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(NOVEMBER 07, 2021) VETERAN OF THE DAY – Today, we honor Alexander Jefferson, Army Fighter Pilot, 100 on Nov. 15, Detroit, Michigan When Alexander Jefferson was shot down over Nazi-occupied Southern France on Aug. 12, 1944, he’d never parachuted before, though he’d flown 18 combat missions with the 332nd fighter group, part of the famed African American pilots and support personnel who became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Jefferson remembered to let the plane pass him before pulling the ripcord. “Otherwise, the parachute can get tied up in the plane and you’ll get dragged to your death.”Bruised and scraped, but with “nothing broken,” he landed — in a tree. Hearing German, “being black,” and knowing the Nazis’ racism, “I said, ‘Oh, brother, here we go. . . ’” Of his eight months’ captivity with fellow American pilots in desegregated quarters, he remembers decent food from the Red Cross and adequate medical care. He and fellow pilots visited Dachau immediately after the liberation; he remembers piles of bodies. “Man’s inhumanity to man. . . I can’t even describe it,” he said. “Everything you hear is true.” Jefferson became a grade-school science teacher, assistant principal, and author of a memoir, “Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free.”#donate “Every Day is Memorial Day” The Greatest GENERATIONS FoundationWeb: www.TGGF.org