h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Zat Fokker's a Messerschmitt

Me and Elektra in 1978: we get off the train in Munich, climb into a taxi.

The driver's a jolly man, but he drives like a maniac.

Me: Mein Herr, were you by any chance a Messerschmidt pilot in the war?
Driver: Yes, I was, how did you guess?

True story.

I once worked in an office with about a hundred other draftsmen. Two of them started talking about their experiences as fighter pilots in World War II, the next day they both brought in their log books and found they had both been engaged in the same action, one in the US Amy Air Corps and the other flying for the Luftwaffe. Also a true story!

FS

!


obviously felt the need to keep his hand in, just in case...

Cool story, FS!

I guess it goes to show something about old fighter pilots...

The strange part was they had no animosity for each other, they had both been young men at the time fighting for their countries. Even though they had each been trying as hard as they could to actually kill each other, it was only their job at the time. No hard feelings

FS

I've found a lot of WWII vets who felt that way.

Agreed, FS & DG. That seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

Quite a few seem to have more resentment against the highest-ups on their own (supposed) side rather than the people fighting for the other.

That makes sense, really. They're perfectly well aware that the other poor chap was in the same bind. Whereas it was the guys up-top who were making decisions they might well have disagreed with.

My dad, for instance, didn't have anything good to say about either George S Patton, Jr, or the level of catering aboard the Queen Mary when it was a troopship. He declared the British authorities were trying to starve him.

'They came around with a bucket of cold tea in one hand, and a bucket of cold boiled potatoes in the other,' he told me.

My wicked stepfather (he enjoyed being called that), a damn fine man, had a primary detestation for one Winston L. S. Churchill.

The whys and wherefores, I never did discover (and haven't had the heart to do my own research) but had a lot to do with being a motorbike despatch rider and among the first to be landed on and the last to be shipped out of North Africa.
The only detail I have is jocular references, on going to bed, to scraping a hole for his hip.

Uh-huh. I can imagine a lot of reeasons for people to be angry at that politician. From both wars.

ve hav vays!

stupid false teeth