My Gramps (an aircraft engineer) went out on the town in Sierra Leone the night before shipping. In the morning he was ill and got left behind by the ship at Cape Town.
Here he got ‘lucky’ on two counts; 1) met a nurse who became his wife and 2) the ship he had previously been on got sank in the Indian Ocean, losing him most of his pals.
On the other side of the family my grampa was a dentist stationed around Egypt. He had all sorts of tales of hijinks, including swimming across the Red Sea with a lit pipe for a bet. Another time he took an unsanctioned adventure “somewhere he shouldn’t have been”.
Obviously in a hot zone during a world war this is a pretty terrible idea and he got shot with the round passing through his lungs and spleen. Due to the multiple mortal injuries he was triaged to be left on the table to die (these injuries typically make you bleed out in minutes), but as it turned out he was an actual Asgardian - when they came over to dispose of his body he was still alive so they ended up operating and he survived.
So from these two mischievous paternal lines stationed in the opposite ends of Africa, both narrowly avoiding death’s touch, comes Jimjam.
Lets keep the memories alive for those who lived through such troubling times weren’t just heroes, they were also people with their own characters: flaws, charm and all.
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