The war and 60-plus years have punched a few holes in Bob Rommel's memories. But there is steel in his voice, forged in combat and paid for with his own blood.
"I did what I did for myself and my country," he proclaims. Rommel's résumé is impressive even for World War II.
He jumped into Europe with the 101st Airborne on the night before D-Day and then jumped again in Holland during the failed attempt to take a bridge across the Rhine. He was part of the "Forgotten Battalion," 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of World War II that was turned into a book and documentary. He served side by side with the men of Easy Company, portrayed in the Stephen Ambrose book and HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers." In the Battle of the Bulge, a German shell made mincemeat of his foot and he spent 119 days in the hospital.
From the friends and blood he left on the battlefield, Rommel swears his allegiance to the flag. "That flag represents our country. A lot of people have died for that flag."
His journey to war started in Modesto. He left Modesto High School to join. He tried the Seabees first, but they rejected him for flat feet. He would get a job in Rodeo, in Contra Costa County, and then wait for his draft notice.
The Army was his second choice and the flat feet were overlooked in early 1943. After basic training, he recalls, "a friend talked me into volunteering for paratroops. The funny thing is,he got disqualified and I went on alone."
He earned his paratrooper wings during training at Camp Toccoa, Ga.
"The first jump didn't scare me," he says. "But as you go on and realize what's happening, it bothers you a little more."
He was assigned to Headquarters Company as part of a machine gun platoon.
Looking at a picture of his platoon from about 1944, he wondered, "If I hadn't seen myself get old, I wouldn't know who I was."
He also doesn't remember who many of his comrades were, not by name anyway. He would pick out the only six men he knew who were still alive. The names may escape him but not the faces and what they meant to him -- one a shy Texas boy, another a leader called "Sarge."
Rommel himself started erasing memories on D-Day. It was the first and last time he would acknowledge seeing any of his comrades killed.
Before he jumped, his life was spared along with all the paratroopers on the same plane by the courage and skill of the pilot.
"The plane I was in got hit just before I got out. The plane turned on its side and everybody was hanging on to the static line. The pilot fought it, brought it back and we all got out. I wondered what happened to him. I found out after the war he went down in the (English) Channel."
His only hands-on encounter with a friend's death came that first day in Normandy.
"I pulled a guy I knew out of a well. I think he drowned. But I couldn't let myself think about it. I had a job to do. From then on, nobody ever died."
They did die, but Rommel was trying to trick his mind.
"I told myself they got transferred. Guys got transferred in and out of the outfit all the time."
The mind ruse worked for 60 years. Ten years ago, Rommel says, he was looking in the mirror while he was shaving.
"It all came back. They were dead and I couldn't stop crying."
His name almost got him killed at a checkpoint one night. The famous German field marshal, Erwin Rommel, really was kin, his father's second cousin. And it was Rommel's forces he was fighting in Normandy.
"I was coming in from a patrol and a checkpoint challenged me: 'Who goes there?'
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