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Suara Auru: Chief Warrior

By Kat on March 9, 2008 | | Comments (5)

[Kat]

Suara Auru

BIALLA, Papua New Guinea - The Japanese fighter caught the American pilot from behind, riddling his plane with machine-gun rounds. The left engine burst into flames. It was time to bail out.

He yanked on the release lever but the cockpit canopy only half-opened. He unbuckled his seat belt, rose to shake the canopy loose and was instantly sucked out.

Swinging beneath his opened parachute, he plunged toward a Pacific island jungle of thick, towering eucalyptus trees, of crocodile rivers and headhunters, into enemy territory, and into an unimagined future as a hero, "Suara Auru," Chief Warrior, to generations of islanders yet unborn.

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5 Comments

By Oran Woody on March 9, 2008 3:45 PM
Thank you much, for linking this. Woody
 
By John of Argghhh! on March 9, 2008 4:43 PM
What Woody said, Kat. This is a great story.
 
By MissBirdlegs in AL on March 9, 2008 6:09 PM
Thank you, Kat. What a terrific story!
 
By Casey Tompkins on March 10, 2008 1:36 AM
That was lovely. Thanks for linking it...
 
By Damian on March 10, 2008 9:45 AM
I'll add my thanks to the others here: what a wonderful story, Kat. I wrote something a few years ago for a Toronto paper for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. One of the things I talked about was how losing our WWII veterans was affecting our society. Not just because of the war they fought and won on our behalf, but because of how so many of them lived their lives after that seminal experience as a young person. We're losing their unparalleled generational track record of community and public service. Oh, there are some in the current generation who are made of the same stuff as those from sixty years ago. With his service clubs, community work, charitable work, and even committee work for a local politician, I'd number this site's owner as one of them. But there aren't as many of those type of people in this generation as there were in my grandfather's. I applaud Fred Hargesheimer, and I wonder where we'll be when the last of his generation has left us.
 
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