 He had joined the Chaplaincy soon after War was declared.Bishop Gwynne,who would become Deputy Chaplain-General on the Western Front,wrote of Sheppard, 'He is a man of real magnetic power and has left his living of St Martin's-in-the-Fields to come out with the Australian hospital'.Sheppard wrote to Lang of his experiences,

'I've sat in a dugout expecting the Germans at any moment all through one night.