The Army of Occupation: 1945–9

The arrival of British troops in Germany in 1945 was not a new phenomenon. Immediately after the Armistice of November 1918, British troops had occupied the Rhineland alongside French, American and Belgian contingents. Unlike 1945, however, they were not part of the government of the country, but were there to ensure that the surrender terms were enforced. This was the first British Army on the Rhine (BAOR). Its mandate lasted until 30 June 1930. Relations between British churches in 1918 and their German counterparts, which had been generally cordial before 1914, remained frozen at the official level. It seems that this isolation from conditions on the ground of what was still technically an enemy state influenced policy concerning the role of chaplains. From George Bell’s biography of Randall Davidson, archbishop of Canterbury, it is apparent that pleas from German Protestant church leaders for help to ameliorate the deteriorating social conditions brought about by the continuing British blockade fell on deaf ears.Footnote ⁷ Something of the same distancing appears to have been applied to army chaplains in that period.

An insight into the experiences of chaplains serving with this earlier occupation force can be gained from the memoirs of the Rev. George Kendall, a Primitive Methodist chaplain. Daring All Things contains two chapters that relate to his time in Germany in 1919 and 1920. One of the few comments relating to German churches described Kendall’s use a of a village church during a two-week spell with his unit away from their base in Cologne. He did so apparently with the agreement of the local pastor. Kendall commented: ‘His duties were very light, for he only held a service on Sunday mornings.’Footnote ⁸ Otherwise, Kendall had to find places for worship where he could. As he noted on another occasion:

Little is known about the official provisions made for places to hold church services during this occupation. Further research might clarify the extent of relations between the British and the German churches and how they changed during the period.

Whatever the relationships that existed between 1918 and 1930, the chaplains who found themselves in Germany in May 1945 were under strict instructions to have nothing to do with the local population. ‘Non-fraternization’ was the rule. The policy was specifically extended to chaplains:

Difficult to enforce in the army in general, non-fraternization proved a completely unrealistic demand for chaplains. In the chaos of May 1945, they were often approached by local clergy who saw them as a point of contact with the occupying forces.Footnote ¹¹ They would also be required by their own superiors to develop contacts with local church leaders in order to provide for the spiritual needs of the British army, not least for the provision of worship on Sundays.Footnote ¹²

With no functioning government in Germany in May 1945, and the need to guard against perceived potential resistance to Allied rule, it was obvious that British troops could be in Germany for some time. Nobody could have foreseen exactly how long. To deal with the situation, the Chaplains’ Branch at Headquarters 21 Army Group, then based in Lübbecke, began to give directions for how to provide places for worship.Footnote ¹³ These were sent out alongside instructions for Operation Eclipse.Footnote ¹⁴ The latter provided detailed instructions for the army as to how to operate in defence of the military government that was acting as the interim administration. Geoffrey Druitt, Assistant Chaplain General, in his directions to chaplains, argued that troops should have access to buildings of sufficient standard to allow them to worship God in the most suitable way. To achieve that aim, Druitt argued that one of three routes be followed:

1. a. The requisitioning of a German church for the exclusive use of British military personnel.

2. b. The partial use of a local church.

3. c. The adaptation of other suitable premises by adequate furnishings and re-decoration for exclusive use as a Garrison Church.Footnote ¹⁵

There was no intention in Druitt’s plan to deny the local population the use of churches. Requisitioning could only take place where ‘exclusive use does not impose any hardship upon the local German population (i.e. that they can be adequately accommodated for worship in the remaining churches of the town)’, but where that was case, ‘this requisitioning should be made forthwith.’Footnote ¹⁶ When a church was taken over, it was stressed that it must be made available for the use of all denominations other than Roman Catholics. This reflected how chaplaincy in the British army at that time was divided into two mutually exclusive organizations: chaplains, apart from those of the Roman Catholic Church, were administered by the ‘Unified Department’, while Roman Catholic chaplains came under their own chain of command. This article concentrates on the work of the Unified Department, making reference to Catholic chaplaincy only where records exist of a distinct policy.

