They told us at boot camp: 'You're here because we need you, but nobody is going to admit it.' That was 1943. I was a radar operator at a station on Cape Cod — 14-hour shifts, seven days a week, watching a green screen for blips. We tracked German U-boats in the shipping lanes off Cape Cod. Yes, U-boats. In American waters. In 1944. Most people don't know that. I saw blips every week. We coordinated with the Coast Guard. On two occasions, the blips disappeared — probably because the subs heard our radio chatter and dove deep. We never sank a submarine. But I like to think we deterred them, jus...

I was 19 when I volunteered for the U-boat fleet in 1942. I thought it was my duty. I went through basic training in Bordeaux — the U-boat pens there were massive, underground, concrete cathedrals. I made four patrols. On my fourth, in April 1944, a British frigate dropped a pattern of depth charges that shook us so hard that three of our crew urinated involuntarily. We could hear the steel hull screaming. The order came: 'Dive to 280 meters.' Our maximum rated depth was 200. We went to 280. The boat held. We escaped. I later learned that 75% of U-boat crews were killed during the war — the hi...