By Michael Lee Simpson via SWNS
A 101-year-old military veteran has put his long life down to the resilience of the B-24 bomber – and never having children.
Leo Magiera, from Ocala, Fla., turned 101 on Sept. 5.
Raised on a 160-acre dairy farm in Illinois, Magiera grew up in a huge family of five brothers and three sisters.
And while work on the farm kept him out of extracurricular activities at school he escaped aged 18, when he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.
The decision took him far from rural Illinois and into the skies above war-torn Europe.
Stationed in Italy, Magiera served as a crew member on a B-24 bomber, flying 21 harrowing missions over Germany during World War II.
“One of the things I remember is when you got over the target, there were a lot of shells bursting around,” he said.
“At one time, there was a shell that burst right underneath our plane, and when we got back to the base, there were a lot of little holes in the bottom of the plane,” he recalls.
