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Narrow Escape!

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During World War II a beautiful girl from the Austrian Alps was working against her will in a German munitions plant. At night she slept in quarters on the factory compound with hundreds of other enslaved female workers. One morning, before dawn, the factory caught fire and the munitions began to explode.

The air roared, the ground shook, whirling disks of fire flew everywhere. Guards frantically herded the frightened girls from their barracks into an underground bunker, where they huddled in terror for about 10 minutes while their shelter shook and crumbled. Every minute the explosions outside grew louder and fiercer -- whistling, roaring and shrieking as bombs and shells detonated in rapid succession.

Suddenly a military officer, waving his arm toward the exit, burst into the girl's flimsy refuge, and shouted, "Get out! Get OUT! GET OUT!" Departing quickly, he ran for his own life. Some of the girls, too terrified to move, perished in the collapsing shelter, but the Austrian girl and a close friend quickly ran for their lives amid the fiery, flying shrapnel.

This side of eternity we will never know what last, desperate sense of duty or compassion prompted the officer to risk his own life when he spent precious seconds warning the occupants to flee that doomed shelter. Thanks to his concern, dozens of young women were saved.



Copyright 2005 by Family Heritage Books.
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Web page created: 11/30/05 Updated: 11/30/05