A Bridge To Far
Hello everyone! Praise the Lord!
It was a beautiful Saturday morning at our hospice. We have had a lot of rain here lately, but the more rain that the forecaster predicted, has been holding off. A wet humid day is a good time to serve other at our hospice.
I was visiting with this wonderful ninety-five year old man. He was a patient at our hospice, and we were keeping him comfortable. The more I talked to him, the more interesting he was. He was very clear minded, but his hearing was a bit poor. But when you are ninety-five years old, you're allowed to have bad hearing!
He started flying airplanes in the late nineteen-thirties while he was in high school. Not long after that the Second World War began, and the American Army Air Force needed his skills. They trained him to be a B-24 bomber pilot!
He was shipped off to a base in Italy. Flying missions to the Balkans, Northern Italy, and Southern Germany. He flew twenty missions! His twenty-first mission would be different, it would be the mission that he would not return!
He was on a three plane mission to bomb a bridge over a mountain pass in Northern Italy. The target was at first obscured by clouds and were going to bomb using radar. They made several passes to size up the target. They seen many flak batteries in position around the bridge.
The clouds cleared and they could clearly see the bridge, and decided to go in by sight. As they went in the final time, the German flak batteries opened up on them. They bombed the bridge and damaged it. As they pulled away, our patient, who was one of the pilots felt a big thud and realized that his plane was hit.
He could not gain altitude and landed his crippled bomber on an open field. The German's were close behind and captured his whole crew. They were now in German captivity! They were shipped by rail car to Poland to a POW camp. When the Russians were getting close, they were shipped to a POW camp just north of Hamburg, Germany. That is where he remained until the end of the war.
It was a beautiful Saturday morning at our hospice. We have had a lot of rain here lately, but the more rain that the forecaster predicted, has been holding off. A wet humid day is a good time to serve other at our hospice.
I was visiting with this wonderful ninety-five year old man. He was a patient at our hospice, and we were keeping him comfortable. The more I talked to him, the more interesting he was. He was very clear minded, but his hearing was a bit poor. But when you are ninety-five years old, you're allowed to have bad hearing!
He started flying airplanes in the late nineteen-thirties while he was in high school. Not long after that the Second World War began, and the American Army Air Force needed his skills. They trained him to be a B-24 bomber pilot!
He was shipped off to a base in Italy. Flying missions to the Balkans, Northern Italy, and Southern Germany. He flew twenty missions! His twenty-first mission would be different, it would be the mission that he would not return!
He was on a three plane mission to bomb a bridge over a mountain pass in Northern Italy. The target was at first obscured by clouds and were going to bomb using radar. They made several passes to size up the target. They seen many flak batteries in position around the bridge.
The clouds cleared and they could clearly see the bridge, and decided to go in by sight. As they went in the final time, the German flak batteries opened up on them. They bombed the bridge and damaged it. As they pulled away, our patient, who was one of the pilots felt a big thud and realized that his plane was hit.
He could not gain altitude and landed his crippled bomber on an open field. The German's were close behind and captured his whole crew. They were now in German captivity! They were shipped by rail car to Poland to a POW camp. When the Russians were getting close, they were shipped to a POW camp just north of Hamburg, Germany. That is where he remained until the end of the war.
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