20 m off the coast of southern France, flight officer Robert Anderson Hoover treads water in the freezing Mediterranean Sea. Blood seeps from shrapnel wounds in his leg. His parachute tangles around him like seaweed trying to drag him under. Above his supermarine spitfire cartwheels into the waves with a sickening splash, disappearing beneath the surface forever. It’s February 9th, 1944.

 3:47 p.m. and the 22-year-old American pilot has exactly 4 hours before hypothermia kills him. This is his 59th combat mission with the fourth fighter squadron 52nd fighter group based in Sicily. Four fuckwolf W190s ambushed his flight of Spitfires over nice. A fair fight except Hoover’s Mark 5 had been suffering mechanical problems since takeoff.

 When the German fighters pounced, his malfunctioning engine couldn’t generate the power he needed. Within minutes, 20 mmer cannon shells ripped through his cockpit. One FW190 pilot, likely Sigfrieded Lumpky of Yagdashwatter 2, pressed his attack until Hoover’s Spitfire was a flying coffin trailing smoke and hydraulic fluid.

 Hoover yanked the canopy release and bailed out at 8,000 ft, watching helplessly as his wingman, flight officer Hugh Montgomery, spiraled down in flames. Another member of his flight, Lieutenant Bishop, also fell to the German guns that afternoon. The Mediterranean swallowed all three aircraft within minutes. As the sun touches the horizon, Hoover inflates his May West life vest and watches his squadron search the waters for survivors. They don’t see him.

 The dog fight continues overhead. Tracer rounds stitching patterns across the twilight sky. Then, as darkness falls, a German merchant vessel appears on the horizon, heading directly toward him. What Hoover doesn’t know is that his war is far from over. The next 16 months will transform him from a shot down fighter pilot into a prisoner who attempts to escape 25 times.

 He’ll spend weeks in solitary confinement, endure interrogations and mock executions, and plot the most audacious theft in aviation history, stealing an enemy fighter aircraft and flying it through both German and Allied airspace with swastikas painted on its wings. The odds of survival, military intelligence estimates less than 2%. The number of American pilots who have successfully escaped German captivity by stealing enemy aircraft, zero.

 But on this freezing February evening, as German sailors pull him from the water, Hoover makes a silent promise. He will fly again, even if it means climbing into the cockpit of a German fighter. By early 1944, the Allied air campaign over Europe faces a crisis that few civilians understand.

 For every thousand American and British airmen sent into combat, 511 die on operations, 130 become prisoners of war and 120 are killed or wounded in accidents. Only 240 survive their tours unscathed. These aren’t just statistics. their sons, brothers, fathers disappearing into the European sky at a rate that makes infantry casualties look merciful by comparison.

 The prisoners face their own nightmare. Over 80,000 Allied PS are held in German camps by 1944 with more arriving every week as the bombing campaign intensifies. Stalaglu I located near Bar Germany on the Baltic Sea coast becomes the primary destination for captured Allied airmen. Initially built for British prisoners, it now houses thousands of Americans behind double rows of 10- ft barbed wire fences.

 German guards called goons by prisoners man watchtowwers with orders to shoot anyone who crosses the warning wire surrounding the inner perimeter. The Geneva Convention theoretically protects these men, but reality tells a different story. Prisoners survive on watery soup, black bread, and occasional Red Cross parcels that don’t always arrive.

 Dysentery, typhus, and pneumonia sweep through overcrowded barracks. The psychological toll proves even worse. Men watch the sky daily, knowing their buddies are still dying up there while they waste away behind wire. Escape attempts are constant. Prisoners dig tunnels, forge documents, steel guard uniforms, and plot elaborate roostes. But success rates hover near zero.

Germany sits in the center of occupied Europe, surrounded by hundreds of miles of hostile territory. Escapees need civilian clothes, forged papers, money, and transportation. All nearly impossible to obtain. Even if they evade immediate recapture, where do they go? Switzerland is 300 m south through Nazi occupied territory.

