Taiwan - Kaohsiung Buddhist Museum, Bell Tower #2 / Dead Germans and the Christmas Feast

This post from ten years ago mentions one of the most fascinating people we've ever met; his name was Cletus B. "Tinker" Slatter.  He was a combat veteran of WWII, but unlike many veterans Tinker enjoyed talking about his time overseas and the battles he helped fight.  And rather than describe events with a grim demeanor, he saw most of it with a sense of humor.

For example, during the Battle of the Bulge, which went on for weeks, he got so tired of being there - in the cold, dirty trenches where being on constant alert frazzled the mind - that he actually stood up, met the eyes of a German across the way, raised his foot where the guy could see it and vigorously pointed.  He was inviting the German to go ahead and shoot his foot so he could qualify to go into the hospital and get out of that miserable place.  His enemy, partially submerged in his own trench manning a machine gun, simply laughed and shook his head, not giving in to the request.

Another time Tinker and his fellow soldiers were marching through the cold and snowy countryside when they came upon a farmhouse, long abandoned because of the war, and spied a chicken wondering around the yard.  It was Christmas day, so they decided to catch that chicken and cook themselves a Christmas dinner.

After building a fire out there in the yard they caught it, killed it and plucked its feathers, eagerly anticipating the first fresh meat to be had in months.  Trouble was, there was no place to sit.

During an earlier battle that was fought there the grounds were littered with dead Germans, frozen solid in all kinds of grotesque positions.  Then an idea hit..."Why not?"  So, as if gathering logs, Tinker and his comrades collected enough frozen dead Germans to arrange around the fire.  Then they sat on them, using them as benches while Christmas dinner finished cooking.

They'd just started eating when they heard a buzz, and within seconds recognized the sound as a Messerschmitt approaching fast.  Very tired and without time to even react, they watched as the plane went into a shallow dive, expecting to be strafed any moment as they sat perched on the pilot's dead comrades.  But to their amazement and surprise, the guy leveled out at 50 feet and actually made eye contact as he flew by, wagging his wings on the way back up, disappearing in the distant sky.

Thus it was that Tinker and his men not only were able to enjoy a rare treat for Christmas, but lived to see another day thanks to a Christmas reprieve granted from a very unexpected gesture of goodwill on that special day.