Rev Dr Donald Caskie.
A Gaelic Bible that belonged to a Church of Scotland minister credited with saving more than 2,000 Allied service personnel during World War II has been returned to his former church in Paris.
Rev Dr Donald Caskie, who was known as the ‘Tartan Pimpernel’, was ministering at the Scots Kirk in Paris when the Germans invaded in 1940 and was forced to flee thanks to his previous vocal objections to the Nazis from the pulpit.
Having refused to board the last ship bound for the UK from southern France, he instead settled in Marseille where he ran a Seaman’s Mission. Living a ‘double life’ under the scrutiny of the Vichy police, he managed to aid British and other Allied soliders escape to freedom across the mountains to Spain. He was eventually recruited by British intelligence officers and ran the last link in a chain of safe houses that stretched from northern France.
Betrayed, he was arrested by the Vichy police and banished from Marseille, moving north to Grenoble where he continued to aid military personnel escape under the cover of being a university chaplain. He was eventually again arrested and, imprisoned by the Gestapo, was sentenced to death. His life was only saved through the intervention of a German pastor and he spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp.
After the war Rev Dr Caskie returned to the Scots Kirk on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, staying there until 1961 before moving back to Scotland where he continued to minister until his retirement. Honoured by both the British and French Governments for his role during the war, Rev Dr Caskie died in Greenock at the age of 81 in 1983 and is buried on the Isle of Islay where he was born.
Rev Caskie’s nephew, Tom Caskie, decided to gift the Bible, believed to have been used by Rev Dr Caskie while in France during the war, to his former church in Paris after hearing they were creating a permanent exhibition to honour his uncle.
“It is in good condition and I recognise Donald’s distinctive handwriting inside the cover,” said Mr Caskie, who inherited the Bible from a family member. “When I heard that the Scots Kirk wanted to install a permanent memorial to my uncle, I thought it was more appropriate that the Bible lived there rather than anywhere else.”
Rev Jan Steyn, the current minister at the Scots Kirk in Paris, said he was delighted that the Bible had been gifted to the congregation.
“I gladly accepted it and as the inscription in the front of the Bible indicates, he acquired it while still in Paris,” he said. “Its return marks a homecoming after more than 50 years.
“We are not sure if this was the Bible which he used during the war but it is most probable as Gaelic Bibles were not generally available.”
