Even amidst the bloodiest conflict the world has ever known, there was compassion. Many
soldiers didn't want to leave their homes and families. Many didn't want to fight and die on
foreign shores. Many understood that the men on the other side of the battlefield, or in
that other plane or ship, weren't so different from themselves. As such, countless moments of
kindness passed between enemies during the Second World War. In this video, we cover just five.
One of the most famous examples of compassion between enemies in World
War II is what occurred between Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler.
American airman Charlie Brown was in command of the B-17 Flying Fortress "Ye Olde Pub"
during a USAAF bombing run on an aircraft production facility in Bremen, Germany,
on the 20th of December 1943. Before Ye Olde Pub could dump its load, German AA guns smashed the
bomber's nose and destroyed one engine and damaged another. After that, German fighters attacked,
wrecking yet another engine and otherwise shredding the aircraft.
The bomber's defensive guns had jammed, one of Brown's men was straight-up decapitated,
and most of the remaining nine men had been wounded.
Down on the ground, a German fighter ace named Franz Stigler was refuelling and rearming
his Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6. He spotted Brown's smoking B-17 and took to the sky
to put the bomber out of its misery. When Stigler caught up, however, he made a decision
that somewhat baffled Brown: he didn't finish off the crippled and defenceless Ye Olde Pub.
With the bomber skinned as it was, Stigler could see the wounded men inside, and understood that
they were no threat to him; they did not need to die. In his words, "I cannot kill these half-dead
people. It would be like shooting at a parachute." Pulling up alongside Ye Olde Pub, Stigler tried to
gesture for Brown to land in Sweden, but Brown failed to interpret this message,
so he just kept flying. To ensure that German AA guns wouldn't fire on Brown, Stigler remained
alongside the B-17 until it left German airspace, at which point Stigler pulled away with a salute.
What makes this story even sweeter is that Brown sought Stigler out after the war, in 1990, and the
two aged veterans remained good friends until they died within a few months of each other in 2008.
After the Japanese crushed the Allies in the Battle of Bataan, they subjected as many as
80,000 less-than-fortunate Filipino and American POWs to the infamous Bataan Death March. Among
them was a professional American football player by the name of Mario "Motts" Tonelli, who had been
serving in the US Army 200th Coast Artillery. While Tonelli was enjoying the Death March,
a Japanese guard approached him and threatened to cave in his skull if he didn't hand over the gold
ring on his finger. This was a very special ring, a ring that had been awarded to Tonelli by the
University of Notre Dame after a College All-Star game in 1939. He refused to give it up—that was,
until one of his comrades reminded him that a piece of jewellery wasn't worth dying over.
Shortly after the guard stole the ring, however, a Japanese officer approached Tonelli and asked,
in perfect English, if one of his guards had taken something from him. Tonelli said yes,
and the officer returned the stolen ring, saying that he had been educated in America
at the University of Southern California and had watched Tonelli play back in 1937.
"I know how much this ring means to you," he said, "so I wanted to get it back to you."
For the remainder of his 42 months as a POW, in which time he dropped from 212 to 92 pounds,
Tonelli kept the ring with him, hiding it from Japanese guards and fellow prisoners alike.
He was one of the 805 prisoners held at Davao Penal Colony who survived.
Like Charlie Brown, American pilot Richard Carroll was tasked with bombing German war
factories during the Second World War. In July 1944, on his first mission aboard a B24,
the bomber was hit by German flak, which macerated one propeller. At this point,
the B24 was soaring over rural Hungary, spewing black smoke. The crew had no choice but to deploy
their parachutes over enemy territory. When Carroll finally touched the ground,
a horde of pissed off Hungarian farmers greeted him with pitchforks and guns. One of them
wasn't messing around: he shot Carroll straight in the heart. Somehow, Carroll survived until
the Hungarian police arrived at the scene. Instead of finishing the job, the police wrested Carroll
from the clawing hands of the farmers and brought him to a military hospital that tended to POWs.
Carroll had a bullet in his heart and a clot in his leg and came close to death time and time
again. But thanks to the unyielding efforts of the Hungarian medics, the American airman
survived. Once he'd recovered, the Hungarians dumped Carroll in a POW camp, where he endured
harsh conditions until the Soviets liberated the camp and sent him to safety in France.
The 1944 Battle of the Bulge was one of the bloodiest and most miserable battles of the war.
On Christmas Eve, however, one unlikely group of soldiers would have some respite from the cold.
That evening, a group of three American soldiers were separated from their unit, and one of the
soldiers was wounded. Seeking shelter, they found a cabin squatting among the snow-heavy trees.
Knocking at the door, a German woman and her 12-year-old son greeted them.
Conversing in French, the soldiers explained their plight, and the woman, Mrs Vincken, took them in.
Shortly after, a second group arrived at the cabin, this one composed of lost
German soldiers. Mrs Vincken told the Germans that they could come
in for supper if they left their guns in the shed and respected her other guests.
She then confiscated the American soldiers' guns and invited the Germans inside.
While a little tense at the start, a pot of stew eased both parties into relatively good spirits.
Fritz, Mrs Vincken's son, later recalled the strange yet heart-warming affair:
"One of the German soldiers, an ex-medical student, fixed the wounded American and
then Mother read from the Bible and declared that there would be at least
one night of peace in this war — Christmas night in the Ardennes Forest.
After a good night[']s rest, they said their goodbyes and went on their way. The German
soldiers told the Americans, which way their camp was and gave them a compass to find their way."
In January 1945, a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Rover Boys Express
took off from Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands to lay waste to the Japanese capital,
Tokyo. Aboard this giant aircraft was a navigator named Raymond "Hap" Halloran.
As the Rover Boys Express flew over Mount Fuji, Japanese AA shells exploded in front
of the bomber, and then as many as 300 Japanese fighters appeared in the sky.
In the cockpit of one of the Japanese Zeroes sat fighter ace Isamu Kashiide,
a notorious B-29 hunter. Kashiide's 37mm rounds caught the Rover Boys Express right in the face,
blowing the bomber's controls and sending the aircraft into a dive.
One of the bomber's crew had been killed, but the surviving 10 bailed out, Halloran among them.
He let himself free-fall most of the 8,200 metres or 27,000 feet before deploying his parachute;
it was so cold up there that he might have frozen to death if he'd deployed it too soon.
Parachuting from so high up also would have made him an easy target for Japanese fighters.
Halloran later explained what happened next:
"The long free fall and shock and fear affected me physically and mentally as I
hung in my chute. [...] I was frightened. Then I saw three Japanese fighters several miles away at
my altitude. They were heading directly at me. I feared the worst. They throttled back and circled
very close to me. Two of the planes left. The third plane circled back and came in very close.
I could clearly see the pilot as he was abreast of me. Then a wonderful thing happened. He
saluted me and flew away. That event was beyond my comprehension at that time."
After Halloran touched the ground, he was bashed by civilians and taken to a prison in Tokyo,
where he endured hell until Imperial Japan surrendered when the war came to an end.
Some 40 years after the war's end, Halloran travelled to Japan
to meet Kashiide and the pilot who saluted him, one Hideichi Kaiho.
The latter had since become an aviation artist, so he gifted Halloran one of his paintings.
But had you heard any of these heart-warming stories before
today? Do you know anything about them that we didn't cover in this video?
Do you know any other stories like these? If so, would you like us to cover them in
a future video? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.