The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 110: The Man Who Ran Away

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

When the shooting started this patriot ran for his life.

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This is the way I heard it. May 6, 1954, the man who ran away had no idea who pulled the trigger. All he knew for sure was that the unbearable tension had been shattered by a gunshot that rang out across the windy field, a shot that sent him bolting in the opposite direction. You never really know how people will react to gunfire until the shooting starts, even those with training. Some will freeze, some will charge ahead. Some will soil themselves. And others, like the man in uniform, sprinting madly across the field, will simply run for their lives.

Not the kind of reaction you'd expect from a self-described patriot, but the eyewitness accounts are clear. The lad bolted the moment he heard the shot. And yet, as he ran, his thoughts were of his countrymen and victory. He thought about the Lutwaffe and the Blitzkrieg. He was too young to have fought in the Second World War, but old enough to remember the hell that Hitler unleashed upon his people. Old enough to remember Churchill's vow to fight the Nazis on the beaches and the airfields and on the landing grounds. Old enough to remember the pride on his father's face when he and his fellow Englishmen transformed certain defeat into their finest hour. truth is, the man who ran away on that fateful day had always considered himself to be a patriot.

That's why he had volunteered. That's why he was in uniform that morning, waiting for orders, hoping to do his country proud. But now, minutes after that first shot, he was still running, running away as fast as his legs could carry him, running away until his heart beat over 200 times a minute and the blood pounded in his ears like a drum. on the field of battle. Moments before he collapsed, his breath came in ragged, tortured gasps, as his peripheral vision began to fade, but still on he ran, desperate to put as much distance as possible between himself and the chaos behind him. Finally, moments before his heart threatened to explode from his chest, his legs gave out beneath him, and the man in uniform fell to the

ground, utterly spent, his body twitching with painful spasms, no doubt wondering if a bullet in the back might have been a more merciful end, after all. That's how they found him, curled up on the ground, unable to speak, a breathless wreck who would forever be remembered as the man who ran from the sound of a single gunshot. And yet this same man eventually became a lieutenant in the royal medical Corps. And a few years after that, this same lieutenant, now a respected neurosurgeon, was officially knighted by the Queen of England. On that occasion, a reporter asked him, as they always did, to explain why he ran on that fateful day. The doctor made no excuses. He simply said, we were still reeling from the Second World War, don't you know, still on food rations,

still not quite ourselves as a people. I just wanted to do something for my country. May 6, 1954. No one remembers who pulled the trigger, but no one there will ever forget the three minutes and 59.4 seconds that followed. Because that's how long it took for an Englishman to reunite the United Kingdom.

For exactly three minutes and 59.4 seconds, there were no politicians in Great Britain, no Protestants or Catholics, no Muslims or Jews, no Hindus, no Hindus, no atheists, no blacks, no whites, no Tory, no labor. For three minutes and 59.4 glorious seconds, they were all just Britons, watching and wonder, as one man in uniform reminded them of who they were as a nation. It was a remarkable moment to witness. At a time when athletes around the world were competing for individual glory, this 25-year-old medical student decided to make his country great again, not with a hashtag or a lecture or a sideline protest, but with a victory, a breathtaking victory that redefined the last night.

Limits of human endurance, and in the process reminded everybody that athletes are at their most persuasive when they stay in their lane and allow their accomplishments to speak for themselves. That's the enduring legacy of an Englishman who ran away from a gunshot, a shot fired from a starting pistol. the same shot that sent him bolting into the history books as the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. The Englishman who ran away faster than anyone had ever run before. Sir Roger Bannister. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters.

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