An American pilot

I may have posted this before, but I don't care. I remember stepping in an American plane in San Francisco for a flight to London in June 1994.

In business class I remarked a tall moustached gentlemen, old but unbowed, which I took for an English baronet, sitting in the right seat of the middle row. I was in the left seat of the right row and soon discovered that the lady sitting at the window next to me was his wife. She told me that he was an American fighter pilot and had flown many missions over Belgium and Europe.

And they were flying to Europe with their daughter, who was a stewardess on the flight, to comemorate the landings in Normandy. I has a nice long talk with the man : he was the first American I met who had fought in the second World War and at the end of our talk I thanked him out of the bottom of my heart for what he and his brothers in arms had done for me, my family and my country. They liberated us from nazi slavery, a fate worse than death.

Two happy men landed in London : the pilot, because I was one of the first, if not the only European who had thanked him recently ; and me : I was walking on clouds because I had been given the opportunity to thank that man, and through him, our liberators.