Louis Zamperini was greeted with a hero's welcome
after surviving a fiery plane crash and a long stint in
a prisoner-of-war camp.
(Creative Commons licensed)

The Green Hornet keeled over.  Two engines of the B-24 were out, both on the left side, and all 11 men aboard knew what that meant. 

Even so, the directions from Russell Phillips, the pilot, rang out loud and clear: "Get to your stations and prepare to crash."

Louis Zamperini rushed to his position in the waist section, at the right window, next to the machine gun tripod.  He crouched low and hugged onto the soft, round life raft stationed next to him, awaiting the inevitable. 

Zamperini's stomach tumbled with the plane for two minutes as it spiraled toward the Pacific, consumed by the sheer horror of his imminent death.

Then the nose and left wing hit the water simultaneously.  Zamperini expected his life to pass before his eyes.  It didn't.  Upon impact, he got lodged underneath the machine gun tripod, which was bolted to the deck.  The life raft pressed against his chest, feeling much harder than it did five seconds earlier. 

He knew there was no way he was going to escape.

The Green Hornet did half a cartwheel before the tail blew off.  The wires connecting the elevators to the cockpit controls snapped and whipped around the tripod, coiling around Zamperini's already caged-in body.

He knew he was dead before, but when that happened, he knew it was certain.  It was an impossible situation.  If there had been somebody with him, they still wouldn't have been able to get him loose.  And he was on his own.

The remnants of the plane sank, the struggling Zamperini sinking with them.  His ears popped.  He knew he was about 20 feet under.  Then the pain came, as if he got hit by a sledgehammer to the forehead.  The headache was unbearable.  He was still sinking.  He was still trapped.  He thought: "This is it."

And then the world went black. 

***

To this day, Zamperini has no idea how he got loose. 

"It's a miracle," he told me, shaking his head.  I sat across the table from the 92-year-old man at his house in the Hollywood Hills.  He turned his head to his left, toward the bay window, which overlooked the entire city of Los Angeles and then some on a clear day.  Not a cloud was in the sky, but he wasn't looking at the panoramic vista.  His eyes glazed over, as if he were looking backwards in time, trying to piece it all together, trying to make sense of it for the millionth time. 

"Well if the water pressure knocked me out at 70 feet, and I'm still sinking, I should still be out, right? If the water pressure knocked me out at 70 feet, and now I'm at 80 feet, I'm not going to come to.  So when I was first loosened and my eyes opened, you know what I thought?"  He chuckled, still shaking his head.  "This is the afterlife.  I really thought that I had been dead, and then suddenly I realized I was out of air."  

***

Zamperini, floating upwards against the plane's sinking movement, blindly reached out and felt his University of Southern California class ring tug.  It had snagged onto the right waist window.  He pulled himself down through the tight opening, scraping the skin off his back.  His lungs felt like they were going to burst.

There was no way he was giving up.  Being an Olympic runner, he could hold his breath longer than most - more than three minutes.  But by this point, he was practically out of air. 
He inflated his life jacket, which surprisingly still had its CO2 cartridge (most sailors would steal them to make soda water for their scotch.) On his assent, he swallowed a mixture of salt water, oil, gasoline and blood.  He broke the surface, gasped for air, and threw it all up.
He was one of only three to survive the crash. 

***

"That was a definite miracle," Zamperini recounted.  He turned to look at me, making sure I got this next point clearly.  "The only answer for that is in the Bible." 

He paused, unsure of whether to continue.  "It's hard to tell the story because people think you're a religious fanatic, you know?"

I simply smiled.  "I'm not judging," I assured him.  How could I judge a man's explanation of survival? 

Comforted, he continued.  "The Bible says 'Are the angels not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?'" My lack of reaction prompted him to resume.  "Meaning, God knew before the foundation of the Earth who would accept Christ and who wouldn't.  Now, he knew that I would, you see?   So the angels ministered to me to get me loose from there.  There's no other explanation. And then..."

He paused again.  This time for longer.  He pointed to the tape recorder and asked, "Is that thing still on?" I told him it was.  Too uneasy to continue, he changed the subject.

"It's just really hard to explain.  It's like when two astronauts saw a flying saucer.  The critics came out and criticized them, said that they were hallucinating...The critics aren't fair."

I offered to turn the tape recorder off. 

"Yeah, shut it off."

***

Zamperini had been floating in a raft in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii for five weeks now.  At this point, it was the first week in July of 1943.    

He started this period adrift May 27 with the Green Hornet's pilot, Russell Phillips (Phil for short) and Francis McNamara (Mac for short), the tail gunner.   The group started with two rafts, six bars of fortified chocolate, designed as survival food, each meant to last about a week, and eight half-pint tins of water. 

After the second night, the group had no more chocolate.  Mac ate it all in a panic while his counterparts slept. 

According to Zamperini's autobiography, "Devil At My Heels," the trio resorted to tactfully catching fish and birds.  They even caught a few sharks.  But mostly, Zamperini would cook for his crewmates.

