Small piece of the past

My Grandfather was an aerial turret gunner in WW2. His plane was shot down by a Japanese fighter plane. He and 2 other men, the pilot and radioman, were MIA for I think 3 months. Their plane was shot down and they crashed at sea but survived. They floated at sea for a couple days and took refuge on Mono Island which is located in the Solomon islands. He had been shot in the leg and the natives helped hide them from the Japanese for all that time before they were able to escape to safety. Of course none of us grandkids knew any of this because he never spoke a word about this to anyone. All we knew was that he had been in a war and walked around with a bullet still in his leg. It was understood that we were not to ask about it for he didn't talk about it. I was only a little kid who's only exposure to the idea of war was on Tom and Jerry so I had no idea what any of that really meant anyway. And as I got older it wasn't something I wondered about because I was your typical narcissistic teen. I think he had been asked to speak at church and that was when he decided to share the story so that all the young people listening to him would understand that there is a higher plan for each of us. Even before any of this came to light, we had always looked up to him as our hero and thought of him as the strongest, biggest, bravest, defender from all bogeymen, Captain of all Heroes. I am not joking or exaggerating. Once, when I was 4 years old, we were spending the summer at my Grandparents' farm and we were playing in the barn. We had been told not to play in there but tell 4 kids on the most beautiful, magical farm in West Virginia where not to go and that's the first place you'll find them. We had only been in there for a few minutes when my oldest sister began screaming at a snake that I still think of as the biggest one in the wild I've ever seen. We ran back to the house and upon seeing my tears, my Papa asked what happened. We told him what we saw and ran to my Grandmother's ever outstretched arms and shut the sliding glass door tightly. A half Popsicle later, my Grandmother told us to look out the window. There was our Papa with that big snake, still alive and wrapped around his shoulders, showing us that we had nothing to fear. That's just one of many examples of why we all thought that he was The Man of Steel. This is a man who survived a plane crash hid on an enemy inhabited island in the Pacific during WW2, hunted down for three months and lived to escape and tell about it(but didn't). Whenever I'm scared, I tell myself,"That's who I am, that's where I'm from." There used to be a website that had all the details but it no longer exists.

One month ago I was doing some research because I was looking for that very website or any other that might mention his experience or anyone who knew him. I came upon a post on Military.com on the missing buddies message board looking for him. It was a woman who had gone to his high school some time after he did and inherited a letter that he wrote to his teacher shortly after their escape and she was hoping to share it with his family. I posted back that the very man she was looking for was my Grandfather and to please email me. About two weeks went by and no word. I got a little discouraged because it was posted in 2007 so I thought I'd never hear from her. Right around Christmas, I got impatient and was able to track down her email through Military.com to a highschool reunion website and sent off another note. This time I got a reply! So since then we have been emailing back and forth. She emailed me a picture but honestly I can't pick out my Grandpa in it, probably because I'm more familiar with his face as an older man. But I was happy to have it. I gave her my address and yesterday I received a large envelope with several copies of the letter for myself and the rest of my family and I can't express how happy I was to receive it! Reading it, I could almost hear my Papa's voice. I wrote her to thank her and told her that the loss of my Grandparents was something I've never quite gotten over and probably never will. But I feel like a small piece of my Grandfather arrived in the mail yesterday so for that I thanked her.

**update** My Aunt is going to send me a copy of his written account. I used to have a copy in my computer a long time ago but that one got a virus and my Papa died before he could email me another. So I'll finally have a written account from him of my own....