Louis Zamperini was a troubled boy in Torrance, California until he took up running and turned his life around. He set the high school track record for the mile and was undefeated for three-and-a-half years. In 1936 he went to Berlin as part of the American Olympic team running the 5000-meter race. At the University of Southern California he set the National Collegiate Athletic Association mile record of 4:08.3 that stood for 15 years.
When the Second World War broke out, Zamperini joined the Army Air Corps as a bombardier. On 27 May 1943, while on a rescue mission 800 miles south of Hawaii, Louis’s plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Only Louis, the pilot, and the tail-gunner survived. They waited in two life rafts for rescue. No one came − and chased by sharks, and surviving on rainwater and raw albatross − Louis drifted 2,000 miles for 47 days before, emaciated and near death, he and the pilot were captured by the Japanese.
Two and a half years of prison, torture and humiliation followed, much of it at the hands of a psychopathic guard nicknamed The Bird. Louis never gave up or gave in. He made it home and was called a hero. Zamperini said only, ‘I’m no hero, just a survivor.’
After the war Louis suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, drank too much, brawled and had constant nightmares about The Bird. It was during this dark period that Louis met and married the woman of his dreams then almost lost her before he hit bottom and found a way to forgive The Bird.
Zamperini went on to become an inspirational speaker and devoted himself to an outreach programme for boys who were as wayward as he had been as a boy. He counselled the famous, infamous and anonymous. He skied, ran, hiked, climbed a glacier − even skateboarded. He wrote an autobiography, Devil At My Heels, in 2003, and in 2010 Louis’s wartime adventures were the subject of Laura Hillenbrand’s mega-bestseller, Unbroken, which is now a movie directed by Angelina Jolie and due to be released Christmas 2014.
Before Zamperini died in July 2014 at the age of 97, he shared the wonderful lessons he had learned during his life, previously untold stories and inspirational insights on how he overcame adversity, maintained a positive attitude in the face of trouble, learned to forgive, and found the quiet strength to never give up and never give in. The result: Louis’s final book, Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In.
