If not for three smiles, I would not exist. My father was in the battle of Bastogne during WW II. He was deep in a Forrest and the fighting was fierce. One of the soldiers from his platoon had just lost his leg from bomb shrapnel. Dad ran to help him! The soldier was screaming in pain and fear as dad put his rifle against a tree to put the soldier on his back.

Dad had just gotten the soldier to hold around his neck when he saw a tall blond haired German soldier, not 30 yards away from him. Dad thought that he was surely going to be killed. The German soldier lowered his rifle, waved and gave dad a big smile. The German soldier disappeared back in the woods. Dad picked up his rifle and carried the soldier back to the medic. This was the first smile.

Not long after the incident above, dad told me that the German offensive was going in high gear. Dad was in a woods again and the bombs were coming in and hitting everywhere. He said that the sound of the German 88 shells would give him chills.

While dad was in his fox hole, a large bomb struck just a few feet away from him. It went in the ground and raised the earth under his buddy to where his buddy was now on a hump instead of in a fox hole. Thank God the bomb was a dud. Dad found out later that the French bomb factory workers had been sabotaging the German munitions. No doubt that the French worker was smiling as he fixed the bomb to not detonate. This was the second smile.

After the war was over, my dad had a really hard time adjusting to civilian life again. He had lost his military papers that declared his thirty percent disability and the building where the military kept his records conveniently burned down. He couldn't sleep from nightmares about the war and he was having trouble finding a job. He was walking down the sidewalk one day and had decided to end it all.

He had made up his mind to kill himself. With his head hung down while walking, he heard a man say "Hi Russell!" Dad looked up and the man had a big smile on his face. Dad was in old ragged clothes and the man had a pin stripe suit on. Dad didn't even know who the man was. Dad felt his feelings of suicide fall away and went home to mom. This was the third smile. A smile can change the world!