The war had ended. I was out in Burma when we got word that we were returning home. We went to Bombay to pick up a ship. There were crowds of men going back, of course, but two hundred of us were assigned to the S.S. Scythia, which was a ship that had been completely refitted as a passenger ship. So this was pretty nice for us to go home on a very beautiful ship!
We didn’t realize until we were about a day out to sea that there were nearly two thousand Italian prisoners of war down below. They were being repatriated to Italy. Many of them had not been home for years. Every evening, they would bring their guitars and mandolins and would gather in a section of open deck. There, under the stars, they would sing songs of home. We would go to the rear of our upper deck and listen to them. It was really beautiful.
Each succeeding day at sea we could sense the emotion rising as they drew closer to home. We passed through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, across the Mediterranean, and then into Naples Bay, with Vesuvius looming in the distance.
We observed the flurry of activity as the ship docked. From our vantage point, we could see that there was a big tent where the military police were. All these men were to be processed and released through that military tent before they could go out to their loved ones. We could see thousands upon thousands waiting behind the iron railing. But there was a little group of people who had been allowed in, maybe thirty-five or so. For some reason, they were on the dock, held back only by a little wooden fence.
And what emotion we saw! We were feeling it ourselves; we too were going home!
One big fellow got to the bottom of the gangplank and started to dance around in circles, crying out, “Liberty, liberty!” He was no longer a prisoner; he was free at last!
Another man fell his full length on the cobble stones and kissed the ground. The place he had been dreaming of these years. Italia! Home, sweet home!
Then I watched as a young fellow descended the gangway. He was a stocky fellow, with two kit bags, one over each shoulder. He got about halfway down the gangplank when there was a shout from one of the men in the little group on the dock, “Antonio!”
The boy looked up. There was a man waving his arms. He dropped his kit bags right there and started to run down the bouncing gangway. The military police tried to stop him and direct him to the tent, but he broke right past them, running for the fence. The fence didn’t stop him, either. He took a flying leap right over the heads of the people and got his arms around the neck of that man. From the upper deck we could hear them weep for joy.
What do you imagine he was thinking about right there? Liberty? No longer a prisoner? I don’t think so. Italy? The olive groves? The grape vines? The sunshine on the Mediterranean? I don’t think so. I think what filled his heart at that moment was the man he loved.
You know, beloved, it’s really going to be something, when at last, in a moment, we step on shore, and know we’re home. HOME AT LAST! We’ll feel at home, among the family of God. It’s going to be wonderful, beloved, to be home. And it’s going to be wonderful to be free. Free of this failing flesh and this wicked heart. But that’s not what will make heaven for us. What will it be? “They shall see His face,” and it will be the Man we love!
From a tape recorded at Markham Bible Chapel, Friday, January 12, 1996. Transcribed by Doug Price (ON).