Paul continued with his busy schedule at the hospital and with the rigorous course of study required for him to become a surgeon. In May 1945 he passed his final exam. Now, as was the custom in the medical profession in England, he could be called by the title Mister Brand, rather than just Dr. Brand, and he could put FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) after his name.
Paul and Margaret, along with the rest of the population of Great Britain, received the wonderful news in early May that the war in Europe was over. Hitler was dead, and Germany had surrendered. This news was followed three months later by the news that Japan also had surrendered. World War II was finally over.
Despite the war being over, the Central Medical War Committee still required Paul to complete his two years of military service, which had been deferred as he studied to become a doctor and then a surgeon. Paul thought that most likely he would be called up to serve with the Royal Air Force, probably somewhere in Asia.
Meanwhile, after ten years away, Paul’s mother arrived back in England on furlough. She had never met Margaret, and when she did, Paul noted that she seemed glad that his wife’s hair was naturally wavy. Granny Brand, as Evelyn was now called, confessed that upon seeing the wedding photos she had assumed that Margaret had a permanent wave in her hair. To Paul’s mother this meant “worldly,” and worldly was not what she approved of in a daughter-in-law.
Once that issue had been sorted out, Margaret, Paul, and his mother all got along well. It was helpful that Paul’s mother was there to shed light on the strange telegram Paul received from India: “There is urgent need for a surgeon to teach at Vellore. Can you come on short-term contract? Cochrane.”
Paul could not imagine who Cochrane was, and he only vaguely remembered hearing about Vellore. How had Cochrane even found his name and where he lived? Paul went straight to his mother to find out what she knew about Vellore and this Cochrane person.
Chapter 8
Vellore
Paul looked directly at his mother. “Do you know why I would get a telegram inviting me to work at Vellore?” he asked. “If I remember correctly, that’s a Christian hospital in southern India, isn’t it?”
His mother nodded enthusiastically. “What a wonderful opportunity!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” Paul said, “but how do they even know I exist?”
Evelyn folded her hands and sat up straight in her chair. “Well, I did pass through Vellore on my way back to England, and I might have told Dr. Cochrane that my son had just earned his Royal College of Surgeons credentials. You know, Paul, it’s a wonderful hospital. It would be perfect for you and Margaret. If the Lord wants you there, of course,” she added.
Paul sighed. “That’s not really the point at the moment. It’s pretty much impossible. There’s no way the Central Medical War Committee is going to let me out of my two years of military service. Besides, I’ve only just qualified as a surgeon. I don’t have the experience for the job. And last but not least, with another baby on the way, Margaret needs me.”
Evelyn nodded, but Paul did not think she had taken to heart any of his excuses for not going. Paul got a similar response from Margaret when he told her about the telegram. “You want to go, don’t you?” she responded with a smile.
“It’s impossible,” Paul explained, beginning to think that he was the only person looking at the reality of the situation. “For one thing, we are having another baby.”
“No, Paul, I’m having a baby,” Margaret corrected him, “and I dare say it will come whether you are here in London, in the Royal Air Force, or in India.”
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Paul retorted. “Besides, the Central Medical War Committee will never release me from my military service,” he added with a note of finality.
The following day Paul composed a letter to Dr. Cochrane in Vellore, outlining the reasons why it would be impossible for him to come to India. Six weeks later, Paul received a response from Dr. Cochrane, who would be in London the following Friday and wanted to meet Paul under the clock at Victoria Station at noon.
Paul sighed when he read the letter. He did not really have time to meet with the doctor, and now he would have to explain to this man that the situation was completely out of his hands. Nonetheless, the following Friday Paul waited under the clock at Victoria Station, more out of courtesy than anything else. In the intervening days Paul had recalled once meeting Dr. Robert Cochrane years before. Dr. Cochrane, a Scotsman and one of the foremost leprosy specialists in the world, had come to give a lecture at the Livingstone Medical School while Paul was a student there. When the doctor showed up at Victoria Station a few moments later, Paul marveled. Robert Cochrane hardly seemed to have aged a day since that time at the Livingstone Medical School.
Paul and the doctor shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before Dr. Cochrane came straight to the point. He explained how the Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital was being upgraded to meet new medical standards put in place in India. The college and hospital had been established in 1900 to train and equip Indian women as doctors and nurses. New buildings were now being added to provide more teaching beds in the hospital, and the medical college had been enlarged and opened up to men. All of this was happening fast to meet the government’s schedule for change, and with the expansion, there was an urgent need for qualified surgeons and teachers to come to Vellore.
“I need you. We must have you there,” Dr. Coch-rane declared.
Paul explained to Dr. Cochrane that as flattered as he was by the offer, he could not accept the position. For one, he had to serve two years in the British armed forces. Plus, his wife was having another baby. And he had only just qualified as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He had barely two years’ experience in the surgical field, not the eight or nine years’ experience needed for a teaching post.
