Georgia WWII vet celebrating 100th birthday on Veterans Day
GRAYSON, Ga. - For one Georgia World War II soldier, this Veterans Day is extra special.
Friday is Paul Sikorski of Grayson, Georgia's 100th birthday.
Sikorski served as a master sergeant in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He trained in microfilming before deploying to Europe, where his assignment helped lift the spirits of other soldiers by getting mail from home to them in days instead of weeks.
"We photographed the letter in the United States, microfilmed it, sent it to our operations in France, did the processing, and turned it back into legible letters," Sikorski said.
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His first night in London, a 500-pound bomb landed just half a block away from him, destroying a building.
Sikorski ran to help and saw a bloodied woman being pulled out on a stretcher.
"It gave us an introduction to what this was about," he said. "This was not something in a movie. This was for real. There were people out there trying to kill us."
There were light-hearted moments too, like when he was stationed in Paris guarding the Eiffel Tower.
He says a big rat would come by every night.
"Obviously we could have shot him, but he was breaking up the monotony," Sikorski said. "So we adopted him and called him Adolf."
When he returned home from the war, Sikorski married his high school sweetheart Mary and had three children.
He retired after working for a chemical company in Dalton for 45 years.
Now Sikorski walked every morning and can still fit into his Army uniform from 1945.
He says he feels grateful and blessed to be one of the nation's veterans.
"I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones," he said. "I have visited the graves in Europe. It's the most depressing sights to see those thousands of crosses and stars of David. It's very overpowering."
Sikorski has one bit of advice for living a good life.
"Try and leave the world in a little better shape than when you arrived," he said.
Sikorski wrote a book about his service in World War II for his family and friends.
He also writes essays about his love for aviation.