LA Times: Bert Shepard, 87; pilot lost part of leg in WWII, then was signed to MLB team (RR)

In all seriousness, Bert Shepard, along with Elmer Gedeon, Jake Jones, Phil Marchildon, and Jerry Coleman, among many others, are among my heroes…

On his way back from a strafing run about 70 miles northwest of Berlin, Shepard heard radio chatter warning of enemy fire. Flying low, just above a clump of trees, he felt the first shot hit his right foot—“like a sledgehammer,” he said later—and the plane soon crashed into a field.

Shepard woke up in a German hospital, where doctors had amputated his right leg several inches below the knee and treated a serious head wound.

“I pull the sheet back and there’s the leg,” he told The Times in 1995. “I looked up at them and said, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’ ”