[PapaBear3625]

>>Somehow the pilot, 20-year-old Lt Charlie Brown, still clung to the controls — and the last vestiges of hope.<<

Wasn’t Snoopy supposed to be the one who tangles with the Red Baron, not Charlie Brown?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlf-—13Q0g

[Broker]

Great read thanks for posting.

[mazda77]

Excellent story. I will buy the book and look forward to the movie.

[texanyankee]

ping!

[BCW]

Great story...has always - found in a British paper...the US news is too busy running lies and race bait for the POTUS to take the time to share something like this...

[A.A. Cunningham]

[Conspiracy Guy]

Great story

[Stosh]

Wonderful story - thanks for posting.

The final lines were especially intriguing - Tom Stoppard is (IMHO) the premier contemporary playwright in the English language, a master of clever dialogue, among other things. I’m really curious to see what he’ll do with this story - it seems so different than the sort of stuff he usually does (how do you do witty dialogue with a fighter pilot alone in his cockpit or in bomber full of shot-up, desperate airmen?)

[yldstrk]

the German military was not all behind satanic hitler

[TEXOKIE]

bttt

[Joe Boucher]

Nice humane story, thanks for a good positive story.
NOw back to death taxes and bad gub mint.

[Gay State Conservative]

There *was* decency to be found among enemy soldiers.Perhaps not a lot,but some.I remember seeing a documentary about Australian POWs of the Japanese in which several Aussies told of how brutal most of their captors were but that there was an occasional guard who gave them extra food,etc.They said that by doing that those guards were placing themselves at enormous personal risk if they had been discovered by their commanders.

[Pontiac]

Somehow the pilot, 20-year-old Lt Charlie Brown, still clung to the controls — and the last vestiges of hope.

If common sense prevailed, he would order everyone to bail out and leave the B-17 Flying Fortress to its fate. He and the crew would parachute to safety, prisoners of war but alive. But that would mean leaving an unconscious man behind to die alone, and Brown refused to do that.

It is hard for me to imagine the 20 year olds of today having the courage and the selflessness to stick it out and pilot a plane full of wounded back to England under such circumstances.

Most of the young ones today simply think of themselves first last and always.

[Pontiac]

Stigler saw himself as an honourable man, a knight of the skies — not an assassin. The first time he flew in combat was with a much admired officer of the old school, who told him, ‘You shoot at a machine, not a man. You score “victories”, not “kills”.

‘A man may be tempted to fight dirty to survive, but honour is everything. You follow the rules of war for you, not for your enemy. You fight by rules to keep your humanity. So you never shoot your enemy if he is floating down on a parachute. If I ever see you doing that, I will shoot you down myself.’

Good words. Good sentiments. And a nearly forgotten word; honor.

This is today it seems an archaic idea this notion of ‘honor’. I know I see precious little evidence of it in our country’s leadership. I certainly see no mention of it in most of the products of the entertainment industry. The cheap imitations of the concept you do see is typically of the Leftist variety where some evil industrialist is stopped from polluting the environment by a green warrior.

I am often tempted to despair for the survival of the Republic.

[al_c]

I’ve read of this story before. I hope they do it justice if the movie is ever completed.

[virgil283]

thanks for posting this...I got the book this morninig and have been reading it...there's a video about this crew here... On this day in history: A Higher Call