--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jpgillam" <jpgillam@...> wrote: > [snip] > This post is more rambling and incoherent than I'd like, but I wanted to lump > these three men together - Adler, Hurley and Ransom - with this idea that, in > a crisis, some distance from one's travails may help one survive. >
I don't know that to say about that. But stories of survival are incredible, aren't they. In my paper today there is a letter that I found amazing. The writer describes how his grandfather was fighting in the Iraq region in the first world war. While assisting a wounded colleague he was shot from behind, the bullet entering his head behind the left ear and exiting through his left eye. Imagine that! Of course he was left for dead by his retreating colleagues who were fleeing from marauding tribesmen. Despite his wound, our chap fought back as the latter attempted to remove his boots. For that he he got bayoneted three times in the back. Despite it all he managed later to drag himself to a camp of Turqs and Germans and so became a POW. He was put on a cart and dragged hundreds of miles to Baghdad, where, being a Catholic, he was turned over to nuns who cared for him with nothing more than bandages and iodine. At home he was reported dead, and a requiem mass was held for him in Manchester (UK). He died at 93, surviving his commanding officer, his wife, and most of the folks at his requiem by many years. Funny old world...
