(This video shows actual footage of WWII. Lou was aboard one of these ships when he was shot at by the Japanese.)

Make sure you read Part I first~click this link:

Do you believe in Angels ? (Part I)

Lou’s story:

It was a hot summer night, in the summer of 1982. Lou was an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) for the town’s police department. He drove an old station wagon with jump seats because back then, this was the type of police vehicle used for responding to emergency calls.

The night started out like any other. Lou was alone (he didn’t usually work with a partner) when the dispatcher alerted him to news of a car crash. The accident happened in a densely populated area by the state forest. It was in the southern part of the town, where there were few street lights. Lou knew the area well and expected the area to be very dark, even in the bright summer moonlight.

He was the first one on the scene.

He spotted the two door car right away because it was billowing smoke. He pulled his car off to the side of the road, swung open his door and ran to the totaled vehicle, no longer a car but mangled metal. Only one door, the driver’s side door, was approachable. The passenger side was cemented to the trunk of a large tree, looking like it had been “swallowed” by the old tall fir.

There was steam coming out of the hood and it bothered Lou that he couldn’t see any movement inside. Peering into the window, he saw a woman in her thirties,conscious and bleeding on the car floor. She was lying on her back and moaning. Lou saw she was trapped because her left foot was stuck under the clutch.

Lou had to get the woman out of the car quickly because he feared the car might ignite at any moment. Risking his own life to save the victim, he struggled with the car door but it was cemented shut. He fought with it, using the strength of a marine, but the car door refused to open. Lou wasn’t distracted by the symphony of sirens and the blue and red swirling lights, rapidly approaching. The police cruisers and fire engines had come to assist and were forming a circle around the accident, making a barricade. They were also blocking the road so no curious townies could get in.

A stranger appeared:

As Lou struggled to pry the door open, he felt a hand rest on his left shoulder. Startled, he turned his head and saw a short, stout woman, barefoot and Lou guessed she couldn’t have been taller than five feet, two inches. He remembers that she had unusually large arms for a woman and was wearing a long dress. Her short, black hair that reminded him of a popular cartoon character, Betty Boop, because it was cut in flapper style with her wavy bangs, bowl shaped, framing her very fair skin. He can’t remember her face, only in his opinion, her face was homely. Staring at her, Lou wondered how she made it through the barricade but didn’t have long to ponder. As quickly as she had appeared out of nowhere, she pushed Lou one side telling him in a calm voice; “Move over love…”

In a split second, he watched the strange woman pull the car door off, using only one hand! Then Lou quickly moved in, working hard to free the woman’s foot in order to pull her out of the steaming wreckage. Just as Lou began pulling the victim, he could feel the car slowly moving backwards. As the car pulled away, it’s force caused Lou to fall backwards onto the ground, bringing the injured woman with him. While lying on his back, with the victim still lying on top of him, both saw that the car was now fifteen feet away and they watched the car ignite into flames. Lou said the explosion seemed to shake the whole forest.

Watching the fiery flames, questions ran through his head: “How was it that the car was no longer “swallowed” by the tree?” ” How could it have rolled away like that?” Lou couldn’t answer these questions. All he knew, was that he and the victim were lucky. If the car hadn’t rolled away, they both would have burned to death.

So, then what happened?

Both Lou and the woman suffered minor burns and injuries and were brought to the hospital but before Lou left the scene or would agree to get into the ambulance, he needed to speak with his good friend, also assisting at the scene, the town’s Captain of the Fire Department .

Lou: “Where did the lady go?”

Captain: “What lady?”

Lou: “The lady! (Lou was annoyed) She was short, fat, arms like Hulk… You had to have seen her!…She ripped the door off so I could get the victim out.”

Captain: “Lou, you’ve got some bad burns around your head…Maybe you bumped your head too…There was no lady. No way could anyone get in, not even by foot. It’d be impossible, Lou…We had the car surrounded… none could get by us…Get in the buggy…Go…Get checked out, Lou….You did good work tonight…now go and take care of yourself…”

Lou got in the ambulance, feeling like he might be going crazy. He thought to himself; “Oh boy…I must be losing it…it must be all the adrenaline…maybe the smoke…”

He tried putting the strange sighting out of his mind. He wanted to believe the Captain. Maybe it was the fall…How else could you explain it?

