Watch This Veteran Fly in the Same WWII Plane He Jumped from on D-Day | Short Film Showcase

I'm Leslie because Jr., and this is my story. Why do I like to paint? Well, it's a form of therapy in one respect. This is my art studio. Today, here's some of my brushes. What do you see out there? Well, this is what I see. I don't see gloom doom. I like to remember in my youth, just drawing pictures, capturing the things that I think are beautiful.

My mother, I know, had artistic talents; she used to paint in oils and stuff, so I guess some of that interest got to me. My parents were separated when I was seven, so I didn't have them to rely on. I spent the next ten years in an orphanage; my mother couldn't handle it anymore—five kids left alone—and my father going like separation in my early life made it more important to have somebody care about me, my brothers, and sisters, and how that affected us.

Most of the guys I knew were all ready to go knock the trottin. There's a chance - I gotta go to somewhere, do something. I was still a loner because I know that when I came in, they didn't look at me. It was too confident that he's gonna amount to anything; to get into that Brotherhood, you had to prove yourself.

Worse, Richard Vargas was a tent mate, and when we were in England, one of the things that I admired about Richard was every night he would kneel down beside his cot and say the Rosary. This is the real thing now—no more maneuvers in play; this is it.

We were pretty safe there for a moment, but then as things quieted down, like I hear Vargas crying and whimpering—his shell had landed right beside him. His head was at my shoulder when I put this tourniquet around him, and I could see his leg shredded. I said I knew I couldn't cope with that. When I found out that he had died, I just went across the road, and I just sat on the road and cried it out. It sounds so callous, but there was much you can do.

It's always been with me; there is no real freedom in these things. We're all obligated to something or somebody. In Holland, they were in a day after day, and today can be helped. All of a sudden, then in Belgium, I felt this hot sensation in my hand, and I knew I had been hit. They named it a million-dollar wound—a light wound. It would get me out of a front situation, and to this day, I'm still carrying about a 3/8 inch piece of shrapnel in my left wrist, which makes it hard to operate.

There was no family to come back to; I was just looking for a place to hang up my hat. I came back to Philadelphia because that's where I had grown up. I was able to spend four years at the University of Pennsylvania studying architecture. Well, that was my career; I worked as an architect for, I guess, about 60 years.

I attended the church by up the street, which was Shelton Avenue Methodist Church, and I met Charlie. A year later, we would become married, and when her mother died, we decided that we would look for another home a short time after that. We have lived here ever since, for 62 years.

The fact that I was placed in an orphanage made it more important to have a family and to make the family function the way it should function, and I think we achieved that. The question was asked to me, "What do I think about my country and what it means to be free?" I think, you know, an American citizen should be basically a responsible person to his family first, to his community, and then to his country.

The National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, New York, has an airplane up there called W7 Whisky 7, and it is the same plane that I jumped out of on D-Day. We were fortunate enough to have a number of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren be there, dear. Shall we participate with us and actually get a ride in the same plane that their grandfather rode in?

What do you see out there? This is what I see. I don't see gloom and doom. This is your Garden of Eden; this is what we were supposed to have. And it's been a good life.

You just buy the Borla term. Wa, how can you be 92 years old, does not be blessed? Those are, of course, emotional statements, and they're always hard to stay. And when you have 13 great-grandchildren, you have to know that you were blessed by God, and I am.