"The mind is a crucial line of defense against adversity," Zamperini writes.  And each man, both separately and together, would exercise his daily.  Zamperini remembered one such morning in his book:
"What's for breakfast?" Phil asked. 

"How about bacon and eggs?" I replied.  "Or ham?  Toast, jam.  Orange juice."

"Didn't we just have that?" Mac mumbled.

"Probably," I said.  "We could have pancakes instead.  My mother had a great recipe.  Biscuits and fresh fruit, too."

"Not for me," said Phil.  "I'm still full from dinner.  The risotto and gnocchi really filled me up.  I don't think my stomach can take it."

"That's the wine," said Mac. "You drank a whole bottle by yourself."

"Who can say no to Chianti?" I said.

"Or dessert," said Mac.

"Biscotti, gelati,..." said Phil.

"Tiramisu," we all added at the same time.

After about a week, the crew had no more fresh water.  They captured rain in containers when they could. 

Once they went a full seven days without water.  Boy, does the ocean torture a man then.  A world's supply of water; of course, it will kill you if you drink it. 

Sometimes when they'd see squalls in the distance, they'd pray for them to wander overhead, and open up above their opened mouths. 

On the 27th day, only one raft was afloat.  The bottom of the second one was blown out by a Japanese bomber. 

The plane was flying too high to notice the red circle painted along the side when the trio used the mirror to reflect the sunlight and get the pilot's attention. They had never been more excited in their lives to see the plane coming in their direction.  Then they were met with gunfire. 

Luckily nobody was hurt, and they were able to patch up one of the rafts to continue their adventure.
 
After 33 days, only Zamperini and Phil remained.  Mac, the weakest both mentally and physically of the group, died in his sleep.  Peacefully, he was slipped overboard in a burial at sea. 

This is around the time it happened - one of the most substantial moments Zamperini has ever experienced, and yet he left it out of his book, afraid the critics would bombard him.  He remembered it like this.

He was lying down on the raft, soaking up the sunrays.  The middle of the ocean was a peaceful place at times, even amidst the fight for his life.   His eyes were closed, and he was enjoying the warmth on his skin when he heard the most beautiful singing he had ever heard accompanied by a completely foreign, yet lovely melody. 

"Phil, do you hear that?" he called out.

"Hear what?" Phil answered.

"That singing...you can't hear it?" Zamperini said.

"Naw Zamp, you okay?" Phil questioned.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," answered Zamperini.

The music was still chiming.  He opened his eyes and took a look around.  That's when he saw it. 

Floating above him, what looked like a choir of angels was singing.  Zamperini described the sight as three rows of about five or six angels each.  Their bodies were only from the chest up and their faces were too blurred to make out, but he knew they were definitely angels.

Even in that moment, Zamperini had the feeling that their song was meant for him alone. 

***

Zamperini has never seen those angels again.  But numerous times throughout his life, he has heard their music: that same, distinct melody that reminds him of his divine protection.
Surviving the World War II plane crash in the Green Hornet was not the first time Zamperini narrowly escaped death.   

A 92-year-old, albeit in-shape, man sat before me.  As he described his two close encounters, I wondered how his now frail body managed to fight death not once, but twice when he was younger.

The first time, he fell into a pool of oil.  You can't swim in oil.  He would have sunk had it not been for the unlikely rusted drilling pipe he used to climb out. 

"I've never heard of a drilling pipe being rusty.  If it hadn't been rusty, I'd still be at the bottom of that hole."

The second time, he and his friend John were trapped in a locked train's boxcar.  There was no opening in the boxcar and the morning's sun continued to heat up the inside more and more.

"It was 110 outside, within an hour it would have been 150 inside and we'd be dead," Zamperini explained.

There was a trapdoor in the ceiling, but it wouldn't budge.  The heat was becoming more unbearable.  Then the boys spotted a broken steel-ladder rung in the corner.  Why it was in the boxcar, Zamperini didn't know.  He stood on John's shoulders and pried the door open just enough to squeeze out, scraping some flesh from his body along the way.

"If John hadn't been there I would have died.  If I hadn't been there, John would have died.  If the window hadn't been there, we both would have died.  If the steel bar hadn't been there, we both would have died. So you eliminate any one thing and we're dead.  That was something."

His friends named him Lucky Louie, and the nickname held true.

***

After 48 days adrift, Phil and Zamperini washed up on one of the Marshall Islands, only to find out it was occupied by the Japanese, and both men were thrown into cells. 

Now skin and bones, the men had to survive consistent brutal lashings from prison guards.  
The prisoners on this island were executed.  Evenutally.  Once they were sucked dry of information.  But Lucky Louie wasn't, and neither was Phil.  Instead they were transported to an interrogation camp.

Zamperini's travel from interrogation camps to prisoner of war camps lasted years.  After a year and one month of being missing, Zamperini's family was presented with his death certificate. 

He still has it. 

***

"If you overcome adversities with the right mind set, you become more hearty," he told me.  "If you have the right attitude, you'll be a better person every time you overcome. "

Adversity might as well be Zamperini's middle name.  And as far as the kind of person he is - I sat in his house for four hours on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and every minute became more inspired. Not only by the tales of his survival, but his ability to maintain what seemed to be a constantly positive outlook on life, despite his turbulent past. 

