General Chuck Yeager wrote an account of a chance encounter with Darrell 'Shifty' Powers at a Philadelphia airport.
The name of SSgt. Darrel 'Shifty' Powers should be familiar to anyone who has read the 2001 Stephen Ambrose book Band of Brothers, or viewed the superb HBO mini-series of the same name, which chronicled the exploits of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from its initial training through its mission in WWII Europe from the D-Day invasion of Normandy all the way through to the end of the war. As a member of that famed Easy Company, SSgt. Powers featured in both Ambrose's book and the HBO mini-series (in which he was portrayed by actor Peter Youngblood Hills), appearing as himself in the penultimate episode to speak of his wartime experience:In the second-to-last episode of 'Band of Brothers,' an HBO miniseries that documented Easy Company's wartime exploits, Powers spoke on camera about the soldiers he fought and also hinted at the intrinsic tragedy of combat. 'We might have had a lot in common. He might've liked to fish, you know, he might've liked to hunt,' Powers said. 'Of course, they were doing what they were supposed to do, and I was doing what I was supposed to do. 'But under different circumstances, we might have been good friends.' Powers, who got the nickname 'Shifty' playing basketball as a youngster, served three years in the Army during World War II and later worked as a machinist for Clinchfield Coal Corp. He found renewed notoriety when his military experiences were depicted on film and in the Stephen Ambrose book of the same name. 'He actually hadn't talked about it, his war years, until the book came out,' said his daughter-in-law, Sandy Powers. 'He gets fan mail from all over the world, and calls.' 'For me and my kids, it's just amazing that our regular, sweet uncle was such a hero,' said his niece, Cheryl Gilliland of Roanoke. 'It sure changed his life in later years. He went places and met people he never would have otherwise.'It's true that Darrell Powers died at his home in Virginia on 17 June 2009 at the age of 86, and that his passing didn't receive much media coverage outside of his home state. (I have read Band of Brothers and watched the HBO series many times, and I wasn't aware he had died until we began receiving the e-mail quoted above.)Authorship of the above-quoted piece, which describes an encounter with Darrell Powers at a Philadelphia airport several years ago, is often attributed to 'retired Major General Chuck Yeager,' but a representative of the General Chuck Yeager Foundation told us that General Yeager had nothing to do with it. Likewise, the account was not written by baseball great Roberto Clemente (who died in 1972), although the oft-appended 'A nation without heroes is nothing' quote is his.According to ABC News, the original e-mail was written by Mark Pfiefer (who also contacted us):Mark Pfiefer ... confirmed to me that he wrote the e-mail and he was the man who met 'Shifty' at the airport in Philadelphia. Pfiefer, who worked for Dow Jones at the time he met 'Shifty,' said today he had no idea the e-mail would take on a life of its own. He just wanted those who received his e-mail to hold a private moment of silence. 'I found out this morning that some took it literally,' he said, 'and now thousands of people have been organized into a virtual memorial service for Shifty on July 20th. It will be on Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other social networking sites.'
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