"My [maternal] grandfather's family was in the cattle business... and he supplied the principality with the horses they needed for the town [of Cloppenburg]. He was very-admired and well-respected.There were about 15,000 people in the town. There…

“We were grounded flyers and we had our wings, but we came up with, somebody in the camp came up with a symbol for us which was our wings with a chain and a ball attached to it. So we used our dog tag chains and the cans of food we got from red…

“We left off there at Stalag III. This was about the 7th or the 8th of June. We went down the 30th of May. This is the 7th or 8th of June and we were standing there by the loading platform and this real mean looking German guard came out hands on…

“So everybody got out and then I got out. This was my first parachute jump. I went out through the navigator’s hatch below and I said ‘Lord, help me get through this.’ I knew I only had two things. One was to get killed or do it. There was no…

"We went back out to the transport area, and we stayed there for three days in the off chance we might be needed again, in case there was a retreat or something of that nature. And at the end of three days they said our services were no longer…

"Well, life on the base there, it was pretty good. The duty was light; we were just waiting for the ships, and they weren’t there. So we played cards. We went into town. There was very little else to do. There was a problem that I had, and again…

"There were so many screw-ups that you can’t count them. I mean, we crashed into piers. One time we were on the Dart River, being as efficient as we were, our propellers got hooked up with some of these buoys and bent them badly. And there was…

"It was only about a day later that we were indeed given our mission, our assignment. We were to assemble at Poole, which is a nice harbor for landing craft because it’s shallow. Big ships can’t go in there but you could put a ton of landing…

“We arrived in Scotland in the Firth of Clyde, and we docked about ten miles south of Glasgow within sight of Brown Shipbuilding, which was where the Queen Elizabeth was built in the first place. There were 15,000 men aboard, which was the most that…

"Now we had the skipper on the bridge, the helmsman below him, and the engine room below him, and the radar man. And the fifth man fired the rockets, and that dubious distinction was mine. I got to do the firing. Well, somehow in some sort of…