"You take a fruit tree.  When you prune it, what happens?" he paused.  I didn't know where he was going with this, so I just waited.  "It looks ugly, but then it produces more fruit.  So every time I go through a tragedy, I accept it as a pruning.  And I come out of it as a better person.  But you have to accept it with the right attitude, with cheerfulness."

For Zamperini, it is easy to accept his "pruning" with cheerfulness.

"All things work together for the good of those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose," he said. 

For example, Zamperini broke his pelvis three months ago, which I never would have guessed had he not told me. 

"Down the stairway, the wheels came off of this vehicle I was pushing and it threw me and boy it was painful.  I thought I shattered everything in my hip. I said 'Lord I know all things work together for good.  This better be good.'"

In the hospital the following four weeks, his positive energy and joyful attitude brightened the days of countless nurses on duty.  At the end of his stay at the hospital, every single nurse came down to take a picture with him.  

***

Something came out in the papers that said if you were a prisoner of war, you got a little bit of added compensation.  All you had to do was go to the Veterans' Affairs Hospital and sign some papers. 

Zamperini never did, until a woman called asking why he didn't.  So he went in to sign the papers soon after.  It turned out, the process was five days of testing, not just a signed paper, but Zamperini went through with the complete physical anyway. 

At the end of the week, he had one more step, which was to see the psychiatrist.  He got there late, just before 5 p.m., and the receptionist called the psychiatrist to hopefully catch her before she left for her home in Palmdale. 

Although the psychiatrist was just leaving, the receptionist talked her into staying an extra five minutes. 

When Zamperini entered her office she said, "Sit down," in a gruff, I-should-be-out-the-door-already tone.  "Well, first of all," she continued, "how do you deal with your anxieties and frustrations?"

"I don't have any," Zamperini replied.

The psychiatrist shook her head.  "Everybody does.  Everybody's different, so we all have different formulas to overcome them.  For instance with movie stars, we have them go into a closet - a dark closet - close the door and scream for two or three minutes to let it all out."

"But I don't have to let it all out," Zamperini said. 

"What do you mean by that?" the psychiatrist questioned.

"Well, I don't let it in," Zamperini explained.

Puzzled, the psychiatrist asked,  "What do you mean by that?"

"The Bible says 'love your neighbor as yourself.'  What am I letting in?  The Bible says 'do good to them that hate you.'  What am I letting in?  The Bible says, 'pray for them who despitefully use you.'  What am I letting in?"

She was stunned and said, "Well, you are confronted by anxieties."

"Yes," answered Zamperini, "but when anxieties knock at my door I don't let it in because if I let it in, it will turn into frustrations, and from frustrations into stress, and from stress into burnout."

Forty-five minutes later, slightly less flabbergasted and more inspired, she hugged Zamperini and said, "I learned something today."

***

Zamperini has focused his lessons on youth.  He started Victory Boys Camp in 1952, an Outward Bound-like program, which soon became known as the best program in the world of its kind.  

"[Outward Bound] is rough. They would shove the kids over a cliff with a rope on them," Zamperini said while explaining the difference between Outward Bound and Victory Boys Camp. "With a little psychology I could get them to go.  Once they look over the cliff they say 'I don't want to go' so I say, well 'I'll go with ya,' and without safety gear I would hold a rope and go over and they would come with me.  When they get to a point of no return I'd pull myself up and coach them on."

The wilderness has always been the perfect classroom for Zamperini. 

"I'm an outdoors man.  I've been a lumberjack, I've been a cowboy.  That's the kind of life I like, the outdoors, the mountains, the range...I quit going the movies 40 years ago.  There were so many things I wanted to do, so I've done everything: red cross lifeguard, builder, scuba diving instructor, so many things."

Zamperini talked about how he even panned for gold, and how exhilarating it was to search for those tiny specks of color. 

"It's not the finding," he explains. "It's the seeking."

And that's a mentality he uses with the troubled children who enter his program as well.

"Working with youth, there are so many different facets, so many different personalities.  It's really exciting work. You have to figure out what the formula is to get through to this guy.  The thrill is in the seeking."

And for Zamperini, the seeking isn't usually that difficult.  Although he is much older, he relates to the kids. 

"My life was remarkable.  I was the worst kid you ever saw.  Very worst."   

It was the recognition Zamperini received through his success as a track star that turned his life around. 

"I know what they're going through, they've got to find something to get their teeth into."
Zamperini accepts as his task to find something each kid can "get their teeth into," while serving as a life coach along the way.  He doesn't even consider it work. 

"I enjoy working with my hands, I enjoy helping people, and I enjoy the accomplishment."

Even with the joy Zamperini receives out of his work with youth, he is 92 and age will quickly catch up with a person.  I asked him if he is bothered by the limitations he feels as the days go on, being such an active person. 

But in true Lucky Louie style, he replied: "No, I just feel like I should have been dead a number of times." In other words, how can he be upset with life, when he came this close to death?