During the summer of 1945, a booklet entitled Occupation of Germany: Plans and Policy affecting the Brotherhood of Chaplains was sent to chaplains. It laid out what the hierarchy of the Unified Department envisaged for the religious life of the army in Germany. In this booklet, Druitt was keen to stress that the use of buildings by all denominations called for restraint in furnishings, as well as a sensitivity around displaying extreme forms of churchmanship.Footnote ¹⁷ Druitt also recognized that it would not be possible, in every situation, to requisition a church, for in rural areas there would usually only be one church, while in towns and larger cities bombing had left many churches unfit for use. In such cases, the chaplain was to ‘arrange with the German Pastor for the church to be set aside for certain stated periods for the exclusive use of British troops; during such set periods the Germans will be denied access.’Footnote ¹⁸ Another section of the chaplaincy plan was entitled ‘The Requisitioning of Churches or other buildings for Divine Worship’, which laid out how this was to be done in accordance with the non-fraternization rules.

The general principles were given more substance by Padre John William Jackson Steele, the Assistant Chaplain General to the 8th Army. Closer to the local level, his instructions were more practical. In a section headed ‘Chaplaincy Ministrations/Duties’, he laid out what would be expected from chaplains. Here, with an eye to the future, he wrote:

For many chaplains denied the use of Roman Catholic churches during the fighting in France and Belgium,Footnote ²¹ the ability to use German Protestant churches represented a wonderful new normality.

A picture of what was to result from all these directives is provided by the diary entries of a medical officer who undertook national service in Germany between 1947 and 1949. Stationed first in Bad Lippspringe, near Paderborn, and then in Celle, Captain Walsh and his family attended the garrison churches. An inveterate diarist, he has left records of his experience of church life:

Frustratingly, he did not record what building was being used in Bad Lippspringe. The nature of the building was clearer when he moved to Celle, as there the British had taken over the nineteenth-century German garrison church, a building they would continue to use for the next fifty years. The website of the current congregation has noted in its history how:

The diary entry referring to the ‘small congregation’ may well reflect the change that had taken place in the life of the army in the autumn of 1946. Following a debate in parliament about the place of compulsory church parades in the life of the army, the government decided that this three-hundred-year-old tradition should be abolished. Apart from some minor exceptions, attendance at church services would henceforth be voluntary.Footnote ²⁴ The route to the decision has been charted by Jeremy Crang, who notes that in the discussion that preceded the decision, Field Marshal Montgomery was among a number of senior officers who argued for the retention of compulsory church parades.Footnote ²⁵ The requirements of the army in BAOR were cited as one of the reasons, since these parades provided an opportunity for soldiers to attend divine worship that might otherwise not be available since there would be no local English language services which troops could chose to attend.Footnote ²⁶ These arguments did not prevail, however, and one of the consequences of the changed provision in the new Army and Navy Act was that the size of buildings required for Sunday worship in German garrison towns would now be quite different from that envisaged by Padre Steele.

Despite the chaos of the first year of the occupation, the army and its chaplains settled into an ordered pattern. No military action was ever required to counter resistance to the administration by the British Element of the Control Commission Germany. There appears to be no evidence for what happened in army chaplaincies in Germany between 1946 and 1949.

