Chance brought childhood friends William, Arthur and Walter together with an opportunity common to many as they combined their talents in a project to create a machine which could reduce the time spent traveling from one point to another...Their joy raised their spirits as the engine which they mounted to a bicycle propelled them along the road, but disappointment overtook them as they discovered that their creation did not have the power to climb a modest hill without resorting to the pedals...
They might have given up the idea, resuming normal lives and taking jobs and raising families...Instead Harley and the Davidson brothers learned from their mistakes, and with the help of a young engine builder, Ole Evinrude, built ever bigger and more powerful machines...Chance brought the men together with the opportunity to do something together they enjoyed, and the emotions they shared of joy and disappointment forged the will needed to form a company which has provided not only the products for a demanding world but a means to provide a living for countless families for over a century...
Even in less heralded events, chance and opportunity can combine their efforts with emotion and will, sometimes twice...Chance brought a nurse to her son's Little League game where a youngster serving as a batboy was hit in the chest stopping his heart...Emotions ran wild as fear gripped those who thought the boy would die...But the nurse, remembering her training, calmly used CPR techniques to return life to the boy...
Years later as the nurse was dining in a restaurant she became choked on a piece of food lodged in her windpipe...Chance dictated that the same young man was working there, and had received training in the Heimlich Maneuver as a firefighter...Pushing fear and distress aside, he used his opportunity to employ his training, saving the nurse from death and repaying the gift of life which she had once provided for him...Both had the will to do their jobs surrounded by panic, stress and confusion...
In the ongoing storm patterns of history, chance and opportunity pause everyday waiting for will and emotion to decide which direction future events will take...Opposing enemies meet on battlefields never knowing in what their actions will result...They only know they are sent there to kill the other, reducing the will of the enemy to continue...At times there are moments when emotion decides personal as well as world-encompassing fortunes...
Two soldiers from opposing camps were sent on their separate duties, each with a job to perform, neither understanding completely why their nations were at war, but both with the conviction to complete their objectives as ordered, and return home alive after the war...Both have been in continuous battles for years, each weary of the daily sight of fighting and death...Both see each other across a battlefield, each understanding the other's duty to reduce the enemy numbers at every opportunity...
They've both been trained to view those in enemy uniforms as nothing more than a unit to be removed bringing the war to a close a few seconds earlier...Both understand that thinking of the enemy as human makes it that much more difficult to bring death to him...They are trained to leave emotion out of the equation, and simply reduce the enemy numbers...
But looking across the few yards of smoking battlefield into each other's eyes, they see themselves, battle-weary, bone tired, cold, hungry and wishing only for rest...One of the soldiers is first to remember that this is an enemy soldier he faces, and raises his rifle in aim at the other...His target stands stoop-shouldered, wounded, leaning on his rifle, waiting for certain death and the peace it will bring...
At some point the soldier with the power of death at his fingertip realizes he's looking at himself in a different uniform, and, deciding he does not have the will to destroy another enemy in this moment, he begins to lower his rifle...The emotion of gratitude in his enemy meets the look of compassion in the soldier who has lowered his rifle as they nod toward each other in acknowledgement and then move off in separate directions to resume the war...
Both survived the war, one in hard fought victory, the other in ignominious defeat...The victor finished the war as his nation's most highly decorated veteran, awarded the highest honors in recognition of his achievements...In later years, during another war the former Private served as an air raid warden, rescuing civilians from their bombed homes...He performed this duty knowing he once had the opportunity to possibly prevent the carnage all around him simply by pulling a trigger on the man who would become the most hated mass-murderer in history...
The soldier whose life was spared during a moment of compassion by his enemy, recalled the event as he recognized the enemy soldier in a photograph of a painting which brought the memory back to vivid life for him...He acknowledged the story to then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during discussions which would lead to the Munich Agreement in a prelude to WWII...Possibly as part of his attempts to appease the power-hungry leader of pre-war Germany, Chamberlain acquiesced to Hitler's request to attempt to convey his greetings to the private on his return to England...
Documentation is sketchy as to how the message was transferred to the former Private Tandey, but during war years he was aware of the coincidence of his battlefield opportunity, and verbally regretted not having the will that day to add Hitler's death to the many other anonymous enemy lives he took during the course of battle...The story is significant in the study of Hitler and his actions which led to the massacre of millions in that he always emphasized, whether in his book, his speeches or in private conversations, that his iron will was what set him apart from others with similar opportunities...
Both men had the opportunity to change history, and one accomplished the goal through his fanatical will to destroy people who existed as enemies only in his tortured mind...Today he is remembered as the murderer of millions who went to his own death only regretting not having killed more...
The other slowly fades from the footnotes of history taking to his death the knowledge that having less compassion and more will for a single moment on a battlefield might have prevented a world conflagration...The chances for such a chain of events were incalculable...
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