From the book “Our Stories, God’s Glory“
A collection of real life inspiration stories from Oregonians
Read more  stories or submit your own here. 

During World War II, I flew a special P38 plane on daily spy missions to Germany from an air base in England. My plane was fully equipped with cameras to monitor enemy troop movements on the ground.

One cloudy day as I flew back to the base, the flight instruments on my plane quit working. I tried everything to keep the plane from stalling, but it quickly tipped downward in a 500 mile-per-hour nosedive into the city of London.

My heart sank. I knew I was flying over a heavily populated area. Frantically, I tried to pull up the nose of my plane to stop its steep dive.

When the plane finally broke through the clouds about a hundred feet above London, it suddenly switched directions and headed back up in the clouds at a 45-degree angle. I didn’t know why the plane had changed directions so quickly—until I looked out the window.
I was astonished to see an eight-foot-tall angel in a long white robe standing beside the left wing of my plane. The angel’s flowing robes and golden hair were completely unruffled and unaffected by the wind.

I didn’t have much time to think about this since my plane’s instruments still didn’t work. But when the airplane reached a higher altitude, I knew I had to parachute out. I didn’t have any idea what would happen to the plane or where it might finally end up crashing.

My parachute landed me in the backyard of an old London pub. The bartender, along with a crowd of people, came out to greet me with a tall mug of beer in his hands. I graciously refused the beer, explaining that I didn’t drink.

Soon a photographer arrived who took a picture of me and my parachute. Then, they helped arrange transportation for me to return to my air base.

The next day, my hometown newspaper in Portland, Oregon, printed that picture with an article about me on their front page. A friend saw it and took the newspaper to my wife. It was the first news my wife and mother had heard of me in many weeks.

I found out later that my plane crashed in another backyard, but no one was injured. I think it all was God’s answer to the faithful prayers of my wife Harriet and my mother!

“God will give his angels charge over you,
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Psalm 91:11

William “Bill” Brabham
Owner, Brabham Electric
Aloha, Oregon
Entered God’s Glory 1997
(Husband of Harriet Brabham at Hearthstone Residences, Beaverton, OR)

— Our Stories, God’s Glory Website
— Buy the book here

Special Note: Seed Faith Books is seeking to collect 1,000 stories from Oregonians about how God has worked in their lives.    How about your story?   Click Here to see how to share your story and be an inspiration to others.

Amateur historian Gary Richards has finally tracked down all 11 of the Camp Adair military chapels. The 57,000-acre Camp Adair, which was located about six miles north of Corvallis, was built during World War II to train GIs for combat. More than 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp before being deployed to North Africa, Western Europe, and the Philippines. Before going overseas, many of the men prayed in one of these chapels.

After the war, the camp’s 1,800 buildings were torn down and sold as scrap. But the chapels were set aside for use by religious organizations as either churches or war memorials.

Richards grew up in a community on the northern edge of the Army base. When he and his family arrived in 1947, most of the camp had already been dismantled.

About two years ago, Richards decided to find out what had happened to the chapels. After doing painstaking research he located nine. He found the tenth by following up on leads given to him by readers after an article about his search appeared in the Corvallis Gazette-Times and the Albany Democrat-Herald.

Recently, he finally located Chapel 11 after he received a tip from a man in Sweet Home.

For further details, see http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/One-man-s-church-search-Old-chapels-of-Ore-base-3979223.php

Our United States military are remembered worldwide. There are over one thousand different memorial sites in foreign countries honoring America’s overseas wartime service. In the U.S., we have 44 National Memorials. In our state of Oregon there are over 200 memorial sites that show our respect and honor the memory and service of all our veterans. I was astounded by the number…two hundred! I couldn’t remember the last time I recalled having seen a memorial to our soldiers, but they are there.

Over the years, communities across Oregon have stepped forward to remember their war veterans. As you travel across the state, if you look, you will find them. You will find them in gardens, schools, parks, and cemeteries.  You’ll even find them on a football field and at a shopping mall. They are remembered on a flag pole in Astoria, a bridge in Bend, a bell in Eagle Point, an amphitheater in Klamath Falls, swimming pools in La Grande, a cannon in St. Helen’s, and a submarine in Portland. There are statues, brass plaques and engraved stones at locations too numerous to mention. You can even sit on a memorial bench in The Dalles.

Honors have been erected to all the wars: Revolutionary, Spanish American, WWI & WWII, Korean, Vietnam and already monuments to honor those in the Afghan and Iraq Wars.  They have become such a common site among our landscape we may walk by them without even a nod, a whisper or a prayer, but they are there.

There are over a dozen walls engraved with names and acknowledgements of their brave service and lives lost. This week four more names were added to our Afgan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial Wall in Salem: Pfc. Cody J. Eggleston, Lance Cpl. Robert L. Johnson, Chief Warrant Officer Joshua M. Tillery, and Pfc. Richard A. DeWater (OregonReport, May 25, “Memorial Day:…”). We salute their service. We mourn with their families.

But these memories should be only a beginning. Memorial Day should give us a greater appreciation for the opportunities we have to thank the soldiers that are still with us. Every day we can pass by those soldiers with more than a whisper, a nod or a prayer. We have the opportunity and  great privilege to thank them and let them know how very proud we are for their service to our country.

If you’d like a complete list of all the memorials you can visit across Oregon, listed alphabetically by city, I’d recommend going to http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=153625

If you’d like to get to know those 114 Oregon men and women who have died serving in Operation Enduring Freedom and the War in Iraq, I’d encourage you scroll through their names and bios on Oregon’s website dedicated to Oregon’s Most Honorable at http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/soldier/soldier_oregons_most_honorable.shtml

Kay Helbling
Kay finds it an honor and privilege to be the daughter of a WWII veteran, the daughter-in-law and niece of Korean War veterans, the sister of a Vietnam War veteran, and the wife of a former Air Force Reserve Officer.