“Hi Jack,” I
would call as Jack strode past our kitchen window on his way to our front door.
“Don’t say that
to a flyer,” he would call back.
Jack was never
hijacked that I know of, but he was the lone survivor of two airplane crashes.
Jack was a
navigator in the Second World War. The spot where the navigator sat, so he told
me, behind the pilot and before the cargo hold, was the safest place on an
aircraft.
Jack’s second
crash happened in Germany behind enemy lines. And, as with the first crash,
Jack walked away, except this time he was captured.
A German soldier stuck a gun to his back and
was pushing him through the forest, while all around ammunition exploded from
the fallen aircraft. As he was stumbling through the brambles, Jack tripped,
and as he fell he reached into his boot for his pistol. Righting himself, he
slid the pistol up the front of his body, laid it on his shoulder, aimed it to
his back, and beside his ear he heard a deafening explosion when he pulled the
trigger.
He ran like
hell, fully expecting any minute to feel a bullet in his back.
No bullet. Nobody came after him. Apparently, his shot
blended in with all the others. No one heard, and he never knew what happened
to the German behind him.
Jack escaped.
He hid during
the day and was privy to real dogfights that was planes overhead shooting it out with each
other. By night he traveled to what he hoped would be safety. By then he had pneumonia, but he happened upon
a French farmhouse, where the lady took him in, hid him and cared for him.
She was so poor,
he said, that she wore a dress woven out of cellophane, and the garden that sustained
them was so overused it produced tasteless food.
One day, to his
surprise, GI’s appeared at their front porch. Instead of his escaping past
enemy lines, the allied forces came to him. He explained to the GI’s who he
was, and how this destitute lady had cared for him. They explained that now
they were on friendly ground.
But that’s not
the end of the story.
The following
day a jeep came laden with provisions for the lady.
This is a true
story that ought to be told with more depth that I have explained here, but I
told what I know. Jack lived to become our friend, and a UFO
investigator with my husband. He died years after his harrowing ordeal, at home
in his apartment on friendly ground.
Aren’t we lucky?
Fascinating isn’t
it, how little we know another human being? “How are you doing?” we ask. “How’s
life?” “What’s happening?” We are met with, “Not much,” “Could be worse.” “Mildewing.”
“This and that.”
We read novels
and there we see the inner workings of a human being. We read their mind droppings,
hear their voice. We know their foibles, you know those things we try to hide
from our acquaintances, and even our family.
I am not able to
tell you how Jack responded to his trauma, if it lingered with him, if it
haunted him, or how he rose to the challenge. We can imagine he had a love affair with the woman, but that is only speculation, but he never married, or wasn't when we knew him. One can only imagine, but that’s
good too, we can empathize. We can be in awe. We can think, “Whew, thank God it
wasn’t me.” “Good for you Jack.” He was a person.
I have
endeavored to make my mother a person as well. She was secretive with me, embarrassed,
not revealing much and thus I saw more into the woman in her letters than I did
in real life. She wrote her letters in private to Grandma Holt. In the dark of night, alone, sitting at her
kitchen table, the children asleep, her husband at work, she could say on paper
what she could say in the light of day. She would have been appalled to think her
words would ever be made public. Yet I believe they ought to be read.
Her letters will
be published again, this time under the title of Mother’s Letters…and mine.
Here is my new
cover. Zinnias for Mom—they remind me if
her.
A link will come
later. First I have to learn to format for a new publication. You could say I’m
a flake and can’t make up my mind, or you could say I persevere until I am
satisfied. Choose which.