Lester Van Loon was born June 24, 1924. He is from Holmen, Washington, and graduated from Holmen High School at age seventeen in 1942. He was in college struggling with money and working odd jobs when he was recruited by the Army and enlisted in the Army Reserve at St. Paul, Minnesota on December 15, 1942. This allowed him to stay in school until he graduated, have a degree, and serve his time. This was an appealing deal because with a degree, he could become an officer in the Army. At school, he said he felt safe with the mindset that if he studied hard, everything would be fine. “Well, that ain’t how it works,” he wrote (Van Loon 1). Private Lester Van Loon 17145049 was drafted for active duty in March of 1943 at the age of eighteen. He was to report to Fort Sheridan, Illinois on April 21, 1943. After finishing only two out of three terms at school, he went home for few days and then boarded a train in Onalasha to Chicago. He met a man from River Falls reporting to the same place and stayed in a hotel that night, where the bellboy offered them “number” or prostitutes. This was a long, noisy night in the city for a man used to dark and quiet. He was stripped of his civilian clothes, given a uniform, and began training for self-reliance and discipline. He was sent to Fort Leonard Wood in Minnesota for five weeks of basic training in the Army Engineers’ Unit. These were long days learning with strangers with no town trips or phone calls. His “farm boy” background gave him a leg up with dealing with weapons, picks, axes, and shovels. He quickly made friends with a man Jim from Michigan, who had been taken out of college as well. They were later put into the same class at the University of Wyoming for the Army exams. They were then sent to the State College of Washington in Pullman, Washington for the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), a concentrated course that completed two years of mechanical engineering in twelve months, where they were assigned to be roommates, along with Vernon from Iowa. The school work was hard and demanding, and he became homesick when it snowed. Later in life, he still thought about that winter in Washington at the first snow of every year. He and Jim we later separated after Washington, but they kept in touch and corresponded back in the US until Jim’s death in the seventies. In June of 1944, Van Loon was sent to Camp Cook, California, for overseas training with the 21st Armored Infantry Battalion where he was ranked Private First Class (PFC).