Tim Larsen:

to his great credit, in a time of war, Milner-White grasped clearly that his beloved Prayer Book services could not meet the spiritual needs of the men.  As they said in an official report, the padres had learned at the front that what was needed were modern services that were “simple, real, and short.” Milner-White said that, when it came to ministering to soldiers, the Prayer Book services were “at best semi-used and semi-usable.” Only a fool would be a stickler for doing things by the book when ministering to the fearful and the dying: “rubrics paled in a redder world.”

When he returned to Cambridge, Milner-White made good on what he had learned by creating the most beloved of all modern Anglican services, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols for Christmas Eve, at King’s College chapel.

My father, although an American, was certainly what the British call working class. He dropped out of high school and joined the Air Force. He fought in the Korean War.  Throughout my childhood and until his retirement, he worked in a construction-supply warehouse in a “low skill” job. He was also a low church, evangelical Protestant. I don’t think I ever heard him use the word “liturgy” but, if he did, he would have said it like “the rosary” or “Ramadan” as something that belonged to someone else’s religion. Yet it was a delight of his holiday season to listen to the Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast from King’s. Milner-White learned in the trenches of the Great War how to create a worship service that could connect even with modern, working-class veterans.