“I don’t remember when I became as interested in WWII history as I am now. The genesis has to be in school where I lapped up history lessons.  Reading about real people and true events was far more compelling than the arcane principles of mathematics (I don’t know how I got through trigonometry!).

“None of my immediate family fought in the war.  My father, who was eligible to serve, had a hush-hush civil service job at Mariana Field (a large B-29 base in the Florida panhandle) and was exempted.

“In those days,  it was fashionable to dress young boys in military uniforms.  As a four year old, I was a “member” of the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF), U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.  I did my part for the war effort by recording patriotic songs for the Pepsi Cola label while wearing my uniforms, collecting tinfoil and eating my spinach.  Mother always told me “Hitler loves little boys who don’t eat their spinach.”

“When the war ended, so did Mariana Field and we moved to MCAS Cherry Point, NC, the largest Marine air base in the world at that time.

“I spent four years in the USAF, but never got near aircraft.  I spent two years in radar (one on the DEW Line in Alaska) and two in ground to air missiles at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

“So, a love for history and exposure to the military in my formative years probably made it inevitable that my writing would be  centered on the largest conflict in human history, WWII.”

Dick Avery is a freelance writer whose passion is military history, specifically World War II.