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

exactly what needed said and just how to say it. More so, the terrorist leader apparently knew things about Tio Zeke that brought forth a certain admiration, maybe even a grudging respect. All put together, it made Micah wonder just how much he didn’t know about his own blood kin.

Looking back, he realized that Ezekiel had not been around much until Micah’s father had passed on. It was really only after that had occurred, followed by the tragic deaths of his uncle’s only son and soon afterward his wife, that they began spending more time together.

Tio Zeke seemed to thoroughly revel in being part of Micah’s family, especially during the period when the younger Templar’s own two sons were growing up. Abby, with a good woman’s innate intuition, welcomed Ezekiel’s pressing need to be included in the goings-on of their modest home. More so than anyone else, she grasped the essential reason for this change and explained it to Micah. Having lost his own family made Ezekiel treasure someone else’s as never before, and more so because of the intrinsic kinship. Personal loss and a searing loneliness often had that sort of effect on those whose spirit had been so near broken.

When it came down to it, in some ways Micah knew more about Max Grephardt than he did Tio Zeke. If his uncle had been somewhat shy in recounting his own exploits as a younger man, he was more than ready to talk about those concerning the former Luftwaffe ace. This unusual imbalance dated back to when Micah was a small boy.

Many times Ezekiel had spoken of what his German friend had accomplished, and of the many challenges and dangers Max faced in his eventful life. Some forty-five years ago, he had been one of the most highly decorated fighter pilots in the German Luftwaffe. But that in itself was only the smallest fragment of the extraordinary mosaic which illustrated Grephardt’s rather remarkable, even unique story.

Micah listened as his uncle reminisced of how he and Max first met, or rather the first time they had met and both been aware of it. The odds were the two men had done so ever so briefly before then, in the sub-zero temperatures of high altitude above Western Europe. Most likely the event was one measured in a scant second or maybe two, closing in upon each other at a combined speed of some 600 miles per hour while spewing fire, steel and destruction. This was the circumstance of their youth, and of their respective duties in a vast and horrendous world conflict.

Similar to their first anonymous meeting, the next was again the product of chance brought on by war. Max had been in a holding camp for the vanquished, only one of literally millions of German POWs who had chosen to surrender to the Western Allies, rather than the Soviet hordes advancing from the east. Ezekiel Templar had been in the company of the victors, involved in running the daily operations of a converted German airbase in that devastated land.

Then a day came along when an airplane had gone down, crashed and caught on fire with men trapped inside. Max was first on the scene and risked his own life to save those of others trapped in the burning flames and black, acrid smoke.

That the aircraft itself was American and the men inside so recently his enemies had meant little to Max Grephardt, what did matter was they were fellow human beings who were in mortal peril and unable to help themselves. As Max went inside the blazing plane and brought out men time and again, Ezekiel Templar had arrived to personally witness the metal within the man. The Air Force colonel would later tell the story at a rare family gathering, smile to himself, and shake his head in amazement.

When he first heard this as a small boy, Micah simply could not understand. In his child's mind of that time, it was impossible to grasp the concept of loving one's enemy enough to risk your own life. Besides, everyone who had ever watched a Hollywood war movie knew that all the Germans were Nazis, and the Nazis were callous monsters incapable of such selfless acts. They had been the perennial villains pitted against the Americans in their proverbial white hats. Why would such an obvious bad guy do something so noble for some of the good guys? And that Knight’s Cross with Silver Oak leaves, was that not presented in part to Max for fighting so well against the Americans, even in killing Americans?

Tio Zeke patiently tried to explain there was both good and evil in most men, and this was reflected in turn by the society in which they lived. Where good prevailed more in the hearts of the individuals who made up that society, the society was viewed in general as being such. The same thing happened when this went the opposite way and into the reaches of the state of evil. In Nazi Germany there had been many good men much like Max, but not enough to make that crucial difference. Hauptmann Max Grephardt had not flown into battle with the black heart of a villain; rather he went in harm’s way only to defend his family, his home and his country as best as he knew how.

As far as the Knight’s Cross, his uncle pointed out it was not the medal pinned to the outside of the man that so impressed him, but once again the metal of the man inside. That was how Ezekiel J. Templar went about choosing his inner circle of friends, the quality of the metal possessed within. To Tio Zeke, that metal was hardly burnished so brightly by any man as Max had done at the scene of the crashed American transport.

But the young Micah Templar remained puzzled and somewhat confused concerning this dichotomy during his growing years. Like