So you think your life is tough? Imagine you're 22 years old, your fighter plane is on fire and you've got to bail out over enemy territory.
Meet Joe Moser. Moser recently visited Baker View Christian School in Bellingham, Wash., to share his story.
In August 1944, while Capt. Moser was on his 44th combat mission over war-torn France, enemy ground fire hit his Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Captured by a German patrol and rounded up with other Allied pilots caught with the French resistance, the young Ferndale, Wash., native (he grew up just two miles from Baker View) faced the ordeal of being sent to the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp.
The upper-grade students, having just finished reading Moser's book, A Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald, were excited to meet this American hero. They listened to his story and had him autograph copies of his book.
The class had built models of the P-38 as part of a literature unit and also took a field trip to see one of the real fighters at the Boeing Museum of Flight.
From Moser's story, students learned a true life lesson about attitude and perseverance in the face of the most extreme circumstances, but also how one man's faith in God helped see him through this struggle and carried him home to a joyful reunion with his family.
