I love those kinds of chance encounters. I have had many of them over the years and have been floored by some of the people I have met. One chance encounter found me having a conversation with the man who designed the canopy system for the Focke-Wulf 190 (had no way to confirm or deny this....the guy did have a very strong German accent, was of the right age, and knew a lot about the 190....a lot of what he told me I looked up and found that it was spot on). Another chance encounter saw me having a chat with two WW2 pilots...one Brit and one German. The first "met" over the English Channel (or there abouts) during the Battle of Britain. The German pilot, flying a 109, shot down and killed (he said he never meant to kill the pilot, just the plane) the best friend of the Brit. After the war, they met in real life, shared stories, became best of friends, become God-Fathers to each other's children, celebrated holidays at each other's homes, and now that they are retired...they travel the world together visiting air and military museums. One chance encounter stands out in my mind as the greatest 10 minute conversation of my life. The guy served aboard the Yorktown...ya know, the aircraft carrier of WW2. He was on the Yorktown when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he was on Yorktown when she was damaged during the battle of the Coral Sea, he was on the Yorktown when she was sunk at Midway. He talked of the friends and shipmates he lost....of fighting the fires, of recovering the wounded and the dead, of a Jap bomb that landed on deck but did not explode and rolled into the hatchway where he was tending to a wounded shipmate.
Life if full of chance encounters.....and I take full advantage of them. Heck, I create chance encounters. I give every vet I see a firm handshake, a salute and a heart felt thank you. My wife says that I pester strangers...I just say that there isn't such a thing as strangers, just friends you haven't met yet.
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