The Little Girl Who Lived Near The Bridge Too Far

[19&41]

https://www.military.com/history/how-au ... _230412.nl

[electra225]

That is an amazing story! Thanks for sharing, Rex....

[William]

Yes, thanks Rex for sharing. I think there are a lot of hidden stories like that just waiting to be told.

Bill

[TC Chris]

Important stories. They teach us the importance of resistance to evil, and endurance. My Dad was in the Netherlands just as the war ended. He and a buddy were in a restaurant one evening when the local sailing club was having its meeting there. Yanks were heroes and the Dutch sailors invited them to join in. The next day one of them took Dad and his friend sailing. The boat had a varnished hatch cover, with a line of machine-gun bullet holes in it. Dad asked about repairing it. The Dutch sailor announced that he would never remove them because he wanted to remember the evil German pilot who strafed a civilian boat shooting from simple malice.

We have Dad's photos on the boat that I just had printed from the negatives. Dad is wearing a tie.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

There was a man who attended our church. He was the song leader and Sunday school teacher. He and his wife didn't have any kids, so they "adopted" some of the kids at church. I was working for him part time, putting up hay mostly. In 1965, he bought a new Zenith color TV. "Hogan's Heroes" was one of the first shows on TV broadcast in color. We were at their place when Hogan's Heroes came on. Willard decided he needed to check on the cows during the show. He was gone the entire half hour. We went over there several times to watch his color TV. He never would watch Hogan's Heroes.

There was an older man who attended our church, Mr. Reagan. He called Willard "Colonel". We never did figure out why. When Mr. Reagan passed away, we found that the little old man we knew was a WW1 war hero. At his funeral, Willard showed up in full military dress. We didn't even know he was in the military. We also found out that the reason he didn't like watching Hogan's Heroes is that Willard was a Colonel who had been captured. He acted like he was crazy so the Germans would leave him alone. Apparently, they believe if they tortured a crazy person, that affliction would be revisited upon them. Willard ran a real underground operation, helping thousands of people escape from imprisonment. He failed to see the humor in Hogans' Heroes. The reason he and his wife never had kids is because of his treatment in confinement.