Overcoming is an autobiological account of Salvation Army social and pastoral work in the UK
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DEDICATION
Dedicated to the 95 Salvation Army Officers of the Overcomer session of Salvation Army Officers trained between 1974-1976 and Commissioned in the Royal Albert Hall, London, England in the Summer of 1976.
Overcoming by Richard Underwood is an autobiographical account of the training, ordination, and subsequent social and pastoral work of a young married couple who were commissioned as Salvation Army Officers in the 1970s.
The story follows them as they undertake inner city Salvation Army social work in Glasgow and London, and Salvation Army pastoral work at diverse town and rural locations throughout England and Scotland.
Sample of Overcoming an Autoy Richard Underwood
During the whole time we lived in Glasgow there were no doctors who would accept a new patient if they gave the hostel as their address. None of the hostel men, nor any of the officers living in the hostel, had a general practitioner. All those that tried to register with one had been refused, including Linda and me.
The hostel men would have been completely without medical practice cover were it not for a brilliant public spirited consultant surgeon from the local hospital. He had heard about the plight of the hostel men, and gave up his free time to visit the hostel once a week to conduct a surgery.
The fact no doctor would allow anyone from the hostel to register with them was not without reason. Many of the men only stayed for a short period of time before moving on. Doctors had accepted registrations from men in the past, and had completed all the bureaucratic administration required, only for the patient to move on a few days later. …
“Can you have a look at Jimmy; I think he’s got a problem?” (Not his actual name).
Jimmy had arrived at the Glasgow Salvation Army hostel for homeless men a couple of days before, but I’d been off both those days and I was just catching up on the new residents.
I found him sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead, if staring was the right word, for Jimmy was completely blind. It wasn’t the blindness that was the problem; it was the rest of him. He was covered in sores and continuously scratching.
“Hello, Jimmy,” I said. “I understand you’ve got a problem.”
“Yes. It’s my eczema. It’s getting worse, and it really itches.”
He spoke quietly, and I’d drawn closer to listen. I soon pulled back as I saw his clothes were crawling with lice.
“I’ve got just the thing for eczema,” I said. “It’s a lotion you add to bath water. It’s really good. It’ll soon have you sorted as good as new.”
I persuaded Jimmy that a bath would help stop his itching, and I led him at arm’s length to the bathroom and ran the bath as he got undressed. I gingerly placed all his clothes into a black bag as he dropped them on the floor, and soon he was only wearing his socks. He seemed reluctant to take them off, and I shared his reluctance as I saw the state of them. The bottom of his legs were black with scabs. Blood had dried into his socks and they were as stiff as cardboard. It was difficult to tell where his legs stopped and his socks began.
“When did you last change your socks?” I asked.
“Last time I had a bath.”
“How long ago was that?”
This time he had to think about the answer. “About six months ago,” he said eventually.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you leave your socks on for now? We’ll take them off once you’ve been in the bath for a while.” He agreed and gingerly stepped into the bath and sat down.
I left him for a while, and used anti-lice powder to fumigate the bag full of his old clothes before collecting fresh clothes from our emergency store. Placing a broom handle in the centre of his bed to create a wigwam, I sprayed anti-lice powder inside before turning my attention to his wardrobe. All his clothes were crawling with lice, so I gave them a good dusting before closing and locking the wardrobe door.
By the time I returned to Jimmy, the water had time to soak into his socks. I pulled at them gingerly, but as I pulled, his skin started coming away. I left them, and was regretting there was no doctor available and trying desperately to remember some of my past training whilst a medic in the RAF.
“Your eczema’s really bad,” I said. “It’ll probably take a few treatments. And your feet are particularly bad, so we’ll leave your socks on for a few days. What we’d better do is give you a bath once a day for the next couple of weeks, and a change of clothes every day. That’s probably the best way of getting rid of your eczema.”
Jimmy agreed and seemed really grateful, and from then on, Linda and I set up a daily routine. I’d run Jimmy’s bath, fumigate his clothes, and treat his feet as best I could. Linda washed and ironed his clothes after fumigation, and returned them for him to use the following day. It was almost a week before I eventually managed to cut his socks away without doing too much extra damage to his feet, and at long last I could put powder directly on his feet and not onto his socks.
It took several weeks for the bulk of his scabs to disappear, and several months before his feet were back to anything like normal, but I don’t think Jimmy ever realised he had lice. To this day he probably still believes he just had bad eczema.
Overcoming is an autobiological account of Salvation Army social and pastoral work in the UK. A miscellaneous bookMiscellaneous Books by Richard Underwood.
