Paul was born and grew up on the farm in the Great State of Kansas . He came of age in the Great Depression witnessing the giant dust bowls and swams of grasshoppers. After enlisting in the Navy, Paul applied to the pilots school, bur that was already full so he became a tall gunner. His thinking was that he could get some of them before they would get him. Fortunately the war ended as his training was finishing up because most would have been sent to the Pacific Theater for the invasion of Japan.