THE GREATEST GIFT WIFE'S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE REUNITES HUSBAND WITH WWII LIFESAVER

I have been meaning to post this awesome story about my grandfather. I figure that today, September 11th, would be a good day to commemorate some of those who have sacrificed so much for our freedom and our country. May we always keep those heroes in our remembrance, pray for those still with us, especially those who are overseas, and for their incredible families. May we all do our part in preserving our freedoms, faith, and families. Support our troops. Be an educated citizen. Vote. Preserve the family. Be a true leader. There are so many ways to make a difference. The power of one is incredible. Here is the story of one such an individual.

"It was one heck of a present that Louise Apperson got her husband, Lloyd, for his 83rd birthday this year.

Finding the buddy who had saved his life 58 years ago in World War II.

Mike Booker is his name, and he was sitting down to have lunch on his farm in Davenport, Wash., on May 15 when the phone rang. It was a woman named Louise, calling from Reseda, Calif.

``Are you Mike Booker?'' she asked.

``Yes,'' he said.

``Did you serve in World War II?''

``Yes.''

``Were you in St-Lo, France?''

``I sure was!''

``Do you remember Lloyd Apperson?''

``Are you kidding?'' Booker shouted. ``I've been looking for him most of my life.''

Louise closed her eyes and smiled. After years of searching unsuccessfully through library phone books and records from all over the country, it took just a few minutes on an Internet Web site to find the right Mike Booker.


"Could you hang on a moment, Mike?'' she asked.

Then Louise walked the phone into the next room and handed it to her husband, sitting in his favorite chair watching TV.

``Happy birthday, honey,'' she said.

They met soon after the D-Day invasion and became friends - a couple of young GIs sitting in their foxholes at night talking about their families back home, and what they wanted to do with their lives if they ever got out of the war alive.

Lloyd was 25, Mike, 20, and they had were lead scouts for the Army's I Company, 357th Infantry, 90th Division - one of the most dangerous jobs in the service.

``We had become good buddies by the time we found ourselves closing in on a huge battle at St-Lo,'' Lloyd said. ``We were scouting ahead of the front line, and Mike was a few steps ahead of me.

``A German soldier raised up across the field and began firing at us. I took my last grenade and threw it at him.''

Lloyd scored a perfect hit, but what he and Mike didn't know was that in some brush near a chateau up ahead, German soldiers in a mortar and machine gun placement were watching their every move.

``They zeroed in on us,'' Lloyd said. ``One of the shells landed about five feet from us. I was left full of holes and helpless.''

Mike got hit in the back with some shrapnel, but he quickly saw his buddy was worse off.

``I crawled over to Lloyd and asked if he could move,'' Mike said. ``He said 'Some,' but then I heard a bolt go click, and knew there was a sniper nearby ready to finish us both off if we got up and tried to make it back to safety.

``We were behind a hedge grove and I told Lloyd that we were OK as long as we stayed low,'' Mike said.

He told Lloyd to crawl onto his back, wrap his arms around his neck, and hang on. Mike was going to belly crawl his buddy the 100 or so yards back to safety.

``Mike had been a football player in high school, and I thank God every day that he was,'' Lloyd said. ``He had shrapnel in his back and me on top of it. It had to hurt like hell.

``He could have left me to save himself, but he didn't. He crawled with me on his back. The bullets from the German snipers sounded like bees buzzing all around us.''

Mike got Lloyd back to safety, leaving him sheltered by a hedge grove before rejoining his company in a fierce battle for St-Lo.

``See you soon, buddy,'' Mike said.

They never saw one another again.

Louise Apperson couldn't remember the last time she had seen her husband cry. But Lloyd was crying now, on his 83rd birthday, as he talked on the phone. So was Mike.

Not a week has gone by in their lives for the past 58 years that they didn't think about each other, the men said. Didn't wonder whether the other had made it home alive.

Not every day, of course, because they had to move on with their lives like all the GIs coming home. They had careers to start and families to support.

But when a guy saves your life or when you save his, you don't ever forget him.

``I told Lloyd I was hit by shrapnel again in the Battle of the Bulge and busted up my ankle, so I was sent to England and then back home,'' Mike said.

Lloyd told his buddy he was picked up by an Army patrol after Mike left him behind. They took him to a farmhouse where a doctor gave him three pints of blood and a 50-50 chance of surviving.

``They moved me from a M-A-S-H unit back to England, then decided my leg would never be well enough to go back to the front,'' Lloyd said.

He still has 32 pieces of shrapnel in his body and two artificial knees that keep him laid up and homebound.

Mike, now 78, is homebound, too, he said. Neither man can travel, and it's driving them crazy because there's nothing these two old war buddies would rather do right now than have the chance to hug each other.

But they can't get closer than a telephone call, and that's what they've been doing two or three times a week since Lloyd's birthday.

``They never run out of things to talk about - from their families and old jobs to what's going on in the country today,'' Louise says.

She says she'd like to meet Mike, too, because in many ways he also saved her life and gave her a future.

While Lloyd was fighting in France, she was pregnant with their first child and working part time as a bookkeeper for a local department store.

One day a man walked into the store looking for her. He handed her a telegram and left before she could rip it open.

``We regret to inform you your husband Lloyd Apperson has been ...'' it began.

She felt her knees go weak and thought she would fall. But the man who owned the store held her up until she got to the next word in the telegram.

``I thought it was going to say 'killed,' but instead it said 'seriously wounded,''' Louise said. ``It's strange to say now but I felt good, relieved.

``Lloyd wasn't dead. He was alive and coming home. We would have a family, a life together.''

Because of a guy named Mike Booker.

Yeah, that was a heck of a present Louise Apperson got her husband, Lloyd, for his 83rd birthday."

By DENNIS McCarthy