BALTIMORE — Leonard “Larry” Washington is 100 years old and will turn 101 next month, but every week he still takes his post at the front door of Baltimore’s Arch Social Club.
Drafted into the Army in 1943, Washington served three years as a supply cook, military police officer, and janitor, keeping the fires going. On the front lines of Normandy, he manned a .50-caliber machine gun, earning the nickname “Bazooka Man.”
“I was the one that supposed to be stopping and protecting the truck, I was a .50 caliber machine gunner. I was a Boozoka Man, shoot that boozka… yeah,” Washington recalled…