 Sweden requires crossing the Baltic Sea. Spain demands traversing the entire length of France. The expert consensus among allied intelligence officers is unanimous, attempting escape from Stalag Lof the is suicidal. The camp’s location near the Baltic offers no nearby friendly borders. The German civilian population, after years of Allied bombing, shows little sympathy for downed airmen, and the penalty for recapture, weeks in solitary confinement on reduced rations, sometimes followed by execution. When Supreme Allied

Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower issues orders in late 1944 for all PS to cease escape attempts and wait for liberation. It seems like sound military advice. Soviet forces are advancing from the east. American and British armies push from the west. The war will be over soon.

 Why risk death when freedom is months away? But Eisenhower’s order doesn’t account for the chaos of a dying Reich. By April 1945, with the Red Army approaching Stalaglof the First, prisoners face a terrifying possibility. Will German guards execute them to cover up evidence of Geneva Convention violations? Will they be forced on death marches westward like PS from other camps? or will camp commanders simply abandon them to face Soviet troops who might not distinguish between German guards and Allied prisoners.

 The stakes couldn’t be higher. 7,717 American airmen are imprisoned at Stalog Luft I by April 1945 along with thousands more British, Canadian, and other Allied flyers. Their average age is 23. Most have college educations, technical skills, and families waiting at home. They represent hundreds of thousands of hours of expensive flight training, and combat experience the allies can’t afford to lose.

 Inside the camp, men face an impossible choice. Obey Eisenhower’s order and hope for the best or take desperate action and risk dying within sight of liberation. For flight officer Bob Hoover, who has attempted escape 24 times in 16 months and spent more time in solitary confinement than any other prisoner, the choice is already made. He’s getting out, even if it kills him.

Robert Anderson Hoover grew up in Nashville, Tennessee with one impossible dream, to fly. Born January 24th, 1922, he wasn’t a natural candidate for aviation heroism. He had no family connections to the military, no private pilot father to teach him, no wealthy background to fund flying lessons. He was just a middle-class kid who looked up at the sky and knew somehow that he belonged up there.

 At 15 in 1937, Hoover started working odd jobs to pay for flying lessons. He washed airplanes, swept hangers, and did whatever it took to accumulate flight hours. His instructor recognized something special. Not necessarily skill or natural talent, but an almost reckless passion for flight that bordered on obsession. While other students flew cautiously, learning by the book, Hoover pushed every flight to its limits, wanting to understand not just how to fly, but how far he could make an airplane perform.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941, Hoover was 19 and working as a grocery store clerk. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces within days. But his lack of formal credentials nearly derailed his dreams. He had no college degree, no engineering background, no prestigious recommendations. The selection board saw an enthusiastic kid with some flight time, nothing special.

They assigned him to ferry duty, shuttling aircraft between bases, the aviation equivalent of driving a truck. For most pilots, ferry duty was a dead end. For Hoover, it was an opportunity. Between December 1942 and August 1943, he fed aircraft across North Africa for the 12th Air Force, logging hundreds of hours in everything from transports to bombers.

 More importantly, he made connections He befriended combat pilots, listened to their stories, studied their tactics, and begged for a combat assignment. In September 1943, the 52nd Fighter Group in Sicily, needed pilots. Hoover’s persistence finally paid off. He was assigned to the fourth fighter squadron, flying Spitfires. His commanding officer, Colonel Marvin McNichol, later recalled, “I knew Bob would either get shot down immediately or become an ace.

 That was because he always wanted to be right in the middle of the action.” Bob loved being a fighter pilot. He would have taken on the whole German Air Force if they’d let him. The critical moment that defined Hoover came during his early combat missions. While other pilots flew cautiously, following doctrine and avoiding unnecessary risks, Hoover flew like he was trying to prove something to his superiors, to himself, to anyone who had ever doubted him.

 He volunteered for the most dangerous missions. He extended patrols beyond their planned duration, burning fuel reserves to search for enemy aircraft. He flew so aggressively that his squadron mates joked he’d die before completing 10 missions. But he didn’t die. Mission after mission, Hoover came back. 20 missions, 30, 40, 50.

 He flew convoy escorts, bomber protection, and fighter sweeps over occupied France and Italy. He logged 58 successful combat missions, far above the average before being shot down. He became one of the squadron’s most reliable pilots. The kind of man you wanted on your wing when the enemy appeared. Then came mission 59. Inside Stalog Lof, Bob Hoover finds an unlikely ally, Major Gustav Edward Gus Lunquist.

