![]() ![]() ![]() I have always believed that there is some sort of atavistic magic at work all around us, but last week I learned that the lucky strike is real. He was understanding, but took the opportunity to mess with me saying “What else did you have to offer?” I gave him a few more smokes and went home.Ī day later I got a job as a history teacher. I asked him if he needed anything else and he said that he needed money, I told him I just spend my last dollar on our smokes. My smoke break with the homeless vet gave me quite a bit of perspective. In the worst parts of my luck/financial drought I’d foolishly considered suicide. I was beginning to feel that there was little left for me to try for. My wife had been feeling the enormous pressures of funding my inability to work and I was truthfully at the end of my rope… in the most sincere meaning of the word. ![]() For some months (nearly six months at this point) I had been out of work and even worse, completely out of luck. We sat on the curb in front of the gas station spoke for a few minutes as he smoked my lucky strike. Somehow, he was no longer a word-slurring homeless man but a dignified veteran, talking to a young man in the middle of some shit. He told me that he was stationed in Cambodia and would make regular drops into the war zone. I asked him if he’d ever heard of the “lucky strike” concept, and he said that he was a Vietnam veteran and that when he was in the war he regularly practiced the “lucky strike” ritual. I walked into the gas station and purchased a pack of smokes and as I was exiting the store I ran into a man (presumably homeless) who was all but out of luck. Only a few days ago I decided to try something. The idea was pretty simple, the upside-down smoke would be your last, and if you lived long enough to smoke it then it was your “Lucky Strike.” When soldiers received their rations there was a tradition, pull your smokes and turn the first one upside down. K-Rations also contained three “meals”: a breakfast, lunch and dinner with four ounces of meat and/or eggs, cheese spread, “biscuits,” candy, gum, salt tablets, a sugary drink, a wooden spoon, toilet paper, and matches.Īside from these k rations soldiers had little to no amenities, and life was basically unbearable, so toilet paper and smokes really were basically all there was. Smokes were given out in what were called the k-ration. The idea was that Cigarettes helped to stave off the incurable unease that came with being in a war away from home by giving them a taste of the world that they came from. Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration we must have thousands of tons without delay.” As a result recording these events became a passion for the Swedish author.In WWII General Pershing said “You ask me what we need to win this war. The memory was one he passed down to Nilsson. In 2015 Nilsson produced a documentary about these servicemen called Lucky Strike.Nilsson’s father, who was only ten years old at the time when he saw the massive American bomber plane plummet out from the sky, men bailing during the decent. Kraft paper used to construct pack as opposed to aluminum foil, 'IT'S TOASTED' - 100 authentic unopened Lucky Strike 20's Cigarette double twin pack from WW2 (2 cigarettes only). ![]() Offered with correct cellophane wrapper still intact. Jan-Olof Nilsson has written more than one award-winning book on the 1,200 United States military men who wound up in Sweden during the war, but it is his latest project that has really brought their incredible stories to light. 100 authentic unopened Lucky Strike 20's Cigarette pack from WW2. But its role as refuge for hundreds of Allied airmen whose planes were badly damaged on missions deep in Germany has gone untold – until now. The country remained officially neutral during the war, although due to economic necessity it continued to sell and export iron to the Nazi regime. When we think of countries that played a role in World War II it is highly unlikely that someone will think of Sweden. ![]()
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