God and the Gun

Wed, May 1st 2024 at 12:40 am - 2:00 am

Padre David Coulter has served with the forces in many dangerous countries.

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Guest speaker was the Reverend David Coulter with a talk entitled ‘God and the Gun’. He described joining the army as a young man and being commissioned into the Royal Irish Rangers in 1980. He later trained for the ministry and studied theology at St Andrews University and was ordained in the Church of Scotland in 1989, rejoining the military in 1994 as a chaplain. He related incidents both happy and sad from his career (until his retirement in 2019) which took him to Germany, to Northern Ireland before the Good Friday agreement, to the Gulf during the Gulf War, to Iraq and Afghanistan.After retirement he spent two years as minister in the Church of Scotland church in St Peter Port, Guernsey. Describing some of the horrors of military life, he told how he had to offer comfort in Belfast when, during a tragic ’negligent discharge' in barracks, a soldier had shot dead his best friend. He described tragedy but often humour, too, showing how strong soldiers can be after injury……a wife was sitting in hospital with her husband who had been shot in the face; to the suggestion that 'he seems worried’ she replied ‘he’s concerned he might lose his Scots accent’. David described how privileged he felt to have had a marvellous and loyal driver for the last four years of his service. This reminded him of a different driver when he was staying at Balmoral to preach one Sunday: on the Saturday he was driven to a barbecue on the estate by the late Queen Elizabeth in her Range Rover…... he described it as ‘an out-of-body experience’! This was a thought-provoking talk which led to questions from members of the club. The vote of thanks was given by Eric Brown.