It can be said that the difference between living and dying is left up to chance or to choice.

On Feb. 22, 1944, 23-year-old John A. Goldbach of Lehighton was killed along with nine other crewmen when the German Luftwaffe shot down their B-24 airplane over a remote hillside in Czechoslovakia.Goldbach's fatality was called a "substitutionary" death by the U.S. Air Force. He was not scheduled to fly the mission, but he volunteered to do so to replace a crewman who had sustained serious injuries during previous conflicts in Europe.Goldbach's story and his legacy survive today in the hearts of his sister Angela Goldbach Tokosh and his niece Judy Sweeney.One of 11 childrenGoldbach was born in 1921 to Edward and Emily Goldbach who had emigrated from Germany in the 1880s. While his father worked as a meat cutter, John grew up in Lehighton with two brothers and six sisters. Two other siblings died at early ages.A childhood altar boy, he would enjoy playing baseball and football at Lehighton High School and won a high diving medal for his back flip at Graver's Pool in town. His sister, Angela, who is now age 90 and lives in Nesquehoning, remembers that his only dream as a young boy was to fly an airplane. Tokosh speaks of John with a love for her brother that she has kept inside of her before and after she was told of his death 72 years ago."We would play 'Tailspin Tommy' (an air adventure comic strip from the early 20th century) and John would climb up a chair to pretend he was flying," she said. "I pushed him off the chair one time. He fell to the floor and was knocked out for a while.""You can tell by looking in my mother's eyes," Sweeney said. "Johnny was special to her and her favorite of all her brothers and sisters."Together in marriage for one dayMany events in Goldbach's life were short-lived. After rapid training as an Air Force gunner in North Carolina, John returned home on leave in the summer of 1943 to marry his girlfriend, Ida, whom he had met while they worked in a local A&P grocery store.The very next day he would return to serve his country. He would never see his wife again, and Ida would never again marry.Cold days in the cloudsAccording to a recent book, "Miss Fortune's Last Mission," there are indications that Goldbach flew missions with the 330th Bomb Squadron before he was stationed with Lt. George Goddard's B-24 airplane nicknamed "Miss Fortune."Goldbach was a left waist gunner. He would fire .50-caliber guns out of large open windows, often with arctic winds roaring at 170 miles or more per hour. Although Goldbach might have worn an electrically heated "blue bunny" suit, he was still likely to experience frostbite.A touch of frostbite might also have been a gunner's best friend. If he incurred injuries with warm blood spurting, he wouldn't bleed to death because his blood would freeze from the brutal cold to form a seal over the wounds.Miss Fortune and misfortuneDetails of Goldbach's ill-fated flight were revealed by a lone survivor of the last mission of Miss Fortune.Ray Noury, a right waist gunner, was able to drop out of a hatch door and parachute into a tree in the Czech countryside. He would be rescued by a native of the area, but later became a German prisoner of war.Noury, who died in 2013, had said, "Goldy was a fighter if there ever was one," who epitomized the definition of courage because he acted with "grace under pressure."Other than Noury's personal account, details of what happened when the plane was shot down remain limited to this day. When asked if there might be any other information, Goldbach's sister Angela spoke with conviction."When they were flying over the Alps, it was so cold that their guns froze up," she said. "They were unable to fight back."Another member of the crew was navigator Joseph F. Altemus, who grew up in Bethlehem, and was expected to go to work for the town's primary employer, Bethlehem Steel, after the war. It was his wife, Grace, who began to search for the families of the crewmen based upon a letter written about the mission by Noury.The story of the final flight has been chronicled in "Miss Fortune's Last Mission," written by William J. Boyce and John H. Torrison, the latter being the nephew of tail gunner Wayne Nelson.It was Boyce's injured father, Bill, who was scheduled to fly the mission that day. That's when John Goldbach raised his hand to become Bill's substitute."John needed only three more missions to total 25," said Judy Sweeney, who is Angela's daughter. "Then he would have been given permission to come back home."William Boyce was impassioned to write the book because his father died without ever telling anyone that he was supposed to be on that plane."Had my father not been seriously wounded on Dec. 19, he by all odds would have been the left waist gunner on Miss Fortune on Feb. 22 - which means he probably would have perished that day with every crew member except for Ray Noury, and I would never have been born. Instead it was John Goldbach."Another consequence of the tragedy occurred to John's older brother Paul, who was training in a seminary to become a priest when he heard of his brother's death."John's death was a life-changing event for Paul," Sweeney said. "He felt so guilty that John had died, and that he was still alive here in the states. He left the seminary and struggled for a while."Later, Paul would become a special-education teacher.Never forgottenAfter the crash, residents of Dubec Hill, a Czech village, searched through the wreckage and buried in makeshift graves whatever they found of the bodies of the 10 men. In 1950, the U.S. Army then transported their combined remains to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis.Each year on the anniversary of the crash, the people of the Czech Republic hold a ceremony to commemorate the fallen airmen, whom they revere as their liberators from the Nazis. They have erected 10 monuments at the crash site to memorialize the brave Americans who sacrificed their lives to help win their freedom.Over 4,000 miles away form the Czech Republic, a small family plot sits in a cemetery at the St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Lehighton. A stone marker has been placed there that reads, "John A. Goldbach, T/SGT U.S. Air Force: Lost in Action WWII."About 7 miles from the cemetery, a mother and her daughter look through old photographs and telegrams on a kitchen table in their home in Nesquehoning, wondering what kind of life John would have lived if he never had volunteered for Miss Fortune's last mission."The Goldbach name died in that airplane with John, too," said Sweeney. "His brothers have since passed, and their children were all girls."She relies on her strong faith to keep John alive in her heart."He didn't crash down that day. He flew up to meet Jesus."And now he's always with me," she says while smiling about her uncle, "even if I never knew him."