 Before being shot down on his third mission in July 1944, Lungquist was an accomplished test pilot who had flown captured FW190s in England, studying their strengths and vulnerabilities for Allied intelligence. Now behind barbed wire, Lungquist makes Hoover an extraordinary offer. “You want to fly one someday?” Lungquist asks one afternoon in the prison compound.

 “I’ll teach you.” And so begins the strangest flight school in military history. With no aircraft, no cockpit, no instruments, Lungquist scratches diagrams in the dirt of the compound, recreating the FW190’s control panel from memory. Fuel selector here, magneto switches here, throttle quadrant here.

 He draws and erases, draws and erases as German guards patrol overhead. The stick is heavier than a Spitfires, Lungquist explains, his finger tracing phantom controls in the sand. You’ll need both hands on takeoff. The torque will try to swing you left, stomp on the right rudder hard. And watch the coolant temperature.

 She runs hot. Other prisoners think they’re crazy. Flight Officer Jerome Jerryennis, another fourth fighter squadron pilot shot down in December 1943, shakes his head at the elaborate fantasy. Even if you got to a German plane, even if you figured out how to start it, even if you got airborne, then what? You’ll be flying an aircraft with swastikas through Allied airspace.

 Every anti-aircraft gun and fighter pilot will try to kill you. That’s illegal. Someone else protests. Flying enemy markings is a war crime. If the Germans catch you, they’ll execute you. Hoover absorbs every word of the criticism, then returns to Lquist’s improvised ground school.

 Night after night, he memorizes the startup sequence, the instrument layout, the emergency procedures. He practices imaginary pre-flight checks, walking through the motions of controls he’s never touched. While other prisoners play cards or write letters, Hoover closes his eyes and visualizes the FW190 cockpit, drilling the procedures until they become muscle memory.

 The escape committee, over 200 prisoners coordinating breakout attempts, considers his plan suicidal. Even the most optimistic estimates give him a 2% chance of success. They point out the obvious problems. He’s never seen an actual W190 cockpit, only sand drawings. He has no maps, no compass, no way to navigate to Allied lines. He’ll be flying through contested airspace where both sides will shoot at him.

 And if he somehow survives all that, he’ll have to land without any idea where friendly forces are located. But Hoover has attempted to escape 24 times. He spent weeks in solitary confinement. He’s been beaten, interrogated, and threatened with execution. Every failed attempt has taught him something. Timing, psychology, improvisation.

He studied guard routines, memorized fence layouts, learned which Germans can be bribed and which are incorruptible. And in April 1945, when Soviet artillery begins thundering in the distance and German guards start deserting their posts, Hoover knows his moment has arrived. “That’s illegal,” he says, looking at his fellow prisoners.

 “So is keeping us here.” The confrontation happens on April 29th, 1945 in a cold barracks at Staloglu I. Colonel Henry Russell Russ Spicer, the senior Allied officer and former commander of the 357th Fighter Group, faces down a room full of prisoners who want to escape immediately. Soviet artillery rumbles closer by the hour.

 German guards are deserting. Chaos reigns. General Eisenhower’s orders are explicit, Spicer says firmly. All prisoners are to remain in camp and await liberation. No escape attempts. The room erupts. We’ve been waiting 16 months. Someone shouts, “The Russians are coming. Who knows what they’ll do?” Another yells, “The German guards might execute us before they retreat.

” Spicer, who has spent 6 months in solitary confinement himself for calling German guards dirty lying sneaks, understands their frustration better than anyone. But he also understands military discipline. Eisenhower didn’t give those orders to torture us. He gave them because escape attempts this close to liberation are suicidal. We’ve made it this far.

 With all due respect, sir Hoover interrupts. I haven’t made it anywhere. I’ve been in this cage for over a year. Every day pilots are still dying up there. He points at the sky. While we sit here hoping the guards don’t shoot us before the Soviets arrive, Spicer studies the young flight officer. He knows Hoover’s reputation. 24 escape attempts.

 More time in solitary than any other prisoner. Absolutely fearless to the point of insanity. And what exactly is your plan, Hoover? I’m going to steal a German aircraft and fly out. The room goes silent. Then everyone starts talking at once. That’s insane. You’ll be shot down by our own side. You’ve never even seen inside an FW190.

