This story was told in 2008 on the Today Show. A story about how this veteran's life was forever changed by a simple "thank you".
“I can't tell the story without breaking up,” Vietnam veteran Bud Willis, 67, said of one painful yet inspiring encounter in the Vietnam War. “That moment changed my life.”
In 1966, late in his 14-month tour, Willis was assigned to provide air support for Marines by flying the wounded out of combat areas. An emotionally challenging job, he quickly learned to look straight ahead when picking up injured soldiers.
“I was just a young pilot with no medical experience. I certainly wasn't a hero, because everyone in my squadron was doing those kinds of jobs — because it was a moral obligation." On one particular mission, Willis was ordered to pick up a Marine and take him to a specialized facility that treated life-threatening injuries. The young soldier, no more than 19 years old, was in critical condition. He was missing a leg, an arm, an ear and an eye. To ease the soldier’s pain, the corpsman shot morphine into his remaining leg.
After dropping his passengers off at the local hospital, Willis saw the wounded Marine motion to the crew chief to lean forward so that he could tell him something over the deafening noise of the helicopters. The chief nodded, walked back over to Willis and took a minute to collect himself before relaying the message:
“Captain Willis, do you know what he said to me? He said to 'tell the pilot, thanks for the ride.'"
On the way to their base, Willis said his men, touched by the gratitude, were “all bawling like babies” and praying for the full recovery of the wounded soldier.
“Any man who could see through his own incredible circumstances and still have the presence of mind to say ‘thank you’ still brings tears to my eyes,” Willis said. "It made me want to be like him."
Willis still doesn't know what happened to the wounded Marine. "One of the hardest parts about these medevacs — and one of the things that hit us back home — was that we knew his family was going to have to hear about this, and we knew it long before they did," Willis said. "It was traumatic."
Although Willis admits he doesn’t “re-visit Vietnam a lot,” he hasn't forgotten that experience. From that day on, Willis committed himself to thanking at least one person each day.
“I have told this many times to teary-eyed audiences,” Bud said of his life-changing story. “We should remember to show gratitude and to thank people every day, and to thank God for people like that young Marine.”
Watch the below video which was on air in 2008, as Bud tell his story of what a simple "thank you" did to change his life forever.....
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