Dr. Cochrane listened to Paul’s list of excuses and brushed them aside one by one. “As to your military service, leave that to me,” he explained. “As to your qualifications to teach, let me be the judge of that. I know your record, and it is quite remarkable. And Vellore is a wonderful place for your wife and children.”
Paul was impressed by Dr. Cochrane’s tenacity, but he doubted that the doctor could persuade the Central Medical War Committee to allow Paul to forgo his two years of military service. Paul left their meeting feeling rather depressed. What a pity, he thought as he boarded the train. This would be a wonderful opportunity if only circumstances were different, but there’s really no way this can work out.
Two weeks later an official envelope arrived in the mail for Paul from the Central Medical War Committee. Paul opened the letter with trepidation, expecting it to be his call-up papers for military service. Instead, the first words that caught his eye on the page inside were “Exempted from service.” Paul scanned the document until his eyes fixed on “Free to leave the country.” As he read the words, tears sprung to his eyes. Somehow Dr. Cochrane had pulled off the unthinkable—Paul was released from his military service deferment.
Despite this good news, Margaret was still having their second child, and Paul was still very inexperienced for the teaching job. Yet in his heart Paul began to believe that this was the path God wanted him to follow. He prayed with Margaret, and together they decided that Paul should head for India and that Margaret and the two children would follow him there when she felt strong enough.
The contrast between the reaction of Paul’s mother and that of Margaret’s parents could not have been starker. “Stottherum!” (“Praise God” in Tamil) declared Evelyn Brand as she expressed how excited she was that her son was returning to India. She herself had just finished negotiating with the mission board, and the board was allowing her to go back to India for one more term.
The Berrys, on the other hand, were visibly upset by the news. They had heard Margaret and Paul talk about missionary life many times, but they believed having two children would settle them down into a normal English life. “Surely you can see there are plenty of people in England who need the gospel,” Margaret’s mother pleaded. “Why would you want to take little children so far away? They could catch any number of tropical diseases.”
Paul knew their concern was real. He was no stranger to the notion of death in a foreign land. His own father had succumbed to blackwater fever. Despite the concerns, Paul felt sure that Vellore was the next step for his growing family. However, he did have some concerns. What if he died in India and left his own son Christopher fatherless? And, he was scheduled to depart from England in the first week of November. What if Margaret hadn’t had the baby by then or had a difficult childbirth or even lost the child? Wouldn’t she need him at home by her side? They were unanswerable questions, and Paul tried to put them aside. If God was calling him to India, He would take care of the details.
Even so, it was difficult for Paul to begin packing. A very pregnant Margaret sat at the end of the bed watching while two-year-old Christopher crawled around on the bedroom floor. Paul hoped that the new baby would arrive before his scheduled departure date.
He was grateful that on October 18, 1946, Jean Brand was born. Paul was delighted to be the father of a little girl, and he knew that the two weeks he would have with the child before his departure would be precious.
When the time came to leave, Paul hated saying good-bye to Margaret and the children. It bought back memories of saying good-bye to his own father all those years ago. He hoped it would not be long before Margaret and the children joined him in Vellore.
Paul sailed away from England and retraced the voyage he had made from India to England as a nine-year-old. The three-week journey included passage down the Atlantic Coast of Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea, and through the Suez Canal.
After twenty-three years away, Paul was back in India, the land of his birth. He could hardly believe it as he stepped from the ship and breathed in the smells and took in the sights of the streets crowded with people and vendors. In an instant his childhood came rushing back to him. What many would consider chaos seemed natural and normal to Paul. To him, everything was as it should be, as it was when he was a child growing up in this country.
From Bombay Paul caught a train headed in a southeasterly direction across the Indian subcontinent to Madras, where he wandered around with his senses on overload: every smell, every scene, every sound drew his attention. He could hardly wait until Margaret arrived to experience this place he remembered so vividly.
Paul made another interesting discovery. Madras was located in the Tamil-speaking region of southern India. As he walked the streets of the city, Paul remembered some of the Tamil language he had easily spoken as a boy. Even though he had barely spoken a word of the language in twenty-three years, he could understand much of what people were saying. He could make himself partially understood in Tamil, though he realized there was a lot he had forgotten and would need to relearn.
After Paul had spent several days at a missionary guesthouse in Madras, James MacGilvray, a staff member from the hospital in Vellore, picked him up and drove him ninety miles west to Vellore. As they drove through the lush, emerald-green countryside, Paul peppered James with questions about his new home. He learned that the town of Vellore had a population of about three hundred thousand residents and that the Christian Medical College and Hospital was located in the heart of the city. James also told Paul a little about the history of the hospital and college. Ida Scudder, an American doctor who, like Paul, had been born of missionary parents in India, founded the place in 1900. Dr. Scudder had established the medical facility to both treat Indian women and train talented women as doctors. Over the years, the institution had grown in size and reputation and had now begun accepting male medical students. In fact, James pointed out, it was December 9, 1946, Ida Scudder’s seventy-sixth birthday, and a celebration party was going on back at the college.
