Story Speech

Story Speech

On the take home test, I was preparing to tell a different story than what I will be telling today, but I decided to change my story because of what happened to me last week. Have you ever been afraid to travel by bus because of the sometimes sketchy people you may encounter? It doesn't always work out that way. In fact, I want to tell you about the most interesting man I've ever met, just last week coming back to Cal Poly. He looked harmless so naturally, I choose to sit by him. He was approximately 5'7", probably 130 pounds and 97 years old. Don't kid your self though; he was a SERIOUS bad ass back in the day. And the day I'm talking about is D-Day, World War 2. His name is Bindo, an Italian American paratrooper, who saw more action, and I'm talking about fighting action, then just about any normal soldier in World War 2. I noticed he was proudly wearing a veteran’s cap, so I asked him about it. He stared his story by telling me he was a paratrooper and jumped four different times during the war. He was one of the select few paratroopers dropped the day before D-Day behind enemy lines to create havoc and sabotage the Germans from behind with absolutely no other support coming for days. Surviving that week was unbelievable, he told me he lost a lot of friends and saw some horrible things. But that was just the beginning, later on in the war, fighting under General Anthony McAuliffe in the infamous Battle of the Bulge, who replied to the Germans surrender ultimatum when surrounded & outnumbered, "NUTS." Which back in the day meant bite me. Bindo and his comrades were able to fight there way out against horrible odds. He let me hold the medal he received as a survivor of the battle of the bulge. He was continued to fight till the wars end. But when he finally got back to California, he told me he made a promise to himself that he wouldn't become like so many others that were permanently traumatized from their experiences during the war.  He went...