“Our B-17, the Tondelayo, was barraged by flak from Nazi antiaircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a 20 millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple.”
On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief told Bohn that not just one shell but 11 had been found in the gas tanks. 11 unexploded shells, where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky!? It was, as if the sea had been parted for us. A near-miracle, I thought. Even after 35 years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn.
He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer.
Apparently when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were as clean as a whistle and just as harmless. Empty? Not all of them! One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read:
“This is all we can do for you now. Using Jewish slave labor is never a good idea.”
The moral of the story: even seemingly little acts of resistance against tyranny and evil can have major repercussions that we may never fully know or even realize.
H/T: Carrie (Thanks!)
3 comments:
I hope that lesson applies to the tyrant Trump who tried to overturn a legitimate presidential election in the United States. We resisted his efforts and that did not happen, but he tried.
Oh, Jerry.
There were a LOT of illegitimate things done in this last election. From secretary of states, judges, and bureaucrats changing state voting laws at the last minute in violation of the U.S. Constitution, to allow same day registration/voting, not requiring ID, extending the days for voting and so forth. There were partisan GOP observers that were kicked out from observing the vote count in PA, MI, and elsewhere. There were numerous affidavit reported irregularities with voting machines being manipulated. Whether these many issues would have changed the outcome of the election is unknown, but all should have been investigated. The Texas lawsuit should have been heard by SCOTUS, but evidently the deep state lives there too.
Those issues were brought to courts across the country and found to be without merit. Disagree with all those courts if you want, but I hope you are citizen enough to follow court rulings.
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