No need to apologize, cobalt. Best of luck to you and your friends and family there. I had a neighbor who is now gone, but who was a decorated navigator for a bomber stationed in England. Once, he described to me how he came to have a wooden leg.
They had been shot up over Europe the previous day, had minor repairs made, and took off again the next morning, heading for the channel. The plane began shaking terribly, and then began to break apart. Parachutes were hanging by a door, and he grabbed his and put it on. The plane blew up and he lost consciousness. Then, while falling through the air, he awoke just long enough to pull the rip cord, before passing out again. What woke him was his partly severed leg hitting him in the head.
As luck would have it, he fell into the edge of a forest, next to a road. A vehicle that was carrying a nurse to work at a nearby military hospital was driving down that road at that very moment, and saw him descend, as his chute was caught up on the tree limbs. They cut him down, stopped the bleeding, and rushed him to the hospital.
He returned to become a senior level geologist at Tulsa's Cities Service Company. His name was Fred Oglesby. Fred passed away about ten years ago.
Those were difficult times a few years before I was born.
