A year before Dad died, we were cleaning out his bookshelves, and came across a book called, "Engineers In Battle", by Paul Thompson, 1942. Dad said that this book was his inspiration to join the army engineer division in WW2. Still have the book. He did not talk about what he did during the war, or the things he saw, which I think is typical.

Dad was a strong, kind, fair, thoughtful person, who worked hard at everything he did. He was an engineer, loved math and numbers, and number puzzles, and the quirkyness of dates of the year, like his own birthdate 8/1/18.