My father once told me a story about what happened to him in World War 2.
He was an army corpsman, and he and his company were put ashore on a Japanese held island in the Philippines. But something went wrong and they were captured.
Each day, as the Japanese lined them up to march towards prison, one of the Japanese officers would walk along the back of the line and randomly shoot men in the head.
One morning, my father decided that he couldn't take it, and he walked away into the jungle, expecting to be shot all the time. And for some reason, he wasn't.
He was the only man of his entire unit to reach the submarine that was waiting to pick them up.
They made him an officer -- he said that was why, and then veered off into a story about getting a tennis lesson from Don Budge in Australia, and seeing penicillin work for the first time.
He told me the story in the mid-eighties, about a year before he died, and a few years later my mom said she wasn't sure if it were true, because the only time she'd ever heard him speak of it was when he was drinking.
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He was an army corpsman, and he and his company were put ashore on a Japanese held island in the Philippines. But something went wrong and they were captured.
Each day, as the Japanese lined them up to march towards prison, one of the Japanese officers would walk along the back of the line and randomly shoot men in the head.
One morning, my father decided that he couldn't take it, and he walked away into the jungle, expecting to be shot all the time. And for some reason, he wasn't.
He was the only man of his entire unit to reach the submarine that was waiting to pick them up.
They made him an officer -- he said that was why, and then veered off into a story about getting a tennis lesson from Don Budge in Australia, and seeing penicillin work for the first time.
He told me the story in the mid-eighties, about a year before he died, and a few years later my mom said she wasn't sure if it were true, because the only time she'd ever heard him speak of it was when he was drinking.
But I know it was.
Keep listening.