Charles "Chuck" E Yeager was born on February 13, 1923 in Myra, West Virginia. The family moved to Hamlin, WV when Chuck was five. He always had an fascination with generators, pumps and machinery used by his father's natural gas drilling business. Three months after graduating High School, Yeager enlisted in the US Army Air Forces where he trained as an aircraft mechanic. In July 1942, he signed up for a program that trained enlisted personnel as pilots. In the end he was the only one of his class to train as a fighter pilot. In March of 1943 Yeager was posted in four bases and in eight months completed his training. In November of 1943 he was assigned to an airbase in Britain called RAF Leiston. On his seventh mission he got his first kill by shooting down a Messerschmidt Bf 109 fighter. On his eighth mission, March 5, 1944, his squadron was ambushed. Being in the rear position Yeager was in a  vulnerable position and was shot down. Yeager bailed out and was able to hide from the enemy and after nearly three weeks united with American Airman. On another flight, Yeager and Lt. Omar Patterson Jr. encountered a German patrol and were fired upon. They escaped but Patterson was struck by a bullet nearly severing his leg below the knee. Yeager amputated the leg, applied a tourniquet and carried his comrade to safely in Spain. Yeager remained in Spain for some time. After this mission, Yeager was to be stationed back in the US fearing he could be a target to divulge information about the France resistance. He appealed the orders and was given audience with General Dwight D Eisenhower. Yeager's argument was simple, he felt he could still help the war efforts and whatever information he may have was of little use since the D-Day invasion as the French resistance was openly known. General Eisenhower agreed and Yeager returned to action and earned a reputation as an elite fighter Pilot. He flew sixty one combat missions. Yeager had many interesting stories from his military service, including testing the X-1 rocket plane. Later Yeager achieved breaking the sound barrier, became a  test pilot, and later trained military pilots to be astronauts. In the early years, Yeager's' planes were often named Glamours Glenn for his future wife Glennis. Yeager and Glennis married after the war. More about Chuck Yeager's story can be found in the attached documents; an article from The Elks Magazine.