Publisher's Synopsis
Two girls were in awe listening to small town hero Henry Langrehr. Born in Iowa, he was raised during the Great Depression. Before his 18th birthday, he quit high school to defend his country and asked his girl to marry him. They decided to wait until he came back from the war. Henry was one of 16,000 men who parachuted into France early in the morning of June 6, 1944. He weighed 150 pounds and had that much weight in material strapped to his back. The men sat on benches facing one another waiting for their time to jump. As they got closer to France, a gun shell landed on the wing instantly killing the man across from Henry and the person sitting beside him. They jumped from the airplane but many men landed in the trees and were shot by the Germans. His friend was caught on a church steeple and Henry crashed landed through the glass of a greenhouse. Henry was taken as a prisoner of war (POW). He and about a hundred others (Americans, British, Polish and Russians) were loaded onto boxcars, packed very tightly with no food or water. Due to an Allied bombing, the train stopped just outside the gate of Auschwitz concentration camp. Henry saw a lot during the war and many of his best friends died fighting alongside him. He came home and told his girl he didn't know how he survived and she told him she believed it was her prayers that kept him alive. Today Henry openly admits he believes he was saved by her prayers.
