The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

passed on into the next world. Weakened and now bereft of his trademark physical toughness, his mind and spirit continued on undaunted to the very end. When the preacher stopped by to pay his respects, by necessity the subject of eternal salvation or damnation came up.

“I have sinned greatly, Reverend, you can be sure on that. It was kill or be killed and for some unknown reason the Lord saw fit that I should survive.  Since then, the two of us have had many a serious conversation about all that.”

The old man paused, coughing up some of the phlegm that would soon kill him. “I figure myself saved as much as any man can. But if those gates are made of sharpened bamboo and a Jap soldier is standing guard with an Arisaka, I’ll know I figured it wrong.”

It had taken Micah two tours in Vietnam to fully understand how his father must have felt, fighting his own war against a cunning, implacable and far more numerous enemy. From there, it had taken still longer with a Bible to fully appreciate Tio Zeke's viewpoint. Yet in the end, Micah Templar considered himself a better man for both experiences.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Occupying the other side of the sofa, Max Grephardt considered options and actions from behind his obscuring screen of closed eyelids. The old Luftwaffe hauptmann realized too well the three of them were going to have to try something, anything, before the time for doing so went completely away.

Thinking upon the potential personal risks involved, there was not one soul among the millions who lived in the city of San Antonio whom he could call friend, or even say they were some sort of close acquaintance. He was nothing more than a brief visitor to this part of the world, some place he came to occasionally because of a desire to spend time with the unlikeliest of old friends and once more be among those of his own kind.

It did not matter so much if they were German or American or whatever, they shared his passion for flying and he appreciated their same enduring passion in return. More so, he had more in common with some of these men than he did with many of those from his own home land, even if they had been on the other side of a terrible war during an incomparably heartbreaking period of his life.

Though they had once been enemies he harbored a great admiration for both them and this grand country called America, that had birthed and nurtured such men. With his own eyes he had seen time and again this young, sometimes childlike nation from the New World at its very best, as well at its most formidable.

When at its most formidable, this upstart country had proven to be an awe inspiring engine of destruction, sweeping away all attempts to stop or deny it from the goal of unconditional surrender on the part of its opponents. Yet when that hard won victory had been realized, he was even more awed in seeing this melting pot of humanity when at its very best.

He had heard knowledgeable scholars say the military forces of the United States of America has seized more enemy territory than any other armed force that ever existed.

What made them unique, though, in their martial accomplishments among the great powers of the world was their open discomfort to any notion of empire building. That exceptionalism and singular system of beliefs had, in turn, led them to give back more conquered territory than any other sovereign power in recorded history, often leaving the vanquished land and populace in better circumstance than first found.

So had it been in his own country and with his own life. Max Grephardt bore personal witness to the astonishing rebirth of what had been little more than an utterly defeated collection of burnt ashes. West Germany had risen from a physical and psychological obliteration to take its place among the major manufacturing and financial forces on the planet. Yet it had not managed to accomplish this miraculous reconstitution alone.

During this arduous rebuilding process, the people of the United States did not stand idly by and let their struggling former enemy fend for themselves. This remarkable nation had shared in the expenditure of planning, effort and treasure to make Germany’s phenomenal rise from those same pitiful ashes a heretofore unheard-of reality.

It was the Americans who had developed and employed the Marshall Plan, and it was the Americans who had helped most in standing against the mammoth Soviet menace that loomed over the new Germany. When the Communists tried to choke the life out of a resurging Berlin, it was the Americans who provided the brunt of assistance in the ensuing airlift to keep the Soviets from doing so.

When the Communists erected their infamous wall and attending death strips, it had been an American president who had stood at that wall and proclaimed, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”  A quarter of a century later, it was another American president who stood at the Brandenburg Gate and demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  The force and conviction of these two great leaders of a great people made the rest of the world pause and take notice.

That wall did come down, and Germany at present was becoming one nation again after decades of forced division and immeasurable human miseries. No other one power was more responsible for this long-anticipated achievement than the United States of America.

In the midst of this decades’ long struggle, Max Grephardt had gone on like so many others to make a new life for himself in his revitalized Vaterland. He had invested everything he had in the future of Germany, including his own heart, mind and backbone.

Like his father, he and his wife Anna had raised five sons and now were grandparents several times over. His family lived in