Herman's Hermit?

We read with due sadness of the death the other day of Josef Stawinoga, the Wildman of Wolverhampton.

Who he, you might be asking though if you were you'd clearly not be keeping up with the world of social networking, for this fellow - some thirty or more years a tramp living on a roundabout in said town - had become something of an Internet phenomenon because someone had chosen to create a Facebook page in his honour.

Unclear how the fellow would have regarded the thing itself. Possibly loved the attention, but somehow one so much doubts it. Marooned by self-imposed exile on his road-bounded island, this Josef seemed quite to be wanting nothing but isolation from everything and everyone.

A veritable hermit then it seems. And possibly so for a purpose. For a fellow Pole - for such was Josef - who did talk with him in early years said he believed Josef had been a Nazi - SS even - soldier in the War. Did he live then in solitude to escape or perhaps to face his demons?

Were there scenes of brutality, scenes in which he had been a player, haunting his mind and soul; driving him to flee other men from whom he was parted by the part he had chosen?

In truth such speculation is not kind to the man, as none of the above might be the truth or anything near it.

One can though imagine something of the kind, for it is said that the pilot of one of the planes that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, on being discharged from the forces, became a Carthusian monk to then spend his life in silent, separate prayer for the world and all its doings.

I have met and conversed with a Carthusian monk, who when asked would not speak on the matter, yet his silence was telling of a certain truth, that after the cry of battle and the rattle of so much cruel death, perhaps only the silence of the Charterhouse or the roar of the ringroad is the place in which to hear the small, still voice of the Lord.