My first contact with BOMBS(in 1944) was to see them falling on Southhampton England from my post in the top of a 100 plus clock tower where I received British information and cut-on the air raid sirens.  The Nazi planes used my tower as a point of repere to turn and bomb the Southhampton docks.  It was fearful for I would see the Nazi pilots faces as they made the abrupt 90 degree turns.

  Soon I was sent to a British bomb-disposal squad to learn how to de-fuse or handle both small one kilo bombs(full of shrapnel) and to be trained to defuse the huge other Nazi bombs that landed and DIDN’T explode at once but were a fearful menace.

  Lucky for me, I had a medical background and when the invasion of Normandy started June 6 1944, instead of unscrewing fuses from bombs, I was scouring operating rooms, and looking after a ward of 34 wounded patients.

  Soom my medical outfit was moved from England to Iwo Jima, but I was dispatched to London to be guard on General Eisenhower ( with medical qualifications in case of an emergency medical need with IKE.) There were no medical problems with Ike and I enjoyed my constant proximity to him.

  But there were SEVERAL more kinds of bombs that seemed to search me out.

  The first was the V-1 or “Flying Bomb”, also called the ‘Doodle Bug’ which looked like a large model airplane but flew with one kerosene jet motor.  THOUSANDS of them flew into and over England, and killed thousands of civilians.  They flew very slowly, about 60 miles per hour, and when the fuel gave out, the nose went down, and a bomb hit whatever at random.  The agonizing thing was to watch them suddenly dip and see them coming down at you and how close would they be?  Would this be IT?  Then another and another fifteen minutes apart.

  But the enterprising SPITFIRE pilots organized a set of flights to block their entry as they came from France and the Scandinavian island of Peenemunde.  Shortly, except for an unusual escaped one, they were all being shot down.

  BUT the ordinary BOMBS  in the German bombers had been steadily bombing all of England  since 1939 and I didn’t completely escape them…my apartment room was exploded by a bomb and I  unhurt but blown out of bed, I had to move to another apartment…the building was collapsing.

  Suddenly, there was ANOTHER kind of bomb!  It was called the V 2 and was a sixty foot long rocket bomb and capable of destroying a small town or city.

  I was involved in a hand to hand combat with a Nazi agent who had penetrated the HQ with a hand BOMB(a hand grenade)and I had managed to stop his clock before THAT bomb exploded.  The only purpose in telling that tale is that the incident brought my person to the attention of Eisenhower and his staff, though I had been there with  them every day for six months!

  At this point, at MIDNIGHT and returning from a birthday party(the 17th one!) for my English girlfriend, I was to appear at an all-night party in a  huge pub by Selfridges department store.  Three Hundred Nineteen members of headquarters company were carousing therein.  As I approached the pub, a V-2 rocket bomb hit it and killed all inside…I and two companions were seriously but not permanently injured.

  That was the LAST rocket bomb to fall on English soil as the Germans were now whipped!

  For me, out of the hospital, the General had me flown back to the United States for officer’s training school at Princeton University.

  The war was over for me and though I had defused no live bombs, one had defused me!