Major Lungquist speaks up. I’ve been training him for months, sir. He knows the aircraft inside and out. Training him? Spicer’s eyebrows rise. With what? Sand drawings. Lungquist admits the absurdity of the situation. A test pilot teaching FW 190 procedures by scratching in dirt hangs in the air. Several prisoners laugh, but it’s the nervous laughter of men who know that if Hoover succeeds, he’ll have accomplished something impossible.

 If he fails, he’ll be another casualty added to an already horrific toll. Colonel Spicer faces an impossible decision. He can order Hoover to stand down, maintaining military discipline and Eisenhower’s directives, but Hoover has demonstrated repeatedly that orders won’t stop him. He’ll just attempt escape again, probably with less preparation.

 Or Spicer can tacitly approve, giving Hoover’s desperate plan his implicit blessing while maintaining plausible deniability if it goes wrong. If I officially approve this, Spicer says slowly, I’m authorizing a violation of Eisenhower’s direct orders. I’m sending a pilot into hostile airspace in an enemy aircraft he’s never flown with no navigation equipment, no radio, and no backup plan.

 Every regulation, every military doctrine, every ounce of common sense says this is suicide. He pauses, looking at Hoover’s determined face. Then Spicer thinks about his own 6 months in solitary, his own sentence to execution that was only overlooked because German command collapsed into chaos. He thinks about the 7,717 Allied airmen in this camp and what might happen to them if the situation deteriorates further.

 Officially, Spicer says, his voice carrying authority throughout the barracks, “I order you to remain in camp and await liberation.” Hoover’s face falls unofficially. Spicer continues, “If you happen to find a board under one of these buildings, and if some prisoners happen to create a diversion that draws the guard’s attention, and if you happen to disappear during that distraction, well, I’m getting old.

 My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. The room erupts again, but this time with cautious excitement. Flight officer Jerry Andis steps forward. I’m coming with you. Within hours, the plan takes shape. The escape committee will stage a fight to draw guards to the far side of the compound. Hoover, Enis, and a Canadian airman will use a plank to climb over the fence during the distraction.

Once outside, they’re on their own. No support, no backup, no rescue if things go wrong. If you’re enjoying this incredible true story of courage and impossible odds, please hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications so you never miss our deep dives into history’s most extraordinary moments.

 Your support keeps these stories alive. Now, let’s see what happens when desperation meets opportunity behind enemy lines. The escape happens just after dusk on April 29th, 1945. As planned, prisoners stage a fight on the western side of Stalagl. Guards rush toward the commotion, whistles blowing, shouting in German. In the chaos, Hoover, Enis, and the Canadian airmen sprint to a predetermined barracks, grab a wooden plank hidden underneath, and rush to the fence line. Now Hoover hisses.

 They slam the plank against the double barbed wire fence, creating a crude bridge over the top. Hoover climbs first, the wood creaking under his weight. The barbed wire catches his prison uniform, ripping fabric. He doesn’t care. He drops down on the outside, landing hard in German soil. Andis follows.

 The Canadian comes last. For the first time in 16 months, Bob Hoover is outside the wire. They run into the night, heading west, away from the advancing Soviet artillery. Behind them, whistles shriek as guards discover the escape. Search lights sweep the darkness. Dogs bark in the distance. But the escapees are already into the treeine. Hearts pounding, lungs burning.

They find shelter in a barn on a nearby farm. Hiding under hay, they wait through the night, listening to German military vehicles rumble past on nearby roads. At dawn, a French woman forced into German labor discovers them. She speaks no English. Hoover writes a hasty note thanking her and asking any Allied troops who find her to protect her.

 She understands, nods, and hands them a small 25 caliber pistol. “More good for you,” she says in broken English, “than me.” They steal bicycles from a village and pedal west, trying to reach Allied lines. But chaos reigns across Germany in these final days of the war. They encounter retreating troops, displaced civilians, and most terrifyingly, advancing Soviet forces who are pushing toward Berlin with little mercy for anyone in their path.

 Using high school French, Andis manages to communicate with some Soviet soldiers. The message is clear. The Red Army is dangerous for everyone right now. Friend or foe, the Americans separate themselves from the Soviet advance and continue west on their stolen bicycles. Then they see it. A German airfield poorly defended with dozens of aircraft sitting in revetments.