At the hospital

Lou was quickly checked out and told he could be released. Sitting in a wheelchair by the emergency door, his head was wrapped in bandages and he was fighting the worst head ache of his life. (Well, almost the worst. He told me it wasn’t as bad as the headache he got during World War II, aboard the Navy Sea Vessel…The Japanese aircraft had hovered over head..then a spray of bullets showered the ship…one had lodged in his head…that was worst headache of his life.)

Staring out the window, he was so focused, looking for his wife, that he didn’t even see the tall stranger walk out of the elevator and approach him from behind.

“So, here you are! The town’s newest hero!”

Lou turned his head slightly, straining to peer over his shoulder to see whose voice was greeting him. The man could see Lou’s discomfort, and quickly moved in front of his wheel chair and extended his hand. As the two men shook hands, the stranger introduced himself. He was the husband of the victim Lou had saved. She was being admitted and asked her husband to find Lou in order to thank him for rescuing her.

Lou: “No need to thank me. How is she?”

Stranger: “She’s going to be okay…They’re admitting her and she’s sore… but she’ll be okay.”

Lou: “I’m glad to hear it.”

Stranger: “Could I get the name and address of the woman who helped you save my wife? We both would like to send her flowers as a thank you.”

Lou was shocked. This man’s wife saw the woman too? The Captain had been wrong? He wasn’t going crazy? The short woman was real, just like Lou believed she had been real?

This news made him uncomfortable, but it also validated his feelings. As incredible as it seemed…as impossible as it was to break through any barricade made with engines, cruisers and officers…The strange woman had been there…Lou knew it had to be true!…The victim saw her too!…What a relief!

Lou: “What did your wife tell you about this woman?”

Stranger: “She only said that the woman appeared out of nowhere and it was so fast she couldn’t get a good look at her. All she noticed was that she was very fat, had dark hair and was able to pull the car door off. She couldn’t believe the woman’s strength! Then she said she saw you, and as you were pulling her out, she felt the car moving backward and then she fell on top of you. She heard the explosion and saw the car fire, but the woman who helped you was gone.”

Lou: “That’s how it happened…I don’t know who the woman was. When we fell out of the car, we saw the explosion…but like your wife said…By that time, the woman was gone.”

By this point of the conversation, Lou’s wife had arrived. Racing through the hospital’s electric door, she spotted her husband and her expression quickly changed from worry to relief. Smiling, she raced to her husband, threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. She hadn’t yet acknowledging the stranger who was smiling, watching their warm reunion, when Lou pointed to the stranger and introduced him to his wife. The three lingered for a few more minutes, exchanged small talk, then parted ways.

Later:

Lou said when he returned to work, he told his story to his police buddies but they didn’t believe him. After hearing the story, most of them, if not all, shaked their heads and teased him. “Must have gotten a pretty good bump there on your noggin, Lou! …Seeing ghosts in the forests?…”Maybe you need a vacation.”

Even his wife had a hard time believing him, so Lou decided not to talk about it again. But he did talk to his sister, the nun. She believed him and so did the bishop. Lou didn’t care what the others thought because he knew it had happened.

“How else can you explain the victim seeing her too?”, Lou asked me.

I just shook my head, taking it all in, not knowing what to say. But I knew my friend and he was intelligent, brave and not crazy. So, I wanted to believe what he was telling me.

Today:

To this day, Lou thinks about that night, convinced that he had witnessed something that was bizarre and inexplicable. Damn all the skeptics; he knows what he saw…

As sure as he was shot in the head, hip and arm by enemy fire during World War II…As sure as he had heard the aircraft overhead… only a boy, age sixteen, who lied about his age so he could go to war for his country… As sure as he remembers anxiously waiting to launch and fight his first battle off the shores of Peleliu…As sure as he can roll up his shirt sleeve to show me his scars, made from all the bullets.

He points one scar out to me as the one that is different from the rest. “See this one?”, Lou asks me. “This one went through my arm and see?” Lou shows me how he can’t move three of his fingers on his left hand. The bullets left his young fingers paralyzed….young fingers, now old and curled from arthritis…

As sure as he lived through that hot September night during the war…He lived through another hot summer night in 1982…

Lou remembers the stranger’s touch, her push, her words (“Move out of the way, love.”) and her strength. If he imagined it, then…

” How do you explain the victim seeing her too?”

I just shook my head again and shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t have the answer.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else believes…

Lou believes…On a hot summer night back in 1982…

He had seen an angel.

How would you explain it?

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.” ~George Eliot

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