During the Second World War, my father died in the army as a result of an accident during a convoy, never having left Britain. The following year my mother too died and I was brought up by my grandparents.

In 1948 my father’s brother saw a small leaflet which an Estonian man was circulating wherever he went on Britain. At that time the man, George Seck, was based at a refugee transit camp at Inskip and a copy of the leaflet was obtained by my uncle after Mr. Seck’s search was featured in a national newspaper. George Seck incidentally was a Christian pastor.

The leaflet is reproduced here:

My uncle contacted George Seck and confirmed to his satisfaction that the inscription was written to my father from my mother.

The bible had been passed to Mr. Seck in Poland by the family of a German soldier, who had picked the bible up from the hand of a dead British officer in North Africa. The family asked him, since he was going west, to try to get the bible back where it belonged - and so he did……..

In 1947 he came to our home where I was being brought up by my grandparents.

 I still remember him bringing a bag of sweets for me, the boy of 9, and praying with us before leaving.

No-one knows how the bible came into the hands of the other British soldier and we can only speculate that my father, who was a Methodist local preacher, gave it to him.

Later George Seck went to British Columbia and ministered to the native Canadians of Vancouver Island at a place called Ceepeecee. It is only in recent times that I have learned that Ceepeecee is a smallish place on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where the Canada Packing Corporation had a fish processing plant - and thus the name! George Seck and I corresponded until I had left university and started work.

In recent times I have tried without much success to trace him to find out more about his later life. Eventually thanks to the wonders of ‘Google’ I traced him on the Internet, in the archives of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, who have 4 pages about George Seck, his work and writings on their website. There it says "He was a travelling Lutheran evangelist. In 1947, he was working at the European Volunteer Workers’ transit camp at Inskip, near Preston. He also spent some time in Poland and Britain around and after World War II. He eventually came to Canada some time after 1947. He lived in various places in Canada such as Winnipeg, Manitoba and Ceepeecee, British Columbia. An important part of his ministry was gospel songs. He owned forty vinyl recordings and a portable, wind up gramophone, which he took with him in his travels. He died in 1979".