I just finished watching a documentary about Greg "Pappy" Boyington, a U.S. Marine Corps Pilot that flew as an ace during the Pacific Campaign in World War II

If you remember watching the old TV show "Black Sheep Squadron," Pappy is the pilot hero portrayed by Robert Conrad. It occurs to me that Boyington's story really illustrates the importance of the comeback.

At the start of World War II, Boyington was down on his luck, in debt, unemployed, and bascially at odds with the law. Instead of fold, he joined the flying tigers and fought off the Japanese in Burma.

After his stint with the Flying Tigers, we found himself back in the U.S. with his reputation in question. He wound up taking a job as a parking attendant for a while. Not giving up however, he wound up writing to the Secretary of the Navy and got himself reassigned back into the service.

For a while he was stuck in a series of desk jobs, but eventually convinced his superiors to let him assemble a group of pilots to form what would be called the "Black Sheep Squadron," which became famous during the push in the Solomon Islands.

Pappy was scheduled to be reassigned after one tour of duty, but wound up going over the heads of his immediate supervisors and convinced them to let him keep flying despite his unorthodox ways.

Boyington started to get tons of media attention has he neared the all time Ace record when he wound up getting shot down. All presumed he had been lost.

However after the War ended, he showed up in health and well in a Japanese POW Camp. He wound up traveling the U.S. to sell War Bonds, eventually Truman awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor at a Rose Garden ceremony.

How about that for a series of comebacks?