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Chair Miller and his crew picked up a new B-24 at California’s March Field on Christmas Eve, 1943, and prepared to fly to England.But they decided to have“one more hamburger”before going out for the distant land of fish and chips.
As the airmen sat in a local restaurant, a beautiful young waitress approached.“I understand you’re going to England,”she said to Miller.Then she told him that her fiancé, an aviation gunner like Miller, was stationed there.
The woman said she was waiting for him to provide an address so she could send him a picture of herself.“You might run into him,”she told Miller hopefully.“Would you take it?”
Miller knew it was unlikely he’d ever see her fiancé.But he didn’t want to disappoint the woman.He took the picture and placed it in his wallet.Later he realized he hadn’t even asked the man’s name.Then he was on to Europe and the war.
On August 9,1944, Miller’s plane was shot down, and he was forced to parachute to an island off the coast of Holland.Captured by the Nazis, he spent the next nine months as a prisoner of war.
It was on Christmas Eve that someone told him a 19-year-old American prisoner down the hall was badly depressed and possibly suicidal(有自杀倾向).Miller decided to pay the man a visit.
To break the ice, he mentioned the POW band he’s started, with the help of the Red Gross.The young man, he learned, played the saxophone.The two began to exchange details about their families.Was he married, the kid asked.“Yeah, since 1938,”responded Miller.
“Have you got her picture?”the soldier asked.So Miller reached for his wallet, and pulled out a photograph of his wife.
“She’s beautiful!”the young man responded.Then he noticed that a second picture had fallen out, and an expression of wonder crossed his face.“Where did you get that?”Miller told the story of the waitress at the California hamburger stand.
“That’s my fiancée,”the surprised man said.Miller kept his promise to the beautiful girl back home and turned the picture over to its rightful owner.
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