EDITOR'S NOTE: The Times Free Press is continuing a series of stories from readers about life experiences they attribute to divine intervention. We'll publish another each week as your stories continue to arrive. If you have a God Thing to share, email Life@timesfreepress.com, or mail to Life Department, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 400 E. 11th St., Chattanooga, TN 37403.
This week, Skip Skipper tells of seeing God's hand several times in his life.
____
I would say my God Things started in World War II before I was born.
My father was stationed in New Guinea. One day, he was going to hitch a ride on a plane but arrived a little late. He threw his bag in the back door of the plane, and it came flying back out. It seems the sergeant didn't like him very much. So he missed the flight. That plane took off and was never heard from again.
When I was in Vietnam in 1968, I was a Cobra helicopter pilot. A warrant officer pilot back for a second tour joined our company and was asking for flight time because he had been there two weeks and hadn't gotten to fly yet. There was also a new captain there who needed backseat time so he could be made a platoon leader. I was supposed to fly in the front seat that day. I went out that morning, and the commanding officer had given me a day off because I had been flying so many hours. So the new warrant officer and the captain flew and were shot down. The warrant officer was killed riding in my place.
Another time, I was part of a two-Cobra fireteam escorting a Huey in to pick up the crew of a medevac helicopter that had been shot down trying to pick up wounded soldiers. We had another fireteam orbiting above us, waiting on us to run out of ammunition. I got a radio call from one of the standby pilots, "Panther 12, you're receiving fire."
They said later that I calmly replied "Roger - receiving fire." I could see the green tracers going by on both sides of my helicopter. A tracer is usually every fifth bullet so that the gunner can see where his bullets are going. So for every bullet I saw, there were four I didn't see - and there were a lot of green balls going by.
Not one bullet hit my helicopter that day. In my whole tour, only one round hit my helicopter, and I think it was a ricochet. I found out in 2017 that the medevac crew was rescued, and I met the pilot.
In about 2012, I read an article in Reader's Digest about a family that was almost killed by gas fumes from a hot-water heater. So I bought a couple of carbon monoxide detectors. In 2015, one of the detectors went off. The gas company told us to go sit in our car. My wife, who was suffering from pancreatic cancer, didn't want to go outside, but we did. The gas company detected carbon monoxide coming from the heating unit and turned off the gas and made sure we couldn't turn it back on. When the heating and air people came the next day, they found the whole bottom rusted out of the heat exchange unit. The technician told me we would have died that night if not for the detectors.
P.S. As I was writing the part about my wife, who died from pancreatic cancer on Sept. 28, 2016, one of my smoke or carbon monoxide detectors started beeping intermittently for about five minutes and has now quit. Probably needs a new battery. Maybe.
- Skip Skipper