Amazing what you can learn if you just take the time to listen...

I knew of a man, elder man, he's 88 now, and I never really gave him much thought, just another old man on his last turn of life. His mind goes in and out from time to time, but for the most part he's with it.

What made me avoid him so much was the fact he would never stop talking, and stuff I honestly never really cared to know about, just useless trivia I really didn't fancy.

Well one day recently, he stopped me and got my attention, I knew I was in for an hour load of nothing important. But boy was I wrong.

We got to talking and I asked him if he was ever in the service, or in war.

He told me yes. He then went to his bedside and picked up a frame, one that I never noticed, but will now never forget. It was a B-17 crew portrait.

He handed it to me and pointed himself out. He was the crew chief/top turret gunner of a B-17G Flying Fortress during World War Two. He flew, I believe 70 or so missions over Europe.

After that I just sat, and all I could now was listen to him. He told me stories of his time overseas, his training, everything a WWII junkie would WANT to know. This man was a living history book.

He was in the 8th Air Force, I can't remember which bomber group though.

After that, he handed me another artifact, a large book, very thick, old, and a bit torn. It was the complete operations manual for a B-29. I looked through it and my God it was a bible to me.

I'll never forget that day my life changed.

And it just goes to show you, you can never really judge someone until you truely know them.

 

Great story, always amazing to discover the pasts we never realised people had. One of my life long regrets is that when I was 4 I lived in a home full of elderly people many of whom were WW1 or WW2 vets but was too young to appreciate it.

 

I talked with the man again today. He told me about some missions he had been on. He couldn't recall the dates, and I never got the bomber name from him, but I'll ask him that tomorrow. But some places he flew over include Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Stuttgart. Targets his missions bombed include Train yards, an airdome, a railroad bridge, and targets of opportunity.

Tomorrow I'll ask him the name of his bomber and some other information, if he's okay with it.