The
inflatable raft, holding three starving airmen, is barely afloat in the
Pacific. Sharks circle the boat. Death is very near. One of these men is former
Olympic runner, Louis Zamperini. How did he get here?
Unbroken, written by Lauren Hillenbrand,
is the gripping biography of this man, this Louis ‘Louie’ Zamperini. During his
childhood, Louie discovered that he could run, that is, as an athlete runs.
Soon, he was smashing records all over the country, trying to run a four-minute
mile. He got into the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Germany, and, although
he finished eighth line in the 5000 meter, caught the attention of none other
than Adolph Hitler, who demanded a meeting with “the boy with the fast finish.”
Immediately
after returning home, he began training for the 1940 Olympics, but all was
about to change. The Olympics were scheduled to be in Tokyo, Japan, but, due to
the outbreak of World War II, they were canceled and moved to Helsinki,
Finland. Then, as WWII began to ravage Scandinavia, the Olympics were suspended
indefinitely. Louie joined the Army and became a crewmember on a bomber.
Several times, Death missed him, thanks to the expert pilot. But, on a fateful
day, a plane went down in the Pacific. Louie’s team was called to go scour the
ocean with another crew and look for the missing plane, or at least the
survivors. Somewhere in the middle of the ‘Big Blue’, an accident happened that
would change Louie’s life forever. The rust-bucket plane his crew was ordered
to fly on this mission had four engines. One went out. The pilot told the
engineer to stop the propeller from turning, which was a normal procedure when
an engine went out. The real problem began when the engineer stopped the wrong
prop. Now two engines were out and the plane plummeted to the depths. Only
three men survived. Now, they were afloat in the Pacific, literally warding off
death with paddles. After weeks of floating, with little more than raw bird
meat and rain water to survive on, only two men remained. Louie and the pilot.
A ship came into view and they became elated with joy that maybe, just maybe,
it would be an American vessel. The happiness quickly turned to horror when
they saw the flag. It wasn’t the Stars and Stripes, but the Rising Sun of the
Japanese Empire.
Unbroken is a story of survival,
courage, and, most importantly, forgiveness. Find out the whole story by
reading this amazing book. I would recommend this work to a more mature audience
due to some language scattered in the pages.
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