Something These Men Could Not Explain

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The boundaries which divide life from death are at best best shadowy and vague.

Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?

That was written by Edgar Allan Poe, and he poses a question which we hope to explore here.

Considering the existence of what seems to be an ever-growing pile of stories to read through, I think it's safe to say that the military and the supernatural have a very close and complicated relationship.

In the chaos of war, where the life of every man, woman, and child hangs in the balance, tales of the extraordinary often emerge.

Some speak of luck or coincidence.

But in the eerie quiet of the aftermath, something unexplained continues to haunt the survivors.

It's not so much a question of why they survived when others died, but who or what was it that kept them alive.

During my time in the Marines, particularly the more dangerous parts of it, I certainly was able to recognize my own mortality in those moments.

And yes, when I had time to think about it, I sincerely hoped that there was some higher power waiting to intervene.

While I don't recall any specific instances where my life was overtly saved by something I couldn't explain, the following stories are from those who do.

From full-bodied apparitions, disembodied voices, and prophetic dreams, these are just a handful of the many incredible stories of people who, in times of war, say that something supernatural stopped them from dying.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

By late 1915, the First World War had been raging for little more than a year, and yet, it was already the most catastrophic conflict Europe had ever seen.

On the fields of Belgium and France, British and French armies clashed with the invading Germans, the two sides quickly getting bogged down in hellish trench warfare.

While fierce fighting stretched all along the 400-mile front line, the area around the Belgian city of Ypres proved to be especially deadly in the war's early stages.

Surrounded on three sides, the Allies had, by the end of 1915, fought off two German assaults, the combined casualties on both sides totaling over 200,000.

In the second attack, launched in April of that year, mustard gas would be employed for the first time by German forces.

Despite the brutality of this new weapon, as thousands of men died in horrible agony, the British forces still clung to the battered city.

Among the ranks of the exhausted British troops was a young lieutenant of the 3rd Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment by the name of William Spate.

On a chilly December night in 1915, Lieutenant Spate found himself sitting in a front-line dugout, trying to keep keep warm during his late-night rotation on watch.

The young officer was in a particularly down mood, having lost a good friend and fellow officer to enemy fire earlier that day.

Since the name of Lieutenant Spate's friend wasn't recorded in his account, we will call him Edward.

While silently mourning Edward's death, the young lieutenant was caught off guard by another officer making his way into the dugout.

As the man walked into the dim glow of the dugout's one burning candle, Lieutenant Spate was shocked to see the face of Edward staring back at him.

As quickly as the ghost of his friend had arrived, the apparition vanished, leaving Spate greatly unsettled.

Despite his fellow officers insisting that the apparition was the byproduct of rattled nerves, fatigue, and the trauma of losing his close friend, Spate was convinced that what he saw was not merely a hallucination.

It was supernatural.

Perhaps feeling sorry for him, another officer agreed to stay up with Spate the following night.

The young lieutenant was hoping to catch another glimpse of his ghostly friend.

But this time, things would take a far more chilling turn.

Much to the surprise of both Spate and the officer standing watch with him, Edward would return the following night.

The two stunned men watched as his ghost simply walked into the dugout, stopped at one place, and then slowly extended his arm to point at the dirt floor.

Then, he once again vanished into thin air.

After the men had composed themselves, both of them in a state of shock after watching a man disappear in front of them, Lieutenant Spate stood up.

He immediately called a few other soldiers over with their trench shovels and told them to start digging in the spot where the ghost of Edward had just pointed to.

Ignoring the sheer strangeness of the whole situation, Spate just couldn't shake the thought that Edward was trying to tell him something very important.

There was a reason he had been pointing to that spot on the ground.

As they dug deeper, he realized what that was.

After digging down about three feet into the floor of the dugout, the men uncovered something shocking.

The Germans, it seemed, had been tunneling their way beneath the British lines.

and planting large amounts of explosives right under their feet.

