FINDING TIME TO DIE

'It is joyful to hear your voice so strong and clear on the telephone and I do hope the food and air and strength of the place you are in is refreshing you mightily.'

Buchman was thinking particularly of Kishi's visit to Caux to discuss the Japanese Moral Re-Armament assembly centre. On the morning of Sunday 6 August he felt it urgent to send a cable to Kishi giving him a wide perspective on his visit to Europe. He told him of plans being made for him to meet British leaders in London, and offered him the hospitality of 45 Berkeley Square. He quoted a letter from Eisenhower congratulating the Japanese with The Tiger on their 'splendid crusade', and told him that Attorney-General Robert Kennedy had received members of the cast on his visit to Lima. Then he invited Kishi to bring all his party to Caux with him.

The cable was discussed with Howard in Caux by telephone and dispatched. Buchman was happy in his mind, but weary. 'How are my Americans?' was his final question. The thought that he might die in Freudenstadt had not weighed on him or those with him. There was no sense of imminence. Then at 2 pm he had a sharp pain in his chest. The local specialist, who came immediately, turned out to have paid a visit to Caux on his vacation a few days earlier. He eased the pain. From time to time Buchman became unconscious, but each time he recovered consciousness he wanted to know what news had come in. It was his first question the next morning after a restless night. That afternoon came a further shock, and the doctor's verdict was 'deadly serious'. Friends around the world were notified. Prince Richard came from Kronberg, Howard started immediately from Caux.

As Buchman hovered between life and death his favourite passages from the Bible were read. When Prince Richard read Psalm 23, Buchman caught the sound of his voice and smiled. Then not long after he slipped into complete unconsciousness. At 9.45 in the evening the last breath left him like a sigh.

There was shock and sorrow in the hotel, as in the world beyond. The Luz family, the hotel staff, friends from the town bearing a profusion of roses and garden flowers, filed into the room for a last farewell. One of the hotel maids who had looked after his bedroom was found on her knees beside his bed, and she told of the brief conversation with him which had made her life different.

On Friday 11 August the town of Freudenstadt gave itself to the memory of Buchman. It was host to the hundreds from many countries who poured in, to the official representatives of the German federal and provincial governments, to the black-uniformed Ruhr miners who stood as a guard of honour around the coffin below the 14th-century crucifix in the church. They flocked to the church service in the morning and the public meeting in the Kursaal in the afternoon, and as evening began to fall many walked along the Frank Buchmanweg.

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