared about how we had become Christians and about how important our faith in God was to us and the way we lived our lives.  We closed out the evening by inviting them to come back the next Saturday night for a Bible study for any who were interested.  The following Saturday about 15 of the original 25 showed up.

     After that first Bible study session I realized that the kids who had decided to come back needed to have Bibles of their own.  So, I went to a nearby Christian bookstore and ordered a dozen Bibles.  I wanted to make sure that each one of them who didn’t already have a Bible had one of their very own.  In due course the Bibles arrived, and we passed them out to all the kids.  We really enjoyed seeing them diligently use them over the next year as we met almost every Saturday night for our group studies.

     The twelve brand new Bibles ended up costing me $142 and change, which was a good hunk of money in those days.  But I really felt that it was something that God wanted me to do.  Not long after giving the Bibles out I received a very official looking piece of mail from the Defense Finance and Accounting Office at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ohio.  In it was a check for some back pay that I was owed.  There was a note explaining that a random audit of my pay records had been performed and that I had been underpaid at one point during my time in Vietnam.  The check in the envelope represented the amount that I was owed plus any accrued interest.  The check was for $142 and change.  To this day I remember the amount because God taught me a great lesson through this experience.  When you step out in faith and do what you believe God is calling you to do, He will be with you every step of the way.

     The following year Avril and I left White River Junction, Vermont, and I headed off to Dallas Theological Seminary to study for full-time ministry.

But when we left, we left behind quite a few young teens who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and who went on to live their lives for Him.  One young girl from our group ended up becoming a medical missionary, and one of the young men ended up going to seminary himself and becoming a minister of the Gospel.  As I’ve said before, God has truly given us a blessed life indeed.