To their horror, the explosives appeared to be fully wired and could be detonated remotely, possibly at any second.

The alarm was raised immediately, and the section of trench was quickly evacuated.

The explosives were then disarmed and removed without incident.

Everyone wanted to credit Lieutenant Spate for discovering the explosives and saving the lives of the men, but Spate knew differently.

In spite of all his reason and logic, his military training and experience as a leader, all of which told him to think rationally and not give in to superstition and hysteria, Lieutenant Spate never doubted once that the ghost of his friend Edward was the one who had saved them.

What do you think, sir?

Hmm.

We will stick to the usual path, Sergeant.

I don't think Command wants us wandering too far on these patrols.

Yes, sir, understood.

Not from here.

Hmm?

What was that, Sergeant?

Sir?

Didn't you say something just now?

Oh, no.

No, sir.

Hmm.

Must have been the wind.

Alright, let's get the men moving.

Ah,

Sergeant, perhaps it is best if we do not move from here.

But sir, if we go back that way, tell the men to move back.

While the Great War played host to many cases of what some would consider divine intervention, this phenomenon is by no means unique to European battlefields or Western militaries.

Wars have been indiscriminately fought across the globe.

in every country and region of the world, and it would seem that protecting spirits do not discriminate between one war and the next.

This next account was written by an Indian man named Hrishikesh and was shared online in a forum discussing wartime paranormal experiences.

In it, he tells two stories, one of his grandfather, a former soldier in the Indian Army's Maratha Light Infantry Regiment, and another from his grandmother, both set during India's border scuffles with China during the early 1960s.

He writes,

I heard this from my grandfather on my mother's side.

He served in the Indian Army's Maratha Light Infantry Regiment and fought in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and 1971, as well as the Indo-China War of 1962.

These two instances happened in 1962.

He was leading a platoon for a Reke patrol.

They were somewhere in northeast India where they were to meet a returning patrol party who had been long overdue.

There were Chinese hidden in the dense forest waiting to ambush the unsuspecting patrols.

There was a shorter route that went through not so dense forest with good visibility and then a longer route with dense forest that was rarely used.

Oblivious to the Chinese trap, the platoon, led by my grandpa, took the usual route.

Suddenly,

he felt a tap on his shoulder, and a commanding voice whispered,

not from here.

He just ignored it and marched forward.

This time it was even stronger, and the command boomed in his ears, I said, not from here.

He stopped in his tracks, and was reconsidering what to do when the Chinese saw that they were not falling for the ambush and started firing on them.

Immediately the returning patrol also joined them in a retaliatory fire and the Chinese fled being outnumbered.

The other platoon commander reported there were unconfirmed reports of an ambush but they could not come back on time as their only jeep had failed on the way.

Their radio had also failed, so they set off on foot to reach the base.

Them fending off the ambush saved not only his platoon, but also helped in defending that sector of land for quite some time.

The second half of Hrishikesh's post details another account from his grandfather's service during the Indo-China border war, this time told from the perspective of his grandmother.

After being saved by the the direct intervention of supernatural forces, Khrushikesh's grandfather would find himself aiding with supply drops to the army's most remote outposts, scattered around the vast northern mountains.

During one of these flights, he would be shot down over enemy territory.

When they received the news, his family believed that he had died in the crash.

However, Khrushchev's grandmother knew something they didn't.

While everyone around her started to mourn the loss of her husband, she said that something,

or someone,

was telling her that he was still alive.

While dropping food and supplies on the Indochina border post, my grandpa was in a small plane called the Packet.

They had been flying low to facilitate the drop.

The Chinese had captured the post.

and were waiting for the supplies to arrive.

They had not removed the Indian flag from from the post, so no one knew that the post had been captured.

After they dropped their cargo, the Chinese began firing on the plane and hit the rudder.

The plane lost control and crashed in some dense forest below.

The pilot managed to report that they had been hit, but searches of the area yielded no result.

