Joseph 'Sunny' Truman served with the British Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in the Second World War. On one occasion, marching in column, he stooped to pick up a rosary that had fallen from his neck. The column ahead and behind him was destroyed by enemy fire; he was the only survivor. He brought the rosary home from the war and gave it to his great-grandson.
In 2008, Lance Corporal Glenn Hockton — Truman's great-grandson — was on patrol with the Coldstream Guards in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He felt the rosary slip from his neck. As he bent to recover it from the ground beside his boot, he heard the soft click of a pressure plate beginning to engage beneath his other foot. He had stepped onto a Taliban mine. He remained motionless for 45 minutes until bomb-disposal arrived. He survived.
Hockton's story was reported by Fox News and the UK national press. He attributed his life to his great-grandfather's rosary — the same rosary that had saved Truman seventy years earlier on another battlefield, in another war.