A Transition to a Cold War Army (1949–60)

The re-establishment of political institutions and the handing over of functions to Germans in 1948/49 could have brought these initial, temporary arrangements to an end, and seen the army return to the United Kingdom. However, as the occupation period began to wind down, it was obvious, with the deteriorating security position in Europe, that British troops would be required to help guarantee the defence of the newly emerging Federal Republic of Germany. Based on the three Western zones, this was vulnerable to threats from Soviet Russian forces to the east. Since the guarantee provided by the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 that created NATO was open-ended, and might well be needed for many years, British troops would remain and a new policy for the provision of churches for military personnel would be required. Whilst it would generally have been feasible to develop a relationship with local German churches, it was decided that the model used in Britain of providing garrison churches exclusively for military use was also to be followed in Germany. In some garrisons, notably Paderborn where the local population was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, it would in any case have been almost impossible to find appropriate buildings. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio, established in the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, was still influencing decisions in 1949.Footnote ²⁷

Although the need for garrison churches was still officially ‘temporary’, it was likely to be of sufficient duration to require permanent structures. There would no longer, except in the case of the headquarters at Bad Oyenhausen in the new Land of North Rhine-Westphalia, be a case for continuing to use civilian churches. It is no coincidence that the boards displayed in Verden’s Dom began the sequence of chaplains at St Boniface in 1949. In Caithness Barracks, which had previously been a German cavalry barracks, a former stable block was converted to become a church. Such buildings were often available in former German barracks, and were frequently chosen to be converted into churches. Retaining traces of the former mangers and with tethering rings on the walls, they were especially atmospheric at services during the Christmas season.

Some of the large barrack complexes built as part of the German rearmament programme in the 1930s which had been taken over by British garrisons had to be provided with new, purpose-built churches. Provisioned with numerous amenities when built, churches had, perhaps not surprisingly given the ambivalent attitude of the National Socialist regime to churches, been omitted from the plans. One such new provision during the 1950s was ‘the white church’ in the camp at Bergen-Hohne, between Hannover and Hamburg. Although there were always four major units and a host of smaller ones stationed there, the ending of compulsory church parades allowed the erection of a much smaller building than would have been required before 1946. St George’s, Hohne, could seat only 250. The comparable camp at Fallingbostel, across the tank firing ranges from Hohne, was provided with a similar building in the form of All Saints. Another church, St Peter’s, was to be provided in Barker Barracks at Paderborn.

One completely new camp was built to meet the needs of the newly configured military presence in Germany. The continued requisitioning of a large part of Bad Oyenhausen, including the church, was inappropriate as well as unsuitable. The headquarters of British Forces Germany needed a new home. This was to be provided on a barren site north of Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, to be known as Rheindahlen, after a small local settlement. The initial plans called for two churches, one of which was to be allocated for the use of Roman Catholics. The Royal Air Force, whose headquarters would be based alongside those of the army, insisted that a building be provided for the Church of Scotland and the Free Churches.Footnote ²⁸ Unlike the army, the RAF had four separate groupings for chaplains (Anglican; Roman Catholic; Presbyterian, Methodist and United Board of Baptist and Congregational churches; and Jewish) and sought to provide an RAF station with a place of worship for each. Thus, Rheindahlen was to have St Boniface, used by the Church of England, St Thomas More for the Roman Catholics, and St Andrew’s for the other denominations. All were attractive buildings, well placed at the centre of the garrison.Footnote ²⁹

The provision of new churches became part of a policy to provide suitable places of worship for the troops and their families. In the summer of 1952, a total of ten new garrison churches were approved to be built.Footnote ³⁰ These included some of those already mentioned. Over the next ten years, the RAChD Journal reported the opening of newbuild churches at Münster in 1954;Footnote ³¹ at Osnabrück, Fallingbostel and Hubbelrath and a chapel at Prince Rupert School in Wilhelmshaven in 1955;Footnote ³² at Iserlohn in 1960,Footnote ³³ as well as the three in the new headquarters at Rheindahlen. There were additionally garrisons, such as that at Herford, where conversion of a part of the barracks was preferred to a newbuild.Footnote ³⁴

