Équipe de Train – Gare de Malades, Lourdes
The Wimbledon College Lourdes Hospitalité is best known for its work at Lourdes’ gare (station). Here, our hospitaliers help pilgrims with reduced mobility to disembark and embark trains. After a long journey lasting many hours, ours are among the first faces that pilgrims meet in Lourdes.
By kind permission of his son, Jim, we reproduce Équipe de Train, a poem attributed to Jim Larner (1916–2007), who was a member of the Wimbledon College Lourdes Hospitalité. The poem powerfully reminds us of the humanity and divinity we meet in those we serve. It is among the resources used by formateurs to train stagiaires, volunteers in their first five years of service in Lourdes.
He cannot move or speak or see,
this hunk of sub-humanity.
Brain dead? Alive and just asleep?
A sight to make the Angels weep,
a snoring hulk, a human shell:
his only attribute – a smell!
Confined within this coffined bed,1
‘twere almost better he were dead.
What cost to State or Charity!
And yet no “Sleeping Beauty” he.
The nun who tended him has left;
God pity him – this soul bereft.
Our task to lift him from the train,
avoiding any stress or pain,
so better call up Number Four2
and slide this bed-box to the door.
(I'll bet this poor bloke weighs a ton)
“Say when you're ready everyone -
Together now – but watch his arms.”
(Can man be so devoid of charms!)
“Now place him on that tringlot3 there.”
(Great Heaven, what a vacant stare!)
Without a doubt he is quite ga,
but one had better ask: “ça va?”
A smile illumes that awful face:
“Mais oui merci – vous êtes anglais?”
(He must have heard and understood:
we'd just assumed he never could.)
I hope we didn't sound unkind,
please God, he couldn't read my mind!
Ashamed, I stroke his cheek and turn,
and suddenly a truth discern.
We have the Faith and do good works,
yet still The Foe within us lurks.
We were too busy ‘doing good’
to recognise the Son of God.
― Jim Larner (1916–2007), Hospitalier HNDL
Reproduced by kind permission of his son, Jim, also a member of HNDL
Coffined bed: a heavy wooden tray containing the sickbed of the most mobility-reduced pilgrims, which reduces the need for physical disturbance.
Number Four: the fourth person of the seven-member team unloading a carriage, who is normally left on the platform as part of the outside team to receive chairs and stretchers.
Tringlot: a trolley enabling stretchers to be wheeled away.