Staff Sergeant Darrell Shifty Powers

I have a fairly general rule when it comes to forwarded mails. They are almost immediately thrown into my recycle bin. Partly because I don’t have time to read all of the ones that are sent to me; partly because they are full of bullshit. This one contained the latter:

Darrell “Shifty” Powers was a tremendous man. A war hero, he fought in the Easy Company, 506th PIR during World War II – the group made famous by “Band of Brothers.” Regular readers know I’m an Easy-ophile, and post about them when they make news, so I wanted to read the e-mail forwarded to me (about a dozen times).

I’m not posting it here, but it is a story (possibly true) about a man who met Shifty inside the Philadelphia International Airport. Shifty appeared lost, and the man offered to help him to his plane, They got to talking, the realization of who Shifty was set in on the man, and the man offered Shifty his First Class seat.

Great story, right? Except in its first incarnation, the man who met Shifty was just some guy. Now the man has evolved into Chuck Yeager. Uh-huh. Right. I have no doubt that Shifty was a terrific man, and I have no doubt people admired him, but the whole story – if true at the time – has spun into a (truly) unbelievable tale.

The kicker, for me, is that the story ends with this:

Shifty died on Jan. l7 after fighting cancer.

Bullshit. Shifty died on June 17, 2009. I posted about it at the time, and linked the story (which did not include Chuck Yeager) at the time, too.

The morale of the story? Forwarded e-mails are mostly bullshit, so don’t waste your time sending them to me.