It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on
the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in
1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large
bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he
would feed them from his bucket.
~
~
Many years before, in October, 1942, Captain Eddie
Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message
to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea.
But
there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the
most harrowing adventure of his life. Somewhere over the South Pacific
the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran
dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean.
~
~
For nearly
a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the
weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights
recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine
by five. The biggest shark...ten feet long. But of all their enemies at
sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their
rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a
miracle to sustain them.
And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own
words, “Cherry,” that was the B-17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read
the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for
deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered
off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep
out some of the glare, I dozed off.”
Now this
is still Captain Rickenbacker talking...”Something landed on my head. I
knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew.
Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under
my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their
faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food...if I could
catch it.”
And the rest, as they say, is
history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its
intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were
sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull,
uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a
sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it.
And
now you also know...that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening,
about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida
seacoast...you could see an old man walking...white-haired,
bushy eye browed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to
feed the gulls...to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave
itself without a struggle...like manna in the wilderness.
~
~
~
*
