Later, the mother said of Eric,
I recollect the comfort he brought to me in one of our meetings, when he taught us that lovely hymn—
Be still my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul, thy best, thy Heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Then again, as he spoke from the text, “Be ye reconciled to God,” he questioned if we were reconciled to God in all His dealings with us—not only in the initial step of salvation, but day by day in our sorrows and trials were we reconciled to God. So my memories of Eric are of one who was quietly and victoriously reconciled to God.[102]
Eric’s head ached over tragic events such as these, as anyone’s would. For a while, he chalked up his dull but constant headaches to the gloomy circumstances they all faced together. Grief, depression, and malnutrition tag-teamed, preying on the minds of many. But for some reason, Eric’s headaches kept worsening—more than normal annoyances.
Something, he feared, was just not right.
[97] David McCasland, Eric Liddell: Pure Gold: A New Biography of the Olympic Champion Who Inspired Chariots of Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2001), 268.
[98] “The Story of Eric Liddell: Olympic Champion—Man of Courage,” Day of Discovery, season 32, episode 22, aired December 5, 1999 (Grand Rapids, MI: Day of Discovery, 2008), DVD.
[99] Lisa Adams, “Scots Olympic Great Eric Liddell Helped Me Survive Concentration Camp Horror,” Daily Record, July 1, 2012, http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/scots-olympic-great-eric-liddell-989642.
[100] Eric Liddell, The Disciplines of the Christian Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), 114–15.
[101] Ibid., 128.
[102] D. P. Thomson, Scotland’s Greatest Athlete: The Eric Liddell Story (Barnoak, Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland: Research Unit, 1970), 198.
CHAPTER 25
GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
Early Winter 1944
Temperatures dropped dramatically within the camp as Christmas loomed, the camp half in anticipation, half in dread. One more week and Eric and his fellow detainees would celebrate yet another holiday within the interior of a barbed-wire prison camp.
Or was Christmas two weeks away? Eric couldn’t remember.
It seemed lately that the days—holy or not—slipped one into the other, each arriving with a deeper level of pain behind his eyes. He could do only half the work he had typically accomplished, and his precious time in God’s Word each morning had become difficult. Lines of Scripture blurred on the pages or made little sense at all.
On some mornings, he managed to open his eyes—blessedly—to no headache at all. Or, at the very least, to only a mild one. Other mornings, however, the pain was agonizing, penetrating to the back of his head. He tried to ignore it, but those days made the denial impossible.
He had told Nurse Annie—and only her—that he feared something was wrong inside his head. But maybe, he hoped—he prayed—the headaches were the result of too little nutrition. Too much physical labor. Too much hot and too much cold. Too much time behind prison walls.
Earlier that morning he’d woken somewhere in between. Not quite miserable. Not quite pain-free. He rose, had his morning devotions with Joe, then set about his chores. But by early afternoon, the throbbing had returned, and he retreated to his bunk, lay flat on his back, and attempted to sleep.
Or to dream of his reunion with Flossie and the girls.
Only moments after he closed his eyes—or had it been hours?—the door opened quietly, and the sound of shuffling feet near his bed roused him. Whoever had come in moved about the room quietly. Eric attempted to open his eyes to see which of his roommates had joined him, but the light became a piercing sword.
The whiff of something putrid reached his nostrils. “What is that smell?” he asked without moving, then winced. His words had been too harsh—something his roommate didn’t deserve.
“Eric?” Joe Cotterill’s voice eased across the room, questioning the tone.
“Are you . . . cooking something?” Eric asked, attempting to smooth out his voice.
“I’m frying bread in a little peanut oil,” Joe answered. “Nothing different than usual.”
But it was different. Horribly different. Why couldn’t Joe detect that? “Whatever it is,” he mumbled, “it smells terrible.”
Eric’s harsher-than-intended confrontation of his roommate lay between them, unmentioned, for days until Eric—feeling better than he had in weeks—spotted Joe along the dusty streets of Weihsien. He called out, crossed over, and immediately apologized for his previous behavior. “I’ve had the most awful headaches lately,” he told Joe. “When they come on, I just need a quiet place to rest.”
“Probably just fatigue,” Joe said, which would make sense to anyone within the camp. Eric did the work of three men, counseled and coached the youth, and taught school from complex books he had personally written.
The two men smiled in reconciliation, shook hands, and then Eric went on to his next assignment. But Joe watched Eric as he ambled away. There was something odd in his gait. The usual pep was missing. He didn’t walk; he plodded.
IN JANUARY 1945, Eric—along with many others—came down with the flu and a painful case of sinusitis. Although treatment brought relief to the rest, Eric didn’t seem to improve.
Still, he continued without complaining, although he spent hours in bed with a cool cloth over his eyes and often missed roll call. Finally, his headaches plagued him so much that he again sought out Annie, who insisted he check himself into the camp hospital.
Eric was miserable, but he patiently endured while he rested. Fellow detainees grew more and more concerned as the days passed without seeing Eric exuberantly strolling out and about, holding class, or attending prayer meetings. Out of the approximate fifteen hundred prisoners, this one
