From Enemies to Brothers...

[Studog43]

I'm sure some of you already know about this but I didn't and found it interesting.

This true story is about an American B17 pilot and German BF-109 Pilot. A synopsis is below.

In the Presence of My Enemy is the second in a series of three by John Shaw, which tell the story of the remarkable incident in December 1943, when Luftwaffe ace Franz Stigler encountered the mortally-wounded B-17 Ye Olde Pub, flown by Charles Brown. This scene depicts the moment when Brown, fighting to control his stricken bomber, first lays eyes on his German enemy flying alongside. Fearing the worst, Brown and his crew marveled that their foe did not shoot them down, but rather escorted them safely to the German coastline, where he then saluted them and allowed them to go home. That moment of mercy, depicted in Shaw’s 2009 painting A Higher Call, became a marvelously popular print, and the subject of A New York Times bestseller of the same title, by Adam Makos. These two men began a decade long search following World War II to find each other, and in the early 90s it came to pass! Brown and Stigler were to become very close friends throughout the remainder of their lives; so close that Stigler wrote a letter proclaiming that Charlie Brown replaced the beloved brother whom he’d lost at the beginning of the war.

Some neat depictions of the incident...