 Most are damaged, victims of Allied bombing raids. But on the outskirts, hidden in a sheltered revetment, sits a FWolf FW190 with bullet holes in the fuselage, but apparently intact engines, and a full fuel load. That’s your ride, Andis says quietly. Hoover’s heart hammers in his chest. 16 months of captivity, 24 escape attempts, countless hours studying sand diagrams, all leading to this moment.

 He thinks about Lungquist’s training. Fuel selector valve, magneto switches, throttle quadrant. He’s never touched an actual FO190 cockpit, but he knows the layout by heart. They approach cautiously. A German mechanic is working on the aircraft, apparently trying to repair it for evacuation. And draws the French woman’s pistol and points it at the mechanic’s head.

 Frai? Andis asks. The mechanic nods, terrified. Using his broken French, Andis explains, “Help the American pilot start this aircraft or die.” The mechanic, realizing the war is lost anyway, agrees. Hoover climbs into the cockpit. The German mechanic points to switches and levers, speaking rapid French that Annis translates, but Hoover barely needs the help.

 Lunquist’s training has prepared him perfectly. Fuel selector on. Battery on. Magnetos both. Primer. Starter engage. The BMW 801 radial engine coughs, sputters, then roars to life. The sound is deafening, earth shaking. German personnel across the airfield begin running toward them, shouting. Get in. Hoover yells to Enis.

 But Andis shakes his head. I never want to fly again. He says after being shot down and spending 16 months as a pow, he’d rather take his chances on foot. German soldiers are approaching. Hoover has seconds to make a decision. He waves frantically at Enis one last time, then slams the throttle forward.

 The FW190 lurches across the grass. Germans are running alongside now, some trying to grab the wings. Hoover doesn’t have a runway, just an open field with trees at the far end. He yanks back on the stick. The FW190 lifts off with feet to spare, clearing the trees by inches. And suddenly, impossibly, he’s airborne in an enemy fighter.

 The reality of his situation hits him immediately. He’s flying an aircraft with swastikas on the wings through contested airspace. He has no parachute, no maps, no radio, and no idea exactly where he is. The Allies control the airspace and will shoot down any German aircraft on site. The Germans still have anti-aircraft positions and might fire at an FW190, behaving erratically.

 He is effectively the most vulnerable pilot in European skies. He climbs to 4,000 ft, staying just below the cloud deck to avoid becoming a target. He heads north until he sees the North Sea, then turns west, following the coastline. “I knew that if I turned west and followed the shoreline, I would be safe when I saw windmills,” he later recalled.

 “Because the Dutch hated the Germans.” Flying at low altitude, Hoover navigates by landmarks. Every Allied pilot who spots him sees swastikas and assumes he’s a German trying to escape to neutral territory. Every German anti-aircraft position sees an FW190 flying erratically and wonders if it’s damaged or piloted by a defector. Miraculously, no one fires.

 After approximately 90 minutes in the air, the longest 90 minutes of his life, Hoover spots windmills dotting the Dutch countryside below, he’s reached the liberated Netherlands behind Allied lines. But now he faces a new problem, landing. He looks for an airfield, but worries about mined runways. Instead, he chooses an open field behind Allied positions.

 With no experience landing an FW190, he comes in too fast and too high. He deliberately ground loops the fighter, spinning it violently to avoid a ditch, wiping out the landing gear. The FW190 slides to a stop in a cloud of dirt and torn metal. Hoover pops the canopy and climbs out, legs shaking. Dutch civilians surround the crashed aircraft, speaking rapidly in Dutch, pointing rifles at him.

 They think he’s a German defector. Hoover spots a British Army truck approaching and waves frantically. I’m an American. He shouts, “I’m an American pilot.” The British sergeant looks at the swastika marked FW190, then at the man in a German prison uniform, then back at the aircraft. “Get in the truck,” he finally says, before someone shoots you.

 Bob Hoover is finally free. Back at Stalog Luft I, the camp is liberated by Soviet forces on May 2nd, 1945. The 7,717 Allied prisoners are evacuated by B17s on May 12 and 13. Colonel Spicer survives. His scheduled execution date of April 1, was overlooked by German camp officials dealing with the chaos of the Reich’s collapse.