Assuming that the plane fell over the Chinese side and all four occupants were dead, they sent my grandpa's belongings back home.

My granny was in shock.

When family and neighbors gathered, they all started the rituals of cracking her bangles and removing the vermilion on her forehead.

She stubbornly stopped them and said that, I'm not a widow yet.

He will come back.

And after a couple of days, the unit sent a telegram saying he had indeed been found and was safe.

My granny said that she heard the voice of her deceased mother saying,

you are not widowed yet.

Don't allow them to treat you as one.

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Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

As many of you know, Mr.

Ballin and Balin Studios have been a huge help in bringing this podcast to life.

And if you'd like to believe you are something of a storytelling connoisseur, then you need to check out Mr.

Balin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.

Each week, Mr.

Balin weaves gripping tales of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, diving into true crime, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal events that keep you on the edge of your seat.

Mr.

Balin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, is available on all podcast platforms, and it is free, just like ours.

There are hundreds of episodes available to binge right now, with new episodes twice a week.

Go listen to the Mr.

Balin podcast today.

This next story takes place thousands of miles away and nearly 40 years later, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to the events described by Hrishikesh's family.

This account, shared online by a man named Roland Bartetsko, describes a similar instance in which someone unseen evidently saved the life of his friend.

The story finds us in the 1999 Kosovo War, a regional conflict that saw the Serbian forces of Yugoslavia clash with the ethnically Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.

While the war was small in scale, it was defined by its brutality and ethnic violence, prompting NATO forces to intervene with a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

As Roland's friend, a young woman named Spresa, fled her hometown in Kosovo alongside other refugees.

He describes the events that followed.

When the war had come to her small village in the north of Kosovo, she and her family packed a few belongings and

left their home.

She had become a refugee, like more than half of the population.

Everybody wanted to get out of the country as quickly as possible.

Her family's neighbor had a tractor and invited her family to put their bags, their small children, and the elderly on the tractor's trailer.

At the time, my friend was 18

and therefore she had to walk alongside the tractor.

They soon met more refugees and formed a long column.

In the late afternoon,

she suddenly heard a voice shouting her name, Spressa, get down, and again, Spressa, get down.

She

let herself fall to the ground.

At this moment,

Serbian machine guns started opening fire on

the refugee convoy.

She heard the bullets sipping over her head and hitting the tractor and trailer.

There were screams everywhere around her.

People were dying.

After only a few seconds,

the machine gun fire had ebbed down.

The few survivors got up and started looking for their loved ones.

Every person that had been sitting on the tractor or the trailer

was

badly injured or dead.

My friend was the only survivor of her family.

It was the voice that had come out of nowhere that had saved her life.

She was never completely sure

who had been shouting her name and told her to get down.

But she told me that at the critical moment, she thought

that it was

her grandfather who had called her.

She had always loved her grandfather and felt very close to him.

However,

the old man had died two years before the outbreak of the war.

I just don't understand how anyone can believe in these kinds of things.

Miracles, divine intervention.

It doesn't make sense.

People put all this faith in things that can't be logically proven.

It's just blind belief.

But that's where you're wrong, Mijo.

You say miracles can't be proven.

But sometimes, the proof isn't written in a textbook.

Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham had faith in God's promise to give him a son.

He didn't just believe blindly.

His wife was 90, and he was 100 when Isaac was born.

He saw with his own eyes what God had promised to do.

And from that, It says that he reasoned that God could do anything.

Reason?

You're saying this Abraham guy reasoned, but what do you mean by that?

His reasoning was that he believed in something that was completely outside of logic.

What proof do we have that Abraham even existed?

Sounds like a fairy tale to me.

What is it that makes you trust the men whose books you read?

That's easy.

The difference is that these men, these philosophers, these scientists, they base their ideas on evidence.

They don't ask you to blindly accept things that can't be proven.

They use logic, reason, and observation to make conclusions.

Their theories are tested, challenged, and refined over time.

