During World War II, I was among the American troops who were captured in Germany.

German soldiers forced us to march 100 miles, in snow and subzero temperatures, to another prison camp. During that long week, we received only two meals.

One snowy evening, as we trudged along the deserted road, I glanced up and saw a beautiful little girl standing beside the road ahead of us. She wore a winter coat with a fur-lined hood encircling her sweet shining face. In her hands, she held a small wicker basket.

As we marched closer to her, I could see her bright eyes smiling directly at me. She acted like she knew who I was, but I had never seen her before.

When we approached where she stood, she stepped up on the road and held her small, covered basket out to me.

As I walked to the spot where she stood, she pulled back the white napkin which covered the basket.

I saw six biscuits inside.

I was so hungry!

Quickly, while still walking forward, I reached out, grabbed the six biscuits and stuffed them into my pocket.

The beautiful little girl flashed a radiant smile at me, and then she turned and walked away.

The other guys didn’t seem to notice the girl. If any of them had seen the biscuits, I knew they would have desperately fought to get them. Everyone was so starved!

In fact, when we arrived at the next village, our captors let us sit down and rest on the street curb. A man wearing an apron came out from the bakery across the street and threw four loaves of bread into the middle of our troop.

Everyone jumped up, frantically pushing and shoving as they tried to grab a handful of bread. In their desperation and hunger, they hit and fought each other for every scrap.

I stood at the edge of the group and stared. I wondered why nobody had tried to grab the biscuits in the girl’s basket.

Was it possible they hadn’t seen the biscuits?

Was it possible they hadn’t seen the little girl at all?

I can still see her beautiful face, even after all these years. It shone so brightly in the dusk. I’ve often thought of her. I had been too exhausted at that time to look back and see where she went or what happened to her.

Later, I realized no mother would have let a young girl take food to enemy troops at night during the middle of a war.

I believe she was an angel of God, sent as an answer to the prayers of my wife. Without those six biscuits, I would never have survived that week-long march in the freezing winter.

Jesus said, “Your heavenly Father feeds [the birds],
Are you not of more value than they?”
Matthew 6:26

Allen Simantel, World War II Veteran
Simantel Berry Farms
Hillsboro, Oregon

From the book “Our Stories, God’s Glory“
A collection of real life inspiration stories from Oregonians

Don Malarkey is a true American hero and an Oregon member of the “Band of Brothers”. He served with distinction in WW II with the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” and parachuted into Normandy on D-Day.  During his time in the service, Don met Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill, and was awarded the Bronze Star.

Don grew up in Astoria, Oregon and he was in his first semester at the University of Oregon in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

He became a member of “Easy” Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. He went to England in 1943 to participate in the largest amphibious invasion in history: D-Day. In the darkness of the morning of D-Day (June 6, 1944), Malarkey parachuted into France with his unit. Later that day, he received the Bronze Star for his heroism in a pitched battle to knock out a German artillery battery; an action now called the Brécourt Manor Assault (which is still taught at West Point).

He fought in Normandy, Operation Market Garden in Holland, the Battle of the Bulge (surrounded in Bastogne), Haugenau, France, and the Ruhr Pocket in Germany. Never seriously wounded, Don served more time on the front lines than any other member of Easy Company.

After the war, Don returned home to Oregon.

In 1987, Don was introduced to author and University of New Orleans Professor of History Stephen Ambrose at an Easy Company reunion in New Orleans. In 1989, Don traveled with Ambrose and other members of Easy Company, including Richard Winters and Carwood Lipton, to various sites where they had fought in Europe following the D-Day invasion. The oral history and first person recollections that Malarkey and the others provided became the basis for Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers, which was published in 1992 – and which later was made into an HBO mini-series (2001).

During Ambrose’s collection of anecdotal information for the book, Malarkey told of the saga of the Niland brothers of Tonawanda, New York, how two had died on D-Day and another was presumed killed. Fritz, one of the four Niland brothers, was close friends with Don. This episode was the impetus for the screenplay of Saving Private Ryan.