http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/w ... f5YKPGzO/0


Wow, just amazing.

Holy cow.

Great uplifting story!
Thanks for posting Tom

Yes, uplifting. Thanks for sharing.

That is one of the best stories I have heard in a long time.

Good story, too bad most of those types of stories will die along with the men who could tell them.
Honor and valor waned as the war wore on but didn't completely go away.
My dad flew B-25's in the Pacific. By the summer of 1945 everybody knew the was was just about over. One of his last flights was a search and destroy mission. Tasked with half a dozen other B-25s they were to fly low level and just look for something to hit. About halfway through the mission they were turning around an island at all of 50 feet when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a Jap destroyer anchored up against a bluff and covered with netting. In a split second he thought he didn't want to be the last man killed and he certainly didn't want to doom his crew either. He knew that if anybody said anything they had to go in. He was also pretty sure the Jap's didn't want to die either so he didn't say anything. Several weeks later the bomb was dropped. Later around the pilots lounge, AKA the bar, the subject of the Jap destroyer came up. Everybody had seen it.
My dad was like anybody who has been there, done that. He didn't like re-living the bad times so most of his stories were like this one, good times, $1 a week Philippina house maids, card playing and general camaraderie. After all the folks back home not only can't understand what it was really like but don't really want to hear about the horrors either.

Great story, Can't imagine going to war in my 20's.

This isn't the first story of this kind I've heard. I've had the pleasure of working in the back of an ambulance for the last 10 years, The elderly patients just about always share their war stories with us "young punks" Makes me realize how good i have it.

That was a fascinating story. Any person would be changed forever having gone through that. There were so many young American's who WWII changed into the greatest generation. You go through stuff like that and everything else seems trivial.

The greatest generation never were a bunch of spoiled whiners living off the system. They were the quintessential get it done now types. Embodied everything that made America great.

G'Day

Great story!

An incredible encounter during wartime, with a happy ending almost 40 years later... think I'm going to read the book!

Now why can't they make a movie about that? Instead of the crap they make normally.