Weekly Wikipedia Find: Dieter Dengler

I wish I was coming upon these entries more randomly (as was my original mandate), instead of featuring some entries that I've actively gone to Wikipedia to look up (i.e. weeks 5,6,13,14,15,16), but we make do with what we have.

Dieter Dengler, former US Navy pilot and Vietnam War POW (actually by the Pathet Leo in Laos), famous (in media) from Werner Herzog's documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and film Rescue Dawn. I came to him by way of Herzog, the latter of which I watched the other day with Christian Bale as the man. Films being films, inspired/based or not, I went to Wikipedia for the true details. Truth by Wikipedia™.

Either way, there was one particular thing in Dieter's entry, something that undoubtedly aided in his time spent as a Prisoner of War:

Dengler had a reputation from his experiences at the Navy survival school, where he had escaped from the mock-POW camp run by Marine guards three times. He had also set a record as the only student to actually gain weight during the course - his childhood experiences made him unafraid of eating whatever he could find and he had feasted on garbage.

It takes a special brand of hero to gain weight during prisoner-of-war survival training.

In conclusion, I like saying "little Dieter needs to fly" in a faux-German accent. A lot.

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