Dad grew up in Europe during the war. He didn't talk too much about it.
He was on a train filled with refugees that was attacked by allied fighters, bombed, then they returned and strafed it with machine gun fire. How could they know that it wasn't a military train? It was late in the war. The assumption that it was a legitimate target was a fair one to make.
He said he remembered a wounded SS officer literallly throwing children from the train, shouting at the women to jump, to get away before the planes came back. Dad said he ran, then stopped and looked back, the SS man was in the carriage doorway passing a child down to a woman when the napalm hit the train.
Maybe there isn't a positive thinking message in that anecdote. Maybe there is.
Maybe in an old man's memory of an extraordinary act of kindness, bravery, and ultimately self sacrifice there is a positive message to be found.
