When Dr Comstock came to say goodbye he told Buchman that watching him during those weeks had restored the faith he had long abandoned. He refused to submit an account, but simply said, 'I am your debtor.' Later in the war when his own son was seriously wounded he wrote to Buchman that, without this refound faith, he would at that moment have despaired of life.3

Buchman's recovery was slowed down by a long-term heart condition, of which he had first been warned by a German doctor in the late 1930s. Campbell's notes for the summer preceding the stroke sometimes show his pulse shooting up to a rate of 130 or 140. He also suffered chronic and often acute pain from haemorrhoids. All these symptoms were to persist for the next twenty years and Campbell cared for him almost the whole time, only taking a break when he was needed for MRA work elsewhere and when another doctor could take his place. He believes this stroke saved Buchman's life, for otherwise he would have killed himself through overwork.

His friends did not find Buchman an easy patient. He had always maintained there was a right way and a wrong way of doing everything, a belief partly inherited from his mother. Now what he had applied for years to his world-wide activities all seemed concentrated into his one room. The curtains had to be just right and every other detail correct. His friends could see he wanted or felt about something intensely; but often he could not speak or only used Pennsylvania German. 'Food?' they would say. It wasn't that. 'Drink?' No. 'You got to longing to find the right thing, which seemed so obvious to him,' one of them recorded.

Campbell says, however, that, throughout his long convalescence, which was such a traumatic change from the crowded activities of his former life, Buchman showed no signs of frustration. Once early on, when he found that Campbell had been discussing with Dr Comstock whether 'anxiety' was aggravating his situation, Buchman said to him, 'You don't understand me yet, do you?' Comstock wrote later of his 'calm, unperturbed attitude with no evidence of fear for the future, either here or there, so to speak'.4

His prayers at this time were short and simple. 'Cure me,' he prayed on 30 March, 'and I promise to be a good boy,' and on 17 April, 'You know I am far from well. Grant me wisdom for the sight I need for today, and tomorrow and the next day. I am just a poor, weak, helpless child of Thine coming to Thee for aid.' But most of his prayers were for others, and especially for those being drafted into the services.

For New Year's Day 1943, a matter of five weeks after his stroke, Buchman dictated a message for the friends and colleagues who were carrying on his work in America, which reveals something of his style of leadership. It reads in part: ‘The call of God is to spiritual leadership, the rarest, the most precious and the most urgently needed commodity in the world. The need for it is universal, its possibilities infinite - and it remains unrationed. Our task as a fellowship is to provide that leadership...

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