The commentary that we wrote for August 14, on the miracle of the lifting fog (A Victory At sea - Through Prayer) around the aircraft carrier in the early 1950's, brought to mind a World War 2 miracle I can remember as a kid. I remember the large newspaper headlines, stating "Eddie Rickenbacker Found Alive." I remember my family commenting on one of the great survival stories of the war. Eddie Rickenbacker was quite a hero in both W.W.1 and W.W.2.
In W.W.1, as a fighter pilot, he shot down 22 enemy aircraft and was awarded the Congressional Medal Of Honor. In W.W.2 he served as a civilian advisor whose plane went down with a crew of seven while flying over the Pacific. The miraculous survival of Eddie and his crew can be attributed to prayer, along the same lines, as prayer saved the lives of many pilots about ten years later on that fog bound carrier.
For you youngsters who were born after W.W.2, this is a short story of Eddie and his crew's miracle, taken from Charles Swindoll's book "The Darkness And The Dawn."
" On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of the plane, and climbed into life rafts.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle.
That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. Then they tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.
It was a seagull! Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait...and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying, "Thank You." That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk out to the end of a pier with a bucket full of shrimp, and feed the seagulls with a heart full of gratitude. "
Eddie and his crew spent 24 days in the rafts before being sighted by American airplanes. Eddie went from 180 to 126 pounds during that ordeal. He lived about another 30 years after that and died in 1973.
This is another case of the power of prayer, especially when all involved in a situation pray en mass. Whether it’s the prayer of a few thousand aboard a carrier, or eight men in life rafts. God will hear those prayers and answer accordingly. He lifted the fog that day in the 50's, and He put the seagull on Eddies head in the 40's. (How else did a lone seagull, hundreds of miles from land, end up on a man's head?)
Never underestimate the power of prayer.
By George Konig
August 21, 2005
www.georgekonig.org
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