As a Realtor, lawyer and writer in Bluffton, South Carolina, I have often visited one of the most fascinating "attractions" in our area, specifically, the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Savannah. It is of tremendous interest to many of my clients here and around the country who either were in World War II, or more recent wars, and the surprising number of people of my generation, the Baby Boomers, who have a connection to WW II through a parent or other relative.
My father was in the "Mighty 8th" and the following story appeared in papers throughout the country in August 2003
Watch Survives WWII, Follows Him Home - ASSOCIATED PRESS
EVANSTON, Ill. - Jim Hoel is glad to have his watch back, even though it had stopped working since he last saw it during World War II. The last time he remembers wearing the old Gallet chronometer was on May 17, 1943, the day he used it while navigating a B-26 Marauder before the bomber was forced to ditch in a canal in the Netherlands . He knows he no longer had the elaborate watch when he arrived at a German prisoner-of-war camp a few days later.
The watch arrived at his home last week in a package sent from England by a truck driver, Peter Cooper, 56, who found it in the possession of an elderly neighbor in the village of Kirton , 75 miles northeast of London .
"It's just eerie, isn't it? That was 60 years ago. I've sort of got gooseflesh," Hoel, 82, told the Chicago Tribune.
Cooper said the neighbor, "Tiny" Baxter, 89, told him his mother had given it to him.
"Whether she found it or it was given to her, I do not know," Baxter, a retired carpenter, said in a telephone interview.
The watch, an enlistment present from the bank where Hoel worked before the war, had his name and Evanston address on the back. Cooper was able to track him down at his new address using the Internet and friends who had contacts in the United States . He persuaded his neighbor to give the watch to him so he could forward it to Hoel.
Hoel said the B-26 was one of a flight of 10 that encountered heavy antiaircraft fire while en route to bomb a power plant near Amsterdam . He and three others of the plane's six crewmen survived. He spent the next two years in German POW camps.
The story was also published in our local paper, The Island Packet, and papers throughout the country. It has also reached "Ripley's Believe It Or Not!" I am currently working on a book about my father's entire story over time. Dad is now 87 years old.
To bring this back to real estate, I'm not selling many homes these days but I am meeting many people with fascinating stories themselves with less than six degrees of separation from our local treasure, The Mighty 8th Air Force Museum. Stories connect people and your local treasures will do the same.
You can read my about my father's entire World War II experience and the many things that have occurred after his "reunion" with his watch at the "War Watch" blog - http://warandtime.blogspot.com/
Comments(3)