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Low Pass for the Home Folks by William S. Phillips
On a trip to Garmisch, Germany, Bill Phillips and his wife Kristi
discovered a war memorial on a hillside. Surrounding the monument
were framed photographs of local young men who had been killed in
World War II. Bill was particularly moved by one photograph of a
fresh-faced boy, his arms around a cow. “This was no jack-booted
Nazi. This was a farm kid who loved his home and went off to fight
for it, just as American boys had done.”
The boy’s story began to develop in Bill’s imagination: the young
German had gone into the Luftwaffe and learned to fly fighters.
One day, early in the war, the boy and a friend had buzzed the home
valley in their BF-109s. “I guess all pilots have done that, in
every country,” says Bill. “The pride of flight is universal.” Bill
checked with a German pilot, who said the practice was strictly
verboten — “…but of course we did it.”
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