One garrison in Germany remained outside the changes that took place in 1949. Berlin remained under military control, organized by the four Allied powers, until the reunification of Germany after the signing of the 15 March 1991 treaty. No mechanism could be found to return it to civilian rule that would be acceptable to all the Allies. St George’s Church in Berlin had been established in 1884 to provide an Anglican place of worship for Victoria, the wife of the Crown Prince Frederick William. It was thus an example of another type of British church existing in a foreign country and not affiliated to any group within that country. The original building had been severely damaged by Allied bombing in May 1944. The ruins lay in the Soviet zone of control, so a decision was made to provide a new building in the British zone and for the building to become the garrison church for the military in Berlin. It would remain so until 1994 when the garrison was disbanded and the church returned to civilian control.Footnote ³⁵

The creation of a permanent garrison in West Germany in 1949, and one that was likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future, posed a unique problem for the Church of England. Although the bishop of Fulham, whose jurisdiction included civilian chaplaincies in Europe, had sought to exercise authority over army chaplains in Germany in 1946, the archbishop of Canterbury remained the ordinary for service chaplains.Footnote ³⁶ After the war, Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher had made visits to Germany. With British forces now being accompanied by a greater number of families, and thus the requirement for an increased number of episcopal confirmations, it would not be possible for him to provide the pastoral and liturgical presence that was required. Unlike almost every other garrison around the world, there was no local Anglican bishop to whom an appeal could be made. Nor, as in times past, could the army chaplains provide a bishop from within their own ranks.Footnote ³⁷ Another solution had to be found. It was therefore decided that the archbishop of Canterbury would give a bishop the responsibility for oversight of the armed forces. It was proposed that he would be known as ‘The Bishop to the Forces’, for he could not be styled ‘Bishop of the Forces’, as that title had been in use for the Roman Catholic bishop since 1917, and the Ministry of Defence thought that there was a danger of confusion. To differentiate the post and to indicate the limit on the bishop’s authority, the full title included the words: ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Ecclesiastical Representative to the Armed Forces.’ The first appointment was made in 1948 when Cuthbert Bardsley, the suffragan bishop of Croydon, then in the Canterbury diocese, was appointed. He retained the role until 1956 despite his translation to Coventry. Later appointments were almost exclusively of bishops with a connection to either Canterbury diocese or to the archbishop’s staff at Lambeth. Their visits to garrison churches in Germany became a feature of military life over the next fifty years.

A Professional Army with a Job to do (1960–90)

A major change was to take place in 1960 when conscription ended. One consequence was that the army in Germany would now comprise only professional soldiers, many of whom might expect to spend years serving in Germany. Further reorganizations within the terms of service helped to create an army in which the majority of the soldiers were married and had families. The emphasis on worship in garrison churches began to shift from congregations of single men, often with considerable experience of church life before they began their period of national service, and thus able to provide organists and choirs from their ranks but who changed every few months, to congregations of families who would be less mobile. The primary recruiting areas for soldiers in the 1960s were those, such as the north-east of England, where the effects of the decline in church attendance noted by Callum Brown were most obvious,Footnote ³⁸ and this became apparent in the garrison churches of Germany.

The new, post-1960 life of garrison churches also saw the development of closer relations with local German churches. In places where German churches had been used by the army this was not a totally new phenomenon. A painted glass window was gifted to the congregation of the Bauernkirche in Iserlohn when the British moved to their newly built garrison church in 1959. It was described as being: ‘In gratitude for the privilege of the use for worship since 1945’.Footnote ³⁹

The 1960s were to see developing contacts between the garrison churches and their local neighbours. Chronicled in the pages of the RAChD Journal, the ‘Command Notes’ from the BAOR reported the regular occurrence of joint services, especially during Advent. No doubt the ecumenical spirit of the time helped to encourage a willingness from both sides to work together when they could. One such event, widely reported in Germany, was an Anglo-German carol service held in Christ Church, Lindenhof, Saarn, in 1960.Footnote ⁴⁰ Another Anglo-German service, this time held at St Boniface, the Anglican garrison church in the headquarters complex at Rheindahlen in the summer of 1963, was recorded as ‘Attracting wide publicity.’Footnote ⁴¹ There were also invitations for members of the British military community to attend the Protestant Kirchentag, a biennial gathering of lay Protestants first held in 1949. The Rev. John Youens, at that time Assistant Chaplain General in charge of all non-Catholic army chaplaincy in Germany, received a special invitation to speak to the 1963 meeting, which was held in Dortmund. Following the erection of the Berlin wall in 1961, the Kirchentag became increasingly interested in the theme of peace.Footnote ⁴²

