Beyond A Lost Boot

I have an 86 year old neighbor who is about as good as they come. Just seeing him lifts my spirits. My first impression was like something out of boy scout law. You know, friendly, kind, cheerful and so on. He's not a big man, he's slightly built and hunched over. It took a while to get to know him but I'm lucky I do, he truly is a great man.
To start with I've never known anyone his age who was in better mental or physical condition. He rides a bike 60 miles per week and walks every place else. He does most of his shopping using a back pack and he walks to a local high school twice a week to an exercise class. On top of this he cares for his wife who has a serious illness. When asked about her health he replies, "oh her health is fine, she just can't walk all that well." He simply has an unshakable positive attitude.
But if it hadn't been for my neighbors, who have lived here much longer than me, I wouldn't know much about his life because he rarely talks about himself. He is understated in every way.
What the neighbors did tell me was that he was a prisoner of war in Germany in WWll.
Over the years I've managed to fill in some of the details of his experience. In April, 1944 his B24 was shot down with 10 crew members aboard on a bombing run to a ball bearing manufacturing plant in Aschaffenburg. He was the only survivor of the crash. "We were unescorted by fighter aircraft, we were sitting ducks," he said.
He was lucky to have had his parachute on as many of his crew mates did not. After the crash he was rounded up by what he said were farmers carrying shot guns, taken back to a farm house and then turned over to the authorities then taken to Frankfurt. He was finally taken to a prison camp called Stalag Luft 1 where he spent one year before being liberated by Russian troops.
This is about as much as he had told me until last week. I told him that I had seen an episode of Ken Burns new series on WWll. He said he had watched some of it to and it seemed to loosen him up a little bit on the subject. We talked about a few more details when he became slightly more enthusiastic. For the first time I felt that I was hearing something that he felt like telling me.
He said that when he jumped from the aircraft he had lost one boot. He said his suit was heated and his boots were fleece lined which had kept him relatively comfortable. But when he landed he had just one boot on and with the mud and cold it made it even more miserable than it already was.
He said that back at the farmhouse after some time had passed, a young girl came to him. His eyes lit up and he became quite animated. He said that she was carrying his lost boot and she could speak some English and said, "is yours?" which he replied,"yes thank you." This obviously was a pleasant and lasting memory for him.
It's difficult to narrow this down to the single most important thought here so I'll let you come up with your own. I do know that it's timeless and timely to.