You can't just accept something because someone says it's true.

So,

you believe these men are wise and truthful?

Because even if one textbook had more than, say,

40 different authors, their wisdom remains consistent.

And you can see that wisdom is true, no matter who is teaching it.

Exactly.

These men aren't asking for blind trust.

They provide frameworks that can be questioned, debated, and refined.

They put their ideas to the test, through experiments, through logic.

And we, the students, are encouraged to challenge them.

Even the disciples asked questions when they did not understand something.

Tell me, Francis.

Do you think anyone could simply pick up your textbook and understand the wisdom it contains by reading it?

Well, no, of course not.

It's taken me years to study it.

And I asked my professors loads of questions, took exams, wrote reports.

But, Maria, even you could understand it if you just took the time to read it and study with teachers like I have.

That is very true, Mijo.

Wisdom is something God calls treasure.

Proverbs says that it is something that you have to earnestly search for, like silver.

You have found one kind of wisdom, but even your reasoning and logic must tell you that there are different kinds,

but

there is only one

that gives life

Well, Maria, I may not agree with you on everything, but you sure know how to carry a conversation

This final account was written by a Vietnam veteran by the name of Francis E.

Kazimak not long after his tour of duty in the early 1970s.

Despite being what he considers a man of logic and reason, he has no explanation to offer for a vivid dream he had while deployed.

A dream that he believes was a message from a departed friend.

A dream that offered him both comfort and assurance during such a brutal conflict, and one that he says he owes his life to.

He titled his story, My Friend, Maria.

I attended the University of the Americas in Mexico City during the 1967-68 school year.

I was a junior majoring in philosophy.

Logic and dialectic were the tools with which I proved and examined all statements and beliefs.

I believed man's power, indeed his very humanity, revolved around his ability to reason.

Accordingly, I scorned anything that smacked of the irrational, including religious experiences of extraordinary nature, psychic phenomena, and out-of-body experiences.

During the Christmas vacation of 1967, some friends and I rented a villa in the seaside town of Playa Azul.

This Pacific Ocean town is approximately 200 miles north of Acapulco.

Our live-in maid and cook was a woman named Maria Sanchez, a charming, although quiet and serious woman of about 55 years.

Because of a severe sunburn, I spent most of the vacation relaxing in the villa, and I got to know Maria rather well.

Although she had little formal schooling, she possessed a quick wit and keen sense of observation.

Our long talks ranged freely from topic to topic.

She was deeply religious and told me many stories of miracles and visions.

I dismissed these tales as local folklore.

She firmly maintained that she herself had seen visions.

I laughed and told her she had an overactive imagination.

After I returned to the United States, I occasionally wrote Maria a short letter or postcard.

She answered regularly with long, carefully written letters.

Then in 1970, I was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam.

My faith in reason was shattered by the hell I found there.

This is what rational men do?

I asked myself.

In September 1970, I was wounded and sent to the regimental hospital.

I was in a state of deep depression and knew that I would never survive my tour of duty.

I was certain I would be killed or crippled, or that I would freak out.

One night, I had the most vivid dream of my life.

In the dream, I was sitting on the beach in my uniform with my rifle by my side.

Maria sat by me silently and brushed the top of my head with her hand.

Her cool, soothing palm on my forehead filled me with a wonderful peace.

I awoke the next morning feeling calm and somehow confident that everything would turn out for the best.

I immediately sat down and wrote Maria a letter.

I later returned to duty, strangely purged of my depression.

A few months later, in late December, I received a letter from Maria's daughter, Graciela Moises.

She apologized for not having written sooner.

She said that her mother had been very fond of me and had often spoken about me.

Her mother, she told me, had died in September, which would have been around the same time

that I had that very vivid dream.

I am certain that our friendship somehow transcended those barriers of time and space

in a manner that cannot be explained logically or rationally.

I still think about Maria often

because she is the reason I survived.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Whit Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddam.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Cloxen-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.