Airline Pilot Central Forums - He Fell From The Sky, Into Their Hearts

This is a wonderful story that will warm your heart and bring tears to your eyes. It illustrates how we are all in this together, inextricably linked, regardless of color, race or religion. My cup runneth over.

Quote:

BIALLA, Papua New Guinea - The Japanese fighter caught the American pilot from behind, riddling his plane with machine-gun rounds. The left engine burst into flames. It was time to bail out.

He yanked on the release lever but the cockpit canopy only half-opened. He unbuckled his seat belt, rose to shake the canopy loose and was instantly sucked out.

Swinging beneath his opened parachute, he plunged toward a Pacific island jungle of thick, towering eucalyptus trees, of crocodile rivers and headhunters, into enemy territory, and into an unimagined future as a hero, "Suara Auru," Chief Warrior, to generations of islanders yet unborn.

Fred Hargesheimer was shot down in the southwest Pacific on June 5, 1943. A lifetime later, he sits in his quiet California ranch house amid the snow and soaring sugar pines of the Sierra Nevada foothills.

.......

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23538741/