Other links were made through the annual Women’s World Day of Prayer, first initiated in 1887 and observed in many countries, and held on the first Friday of March each year. Through the 1980s, there was regular involvement in Bergen-Hohne where representatives of the garrison churches took part in the planning and conduct of the services. Another link was forged at Hohne between the congregation of St Ninian’s, the Church of Scotland, Methodist and United Board garrison church (the only one other than St Andrew’s at Rheindahlen to be so designated), and the German Mission Seminary at Hermannsburg. The seminary students, who were often going to countries where English was spoken and English church influences were important, attended to experience worship in English (or sometimes, when led by a Church of Scotland chaplain, Scots). Between 1987 and 1988, a chaplain helped moderate a course on Anglo-Saxon church history.Footnote ⁴³ This also resulted in an involvement with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bergen-Belsen, a local pressure group that was seeking to improve the sparse historical information provided at the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

This was probably the high point of the relationships with the German churches. Some connections lingered – the annual Advent carol services in the Paderborn Dom and the Dom in Münster have remained important dates in the local Anglo-German calendar – but other links do not seem to have survived. One reason was the continual drain of operations and exercises on chaplaincy time. The increase, in the early 1980s, of the length of emergency tours in Northern Ireland from four to six months put extra pressure on the time available to those chaplains remaining in Germany. Contacts at national level, such as the signing of the Meissen Agreement that formalized the relationship between the Church of England and the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (German Protestant Church) in 1991, had an impact on local relations. Closer relations might have been expected to ensue, but failure by the Church of England to identify almost all garrison churches as ‘Anglican’ meant that they were generally viewed by German churches as falling outside the scope of the agreement. Germans began to look elsewhere for their contacts with British churches. There were also decisions taken at a national level which affected local arrangements. On 8 December 1988, a US Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt fighter crashed into a residential area in the city of Remscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, killing five people on the ground. There was already considerable concern after a previous major disaster at an airshow in August that year at the US Ramstein air base. Although there had been no British involvement in either event, the decision was taken that all military activities with the German population would be cancelled. Planned carol services did not take place, and many were not restarted in subsequent years. A similar edict, from the British Foreign Office, was issued in 1995 banning the British military in Germany from holding any events to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. No protest appears to have been made by the staff at Ministry of Defence (Chaplains [Army]), the headquarters of army chaplaincy.Footnote ⁴⁴

A study made in 1987 as preparation work for the mid-service clergy course at St George’s House in Windsor Castle, revealed how ecumenical the work of chaplaincy had become in one part of Germany. Its title, ‘Pragmatism or Policy?’, indicated a drift in Germany to its being ‘the army church’, rather than ‘the church in the army.’Footnote ⁴⁵ Responses from chaplains serving within the boundaries of the 1st Armoured Division area in North Rhine-Westphalia to a questionnaire showed that most had received little or no guidance from their church authorities about how to minister in situations such as those of the garrison churches in BAOR. One chaplain declared that he served a church which had always had an Anglican chaplain as there was a ‘Free Church’ in the same location. However, he admitted that when he was away from the garrison on a tour of duty in Northern Ireland, the chaplain who conducted worship in the so-called ‘Anglican’ garrison church was not Anglican. Only the Roman Catholics, at that point still a self-governing group within the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, managed to maintain a clear religious identity, and that would change after the Millennium with the advent of a new policy of ‘All Souls Ministry’.Footnote ⁴⁶

