Originally intended as a few wartime sketches of the author’s wartime experiences, to be read only by family and friends, the story was driven by its own momentum to become a detailed record of how this one unusual student-citizen-soldier journeyed through a strange, unexpected world. The story follows him from his beloved fishing holes in pre-war New Jersey to the interior of China as the War approached its end. Along the way he trains as a ski-trooper, a small-arms expert, becomes an accomplished paratrooper and special weapons instructor and operator. He is deployed to North Africa, England, France, India, Burma and China, enduring long sea voyages, parachute drops in the dark, pitched battles, and even driving a balky truck loaded with ammunition over the Ledo road into China. There, the Wars final days brought Red Group 2 to an end, fittingly enough punctuated by one last fire-fight in concert with their Chinese irregulars, designed to confuse retreating Japanese troops.
