The Daily Alaska Empire

RANGER MEETS CHAPLAIN WHO HELD FUNERAL

DES MOINES--(AP)-- When Chaplain De Loss Marken was introduced to Lloyd Church at the Veterans hospital in Des Moines, he thought the name sounded familiar.

"It seems to me I had a funeral service once for you," he said.

"So I heard." Church said, grinning.

Church, a former U. S. Army ranger who was wounded six times in the Dieppe raid, said a man he met later in a German prison camp told him about the funeral. Church spent three years in German prison camps.

The Rev. Mr. Marken, formerly a chaplain with the 34th Division, said he was in Scotland after the Dieppe raid and was asked to conduct memorial services for seven of the American rangers who didn't come back. Three of them were known to be dead and the other four were believed dead.

Church was one of the four.

Church, whose home now is in Marshalltown, Ia., receives a pension for 100 per cent disability. He is married and the father of a 20-month old daughter.

After the Dieppe raid, the veteran said, he came to in a hospital. Then there were prison camps. In 1945, when the Russian armies were approaching his camp in German-held Poland, Church and 16 other Americans escaped, made their way to the Russian lines and fought two weeks with a Russian armored division.

At the Elbe, he said only a bridge separated them from the American 69th Division, but "the Russians wouldn't let us go over to them." When the Red division was ordered back to Russia, the Americans went along to Moscow and Leningrad. Eventually they were flown to Paris and Church was discharged.