Differences in style within denominations could sometimes be more important than those between them. A change of chaplain in one garrison church in Germany led many in the congregation to believe that a Baptist chaplain had been replaced by an Anglican, when in reality it was a Methodist chaplain who followed an Anglican colleague.Footnote ⁴⁷ Even in the 1st Armoured Division, the area studied in the 1987 questionnaire, there was a Baptist chaplain, serving as a member of the United Board, who would baptize infants. His argument was that other URC members of the United Board would do so and so should he.Footnote ⁴⁸ If there is any explanation, it probably lies in the liturgical upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s that affected most denominations. The disappearance of abbreviated services of matins, familiarly known in army chaplaincy circles as ‘mangled matins’, and the demise of large Sunday schools was as obvious in garrison churches in Germany as in the churches in the UK.

There had been other changes during the period. The Canadian army had maintained a presence in Germany after 1945, serving alongside the British. The move to a settled existence in the 1950s saw the building of spacious and attractive churches for the use of their army. By the mid-1970s, the Canadian government decided to relocate a smaller force closer to the American army in the south of Germany. In 1977, the British army carried out a reorganization of its forces to include a take-over of former Canadian bases. The RAChD thus assumed responsibility for the two striking garrison churches in the headquarters of the 3rd Armoured Division at Körbecke, close to the Möhnesee and its famous dam.Footnote ⁴⁹

The apparently settled state of the 1980s came to a dramatic end with the events of 9 November 1989 when the Berlin wall effectively ‘came down’. The following months were to see massive changes in the internal politics of the countries of Eastern Europe that comprised the Warsaw Pact. By 1991, the Cold War was over and on 3 October 1990 the former German Democratic Republic, the East German state, was absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany. The rationale for British troops to remain in Germany to defend against a possible Soviet lead invasion had disappeared.

The Time of Withdrawal (1990–2019)

Although a ‘peace dividend’ was declared in Britain in the 1990s, the new defence policy initially envisaged a reduction of the number of troops in Germany rather than a complete withdrawal. A map of the location of garrison churches, the only one ever produced, was drawn in 1994 and shows the significant number that were still in existence.Footnote ⁵⁰ One early round of closures occurred when 3rd Armoured Division returned to England in 1993.Footnote ⁵¹ As a result, the garrison churches in Körbecke, Söest and Lippstadt, taken over from the Canadian army in 1977, do not appear on that map.

As early as September 1990, after a coalition had been formed to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait following their invasion on 2 August 1990, it became clear that troops based in Germany would soon become a resource to be deployed elsewhere. They were highly trained, reasonably well staffed and with access to weapons and material. The Kuwait war was to have a significant impact on the life of garrison churches. With almost all troops from the 1st Armoured Division deployed to Saudi Arabia by Christmas 1990, pastoral ministry for the remaining troops and the large number of ‘headless’ families had to be provided by a number of Territorial Army chaplains engaged on regular terms and deployed to Germany. That could only be a temporary solution and when, after 1992, increasing numbers of troops were sent to the former Yugoslavia, a new solution had to be found. With deployments involving the majority of troops from a brigade, a decision was taken that chaplains would deploy with units. It was decided to implement a policy of employing clergy as civil servants. Often referred to as ‘Retired Chaplains’, since most were former members of the RAChD, the posts could also be filled by clergy with other previous experience with the military community. The policy worked well, although one unintended consequence was a further decrease in contacts with local German communities.

