His father's harrowing stories of trench warfare in World War I, convinced F. Harper Griswold in 1942, to serve his country in the Navy. But as Griswold soon learned in his safe job as an amphibious repairman in Falmouth, England, the opposite of harrowing is often boring.

"I was tired of sitting in the rain guarding pontoons," says the Catonsville resident. So he became a cook on an old British cruiser. Ironically, he landed in the midst of action as harrowing as anything in World War I. His ship, the H.M.S. Ceres, stood off the coast of Normandy on D-Day, directing troop convoys to their landing areas.

"We were right next to the USS Texas and when it fired it looked like the whole deck of the ship was on fire," he says. "There was just a wall of smoke on the beaches. It was hard to comprehend. I was an 18-year-old kid and most of it didn't sink in at the time. It went right over the top."