My wife's grandfather is named Arthur P. Rohr. He is part of the Greatest Generation. I had another post scheduled for today (round 2 of poop), but scrapped it Saturday after doing some reading on D-Day. I felt since that I couldn't storm a beach surrounded by high cliffs infested with hundreds of machine gun nests, my life most likely snuffed out before I hit the water with 65 pounds of gear strapped on my back (or I'd quite possibly drown before getting to the beach), that reading a bit about the Great War was the least I could do. I'm quite the patriot.
Arthur was a tail gunner on a B-25 bomber during WWII. He flew missions over Italy and was shot down over Sicily during a bombing run. The last thing he remembers as the plane is going down is jumping up and down on the hatch; it was jammed and wouldn't open. So there he was, the plane going down in flames and he's jumping — up down up down. What could possibly be running through your mind in a situation like that? UPDOWNUPDOWN — that's all I'd be thinking.
The next thing Arthur remembers, he's on the ground.
He got the hatch open, somehow...
pulled his chute, somehow...
and landed, somehow....
He doesn't remember any of it.
Two of his crew died in the crash, two got captured by enemy soldiers. He shed his uniform and spent the next three weeks evading capture by hiding with sympathetic Sicileans (sorry, bad movie flashback here) in barns and houses before getting back to Allied-controlled territory.
Can you even imagine?
So on today, the day after the day after we remember D-Day, I remember Arthur P. Rohr. He's 87 and still going strong.