The gradual decrease in the number of garrison churches and of chaplains ministering in Germany during the 1990s revealed a new challenge. The churches had often been attended by former members of the military community who had retired locally, by members of the wider civilian community who served the needs of the army but were not entitled to any of the benefits of service life, and by local members of the German population who enjoyed British styles of worship. These ‘non-entitled’ members of the church communities began to take up an increasing amount of chaplains’ time. In addition, veterans from earlier generations who had settled in Germany were beginning to die. Their next of kin would often request a funeral with a military element. Unless such veterans had paid their German church tax,Footnote ⁵² local German clergy were unable to take any responsibility for providing funerals, or indeed for any other pastoral offices. With the very different approach taken in the United States army, where veterans remained entitled to certain benefits including a ‘military’ funeral, pressure began to mount for British chaplains to make their churches and their time available for such funerals. By the mid-1990s, the time and resources being devoted to such tasks resulted in a directive from the Assistant Chaplain General at United Kingdom Support Command (Germany), the successor to BAOR, that such requests should be directed to the churches that formed part of the Church of England’s civilian diocese in Europe, unless there was a clear reason why an army chaplain should be involved.Footnote ⁵³

Decisions also had to be taken about how far the ministry of those who were not members of the service community should be recognized within garrison churches. Serving in Verden in October 1992, I was able to present to an American civilian, with no connection to the British military community, a certificate from the bishop to the Forces to assist at the administration of holy communion. That might seem a local measure and fully acceptable. In contrast, the case of the ordination to the priesthood of Carsten Peter Thiede was more troubling for its implications. His priesting merited two short mentions in the RAChD’s Journal, but this failed to give details of this peculiar episode.Footnote ⁵⁴ Thiede had previously worked in the United Kingdom. He had become an Anglican whilst in England and had been licensed as a reader. On his return to Germany, he became part of the worshipping congregation at St Peter’s Garrison Church in Barker Barracks, Paderborn. As a German and someone not a member of the service community, he was however accepted for ordination within the diocese of the Forces, and ordained priest in Paderborn in the summer of 2000. Whilst the Anglican chaplain in Paderborn saw no difficulties with this, others were troubled about why it had not taken place within the diocese in Europe. Thiede died suddenly in 2004 and therefore did not live long enough after his ordination for problems to arise as garrison churches closed across Germany.

More closures of British bases in Germany, and their associated churches, became the norm during the first years of the twentieth-first century. With the demands of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, fewer troops remained and the programme of barrack closures accelerated. Arrangements were made for furniture, artefacts, records and stained glass to be returned to Great Britain or disposed of elsewhere. A considerable amount of surplus furniture and other items were sent to Fiji, connecting the sizeable Fijian community within the British army with their home churches.

There were other, more important, artefacts. Chief among these were the many painted glass windows that had been installed in many of the garrison churches. These had often been donated by units and in some churches, such as St Christopher’s in Dempsey Barracks in Sennelager, formed an impressive display that depicted the history of the church as part of the military community. Most of them were repatriated to the United Kingdom to find new homes in army and other churches. Some, such as the impressive east windows in St Boniface, the Anglican church in the headquarters complex at Rheindahlen, remained in place.Footnote ⁵⁵

Amongst the final places to close, inthe summer of 2019, was Church House at Lübbecke. At a time when economies needed to be found, and barrack closures were brought forward, it was notable that Church House remained in daily use for almost forty years, until the very last days. It was a tribute to the place of chaplaincy that it was needed to perform the services it had been doing for almost forty years until the very last days of British military involvement in Germany. Originally built as a training centre for the Hitlerjügend organization, the complex was captured in the closing days of the war and became, briefly, the officers’ mess of Field Marshall Montgomery’s headquarters. It then fulfilled the same function for the 2nd Division until that division was relocated to the United Kingdom in a reorganization in 1982.Footnote ⁵⁶ At that time, the RAChD was looking for a replacement church house, as the existing one in Wuppertal was scheduled to close. Repurposed, the Lübbecke complex provided support to chaplains and the wider military community in Germany. It remained in use as one of the last British facilities still in operation as the final drawdown of British troops took place. It eventually closed with some ceremony on 15 June 2019.Footnote ⁵⁷ It had been a fitting successor to other church houses that had served since the first one had opened in 1945.