“I went to Europe in 1917 with sixty-five lbs. on my back,” he told Hedda Hopper in a May 17, 1960, radio interview. To another interviewer, he quipped, “I learned to run the 100-yard dash in eight seconds flat, carrying a full pack.” He served for nineteen months as a private in the 101st Field Artillery Regiment in France. He never said much about what combat was like, except to confess that he was “severely frightened 500 times.”

“I went to Europe in 1917 with sixty-five lbs. on my back,” he told Hedda Hopper in a May 17, 1960, radio interview. To another interviewer, he quipped, “I learned to run the 100-yard dash in eight seconds flat, carrying a full pack.” He served for nineteen months as a private in the 101st Field Artillery Regiment in France. He never said much about what combat was like, except to confess that he was “severely frightened 500 times.”

— Carl Rollyson