"Courage is doing
what you're afraid of doing."
Daredevil. Defier
of death. That was Eddie Rickenbacker. He raced cars before World War I,
competing in the Indianapolis 500 four times. Never mind that he started as a
lowly mechanic with only a sixth-grade education, this man set a world record
of 134 miles an hour in 1916.
His
childhood? It was tough. He sold newspapers on street corners when he was five.
To heat the family home, Rickenbacker's parents sent him out to the railroad
tracks to hunt for coal that fell off trains.
During the
Great War, he became America's "Ace of Aces," shooting down 22 German
planes. Never mind that he entered the war as a chauffeur for General Pershing.
He wasn't a
college grad like the pilots, and at 22 he was two years over the age limit to
be a pilot. Other fliers loathed him for his vulgarity, fame, and insistence on
personally checking out his plane and its guns before every combat mission.
Gentlemen didn't do such things.
Fight Like a Wildcat
How did he
get 22 kills? (Actually, he had 26, when including shoot-downs of four German
balloons.) He called his strategy "planned recklessness."
"I've
cheated the Grim Reaper more times than anyone I know," Rickenbacker said,
"And I'll fight like a wildcat until they nail the lid of my pine box down
on me."
Truer words
were never spoken. This was a man who was in two horrendous air crashes in two
consecutive years.
In February
1941, he was flying on Eastern Airlines. He happened to be the company's
president and ran it well from 1935 to 1960, except on this particular day when
he was a passenger on a DC-3 that crashed on its approach to the Atlanta
airport. Rickenbacker's injuries? A shattered pelvis, a fractured skull, a
broken knee, a shattered left elbow, six broken ribs, a broken leg, and one of
his eyelids was nearly ripped off.
Nonetheless,
he not only remained conscious but comforted injured passengers, telling them
not to give up hope, though he was trapped in the wreckage.
"Courage
is doing what you're afraid of doing," Rickenbacker was fond of saying.
"There can be no courage unless you are scared."
The
ambulance crews ignored him, thinking he was dead. When he was finally taken to
the hospital, the doctors thought he was dead, too, and they did the same.
Nearly a
year and a half later, he had a limp, but otherwise he so fit that President
Roosevelt sent him on a secret mission to meet with General MacArthur. (The
purpose? To rip MacArthur a new one because of his criticisms of FDR's wartime
leadership.)
His B-17
went hundreds of miles off course due to a faulty navigation system. It crashed
deep in the Pacific far from shipping lanes.
Snapped Its Neck
Rickenbacker
was one of eight men on two tiny rafts. Their food? They had to make four
oranges last for days. No water. Rickenbacker, of course, put himself in charge
of distributing the segments of the oranges. On the eighth day, when a seagull
made the unfortunate mistake of landing on his head, he grabbed it, snapped its
neck, plucked its feathers, tore out its guts, and divvied up its meat.
The other
men hated him. He literally would not let them die. He said cruel things to
them to make them ashamed of wanting death to come
One night,
he heard a man praying aloud, wishing that God would let him die. Rickenbacker snapped,
"He answers men's prayers. Not
that stuff." And when someone moaned in agony, he said, "When we get
out of this, you better crawl home to the women where you belong!"
Seven survived.
The one who did not drank sea water. When they were rescued after 24 sun baked, agonizing days, some of the men
never even thanked him. He was cruel, but he wouldn't let anyone quit in a
seemingly hopeless situation.
Rickenbacker
was an incredible lifelong optimist. "If you think about disaster, you
will get it," he said. "Think positively and masterfully with
confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action,
richer in achievement and experience. This is the sure way to win victories
over inner defeat."
He was
meticulous in every aspect of his life—except in the wild fearlessness of his combat
flying. Said Rickenbacker: "I can give you a six-word formula for success:
Think things through—then follow through."
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