……..LOL… the day I saved a 14-year-old Jewish girl
In 2004, while living in the south of France (actually, 100,000 Americans and Brits also live there) ….which is a beautiful, magical, sunny place with lavender fields [photo] and vineyards….
..and is not far from the Stone Age home in France of the ancient Solutrean culture….
….my then wife and her friends, a very nice French couple with a teenage daughter, wanted to go on some errand together…. and they asked me to please watch over their daughter, a very pretty Aryan and curvy white girl, around 14, and over her friend of the same age, a Jewish girl, dark-complected, not bad looking, really, with a golden Star of David necklace on. 😉
Well, the girls wanted to go down the mountainside to the ocean, the Mediterranean, sit on the rocks, and watch the waves…………….. (AND GOSSIP ABOUT BOYS.)
It was out on the tip of the right side of this fjord, called a calanque in French.
Anyway, the girls sat down on the edge of the rocks, with a drop of maybe 15 feet down to the water, and began the usual teenage-girl giggling.
Moi, I was praying and thanking God for the marvels of beauty of this world, and of France, land of my distant ancestors.
But as a father of two girls myself, one part of me was still parental/on duty/vigilant.
Weird….. I guess WAY out in the Mediterranean, miles out, some huge cargo ship we could not even see in the summer haze must have passed by at 15-20 knots, or was it a minor earthquake out at sea (a seaquake) — well, whatever it was, it produced ONE HUGE WAVE, a “rogue wave.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave
I saw it coming in, silently, and, well, in the Marines we are part of the Navy and we watch the water.
There it was:
The white girl saw it, shrieked and began clambering higher up the rock. The Jewish girl was oblivious until it was too late.
The whole top two-thirds of the rock was flooded, the wave lifted her up and seized her, and she was swept out to sea.
I guess it was partly my nature and world view — men are supposed to be the heroes — and partly the Marine training, but I instantly went into combat mindset — shut down all emotions and act.
I crab-walked — on my hands and feet, my back hovering over the rocks — down, down, down, exactly to the point where she had been swept off the rock.
I felt the return wave would bring her back to the same spot.
I saw the young Jewess, brown as a nut and with black hair, wide-eyed in fear, 25 feet away, up in the air, perched below the crest of the wave, as this secondary wave prepared to fling her, face first, against this rock.
I was in position for the rescue, I just watched her intensely, I locked eyes with her, and she saw me put out my arms.
The wave hit the rock with great force, and it deposited this girl straight into my arms. 😉
The water drained away, and here was this Jewish girl, her Star of David bangle gleaming, clad in a bikini, firmly in my arms!
All I can say is there is nothing more fulfilling for a man than to be brave, decisive, and save a woman’s or a child’s life.
In this case, both.
Heh-heh, and you may get a look of thanks that you will never forget. 🙂
Yours truly in 2004 in France
…….Contact and support
Leave a Reply