 And Jerryennis, who declined to fly with Hoover, also escaped successfully on foot and survives the war. This story gets even more remarkable. Please take a second to like this video. It really helps the algorithm share these incredible true stories with more people. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now. You won’t want to miss what happens when this escaped pal meets a young fighter ace named Chuck Joerger.

 The story of Bob Hoover’s escape in a stolen FW190 remained largely unknown for 40 years. When he returned home in November 1945, his hometown newspaper mentioned it briefly, but Hoover himself never talked about it. I wasn’t proud of that flight, he said decades later. It was about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

 But his superiors at Wrightfield saw something different. They saw a pilot with extraordinary instincts, nerves of steel, and the ability to fly anything with wings. Hoover was assigned to flight test duty at Wrightfield near Dayton, Ohio, exactly where he had dreamed of working while studying Lungquist’s sand diagrams in Stalog Lof.

There in 1947, he met Captain Charles Chuck Joerger, a brash young fighter ace chosen to pilot the experimental Bell X1 rocket plane. The X1 program aimed to break the sound barrier, something many engineers believed would tear an aircraft apart. They needed a backup pilot and a chase pilot for the supersonic attempts.

 Hoover got both jobs. On October 14th, 1947, Joerger became the first human to break the sound barrier, flying the X1 at Mach 1.06 over Murickfield, California. Hoover flew chase in a Lockheed P80 shooting star documenting the historic flight. When Joerger’s X1 exceeded Mach 1, Hoover was one of the first people to witness it.

 Over the following decades, Hoover became a legend in his own right. He tested hundreds of aircraft types from experimental jets to supersonic fighters. He became the backup pilot for Jackie Cochran when she became the first woman to break the sound barrier in 1953. He flew as a test and demonstration pilot for North American aviation, demonstrating new aircraft to potential customers with arerobatic routines that defied belief.

 His signature demonstration, flying a twin engine Shrike Commander through loops, rolls, and inverted flight while pouring himself a glass of iced tea, became legendary in aviation circles. Fellow pilots called him the pilot’s pilot. General Jimmy Doolittle, the famed Tokyo raid leader, said Hoover was the greatest stick and rudder pilot who ever lived.

 Chuck Joerger, never generous with praise, called him simply the best. But Hoover remained remarkably humble. He refused most interviews about his wartime escape. When Jerianis appeared at an air show in Reading, Pennsylvania in the mid 1980s, and told the story publicly, Hoover was embarrassed. “Any pilot would have done the same thing,” he insisted.

 Though, of course, that wasn’t true. No other American pilot successfully escaped German captivity by stealing and flying an enemy aircraft. The techniques Hoover learned during his escape, improvisation under pressure, flying unfamiliar aircraft without training, navigating without instruments, became teaching tools for test pilots.

 The Air Force Academy made him an exemplar for the class of 2020, holding up his career as a model of courage and innovation. Bob Hoover died on October 25th, 2016 at age 94 near his home in Southern California. He never stopped flying until his death, logging over 50,000 hours in his lifetime, more than most commercial pilots accumulate in entire careers.

 At his memorial service, dozens of military and civilian pilots eulogized him as the finest aviator of his generation. The FW190 he stole and crashlanded in the Netherlands in April 1945 was never recovered. It was likely scrapped for metal during postwar reconstruction. No photographs of the aircraft exist.

 All that remains is the story. a desperate pow, a stolen enemy fighter, and 90 minutes of flight through hostile skies that should have been impossible. But for pilots who study aviation history, Bob Hoover’s legacy endures in every test flight, every emergency landing, every moment when a pilot has to improvise or die. His story teaches a simple lesson.

 When conventional wisdom says something is impossible, sometimes the only way forward is to stop listening to experts and start believing in yourself. As Hoover himself said in one of his rare interviews about the escape, fear is a useful emotion, but it should never make your decisions for you.

 The moment you let fear choose your path, you’ve already lost. for the 7,717 Allied airmen liberated from Stalog Lof on May 12th and 13th, 1945. Bob Hoover’s escape represented something profound. While they waited behind barbed wire for rescue, he made his own rescue. While they hoped someone else would save them, he saved himself. And while they followed orders, he followed his instincts.

 One veteran meeting Hoover decades after the war summed it up perfectly. Because of your courage, we believed escape was possible. Because you made it out, we never gave up hope. Thank you for showing us that even in the darkest moment, freedom is just one impossible decision away.