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People suggest topic ideas for my columns frequently. I’ve been writing “The Meat and Potatoes of Life” since 2010, and 2026 marks the 10th year my columns have appeared in Stars and Stripes. After writing more than 700 columns, you’d think I’d welcome new ideas, and sometimes I do.
“Don’t you just hate it when Uber drivers want to chat,” someone might say, “Hey, that’s it! Write your column about that!” I feign appreciation, knowing how difficult it is to transform a simple idea into a 700-word column with a well-crafted beginning and middle, and a heartwarmingly poignant, unexpectedly witty or thought-provoking ending.
But every so often, I squirrel away friends’ suggestions for days when my brain dries up like an old kitchen sponge. That happened recently after my military-history-obsessed brother-in-law sent me a text.
“Do you ever write about WW2 aviation history?” his message read. He told me about “The Brown Stigler Incident.” As far as stories go, it’s an incredible tale of heroism. Not only does the story have a riveting beginning and a fascinating middle, its ending is both heartwarmingly poignant and thought-provoking.
Thirty-six years ago, on Jan. 18, 1990, retired U.S. Air Force B-17 bomber pilot Charlie Brown opened a letter he’d received at his Florida home, postmarked from Canada. “I was the one,” it read, and Charlie knew instantly — his 50-year search was over.
When the incredible incident happened in December 1943, Charlie was told to keep it secret, because it could affect the troops’ perceptions of our Nazi German enemies. So he did, for 43 years. It wasn’t until a 1986 combat pilots reunion in Alabama that Charlie told the tale of what happened to him and his crew in the skies over Germany in 1943.
Second Lieutenant Charles Brown was the commander of a B-17 bomber called “Ye Old Pub,” with co-pilot Pinky Luke and eight crew members. On Dec. 20, they were flying in formation on a bombing run in the frigid skies over Bremen. Within minutes, flak hit Ye Old Pub’s nosecone, shattering it, damaging the No. 4 engine and causing the bomber to fall out of formation and be left behind.
Vulnerable and struggling, Brown’s damaged plane was soon attacked by more than a dozen German fighter planes and sustained significant further damage, incapacitating onboard systems, reducing engine No. 3 to 40 percent capacity, blasting holes in the cabin top, jamming weapons and disabling heat and oxygen. The tail gunner had been decapitated and was dead. Brown and the rest of the crew survived the attack, but sustained shrapnel and cannon shell wounds and frozen feet.
With no radio and the threat of what might happen if they landed in enemy territory, Charlie was flying the hobbled bomber toward the North Sea, when a Luftwaffe Messerschmitt BF 109-G6 appeared beside them. The pilot, Oberleutnant Ludwig Franz Stigler, was intending to shoot the U.S. bomber down, but when he saw the injured crew through the holes in the cabin top, he thought it would be dishonorable, like shooting a man in a parachute. Instead, Stigler flew close to the bomber, trying to mouth a plan to Brown to fly to safety in Sweden.
Brown and his crew didn’t understand what Stigler was trying to communicate, so they flew on with weapons pointed at the BF 109. Stigler escorted them all the way to the coast, offering a respectful salute before leaving Brown’s bomber over the North Sea on its way to safety in England.
Stigler flew back to base, never revealing what he’d done, for fear of Nazi court-martial. Fifty years later, after Stigler, who had moved to Canada after the war, read a letter Brown published in the combat pilot association newsletter, the two men reunited.
Brown and Stigler became good friends, a relationship they cherished until they died in the same year, 2008, only two months apart.
This tale reminds me again that current news, trendy topics and fresh anecdotes aren’t always more interesting, informative or entertaining than stories about things that happened in the past. In fact, we should always tell old stories, because remembering our past helps us inform our future.
Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com
