The late, great baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean once said, “When you done it, it ain’t braggin’.”

My Uncle George Renard puts it differently. He says simply, “You have to have the paperwork.”

All the guys who went off to the second World War over a half century ago lived by a set of unwritten rules. If you did not have the paperwork, you could not talk about your war experiences.

There are at least two ways to get the paperwork. You can acquire it the hard way like my father did, taking four bullets on four separate occasions, including one in the head and one in the “buttocks” (as Forest Gump would say).

“Michael A” as he was known to my Uncle George, “got his paperwork the hard way.” He earned four Purple Hearts and a Silver Star.

Uncle George acquired his paperwork in a different way, but quite honorable nevertheless. He was a bombardier aboard “B-25-D 12994” which flew over 50 missions over Italy and North Africa in 1943 and 1944.

His first mission on June 5, 1943 was destined for the Sicilian island of Pantelleria in the Strait of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, about 62 miles southwest of Sicily. Some 36 planes hauling over 1000 bombs each were jumped by 15 ME. 109’s. “We saw one of the B-25’s crash land on the water,” wrote my uncle in his Navigator’s Log, leaving everyone on fire.”

Two things jumped out at me as I read my uncle’s log of over 50 missions flown. The first was his remarkably beautiful handwriting, a by-product of a lot of knuckle-wrapping by the nuns in Catholic School in his native Cleveland.

The other thing that was extraordinary was his modest description of the events of every mission. On June 10, he wrote “We went back to Pantelleria again today (42 planes 3 X 1000 lbs. of bombs) and that place is sure taking a beating. I don’t know what’s holding that island up.”

A day later, he wrote, “We were the last bombers to bomb Pantelleria (48 planes and 12 cluster frags),” he inked in the log. “In fact, we actually bombed seven minutes after the island surrendered.”

On June 24, his aircraft and 35 others flew out of Kings Cross, Africa with a destination of Golfo Aranci, Sardina. “No fighters,” he acknowledged in the log, but some flak. I made a direct hit on a ship… maybe two. They were at a pier and my bombs went across both of them.”

If you have the paperwork, it is not bragging. I used to love to sit and listen to my dad an uncle tell the war stories. True enough, they were always embellished a bit, I’m sure, but their roots were established in real life events.

Most of the fun of listening to Uncle George’s stories was his liberal use of “expletive deleted” adjectives. Some of the very best curse words I ever used I learned from Uncle George.

My Aunt Olga would always admonish him, especially if he was about to go to a nearby elementary school in Lexington, SC to address a class of students, as he did so many times. “Watch your language,” I could hear her saying to the bombardier.

Now nearly 90 years old, he still gets invites to address a Civic Club or a church. Every day was not necessarily a good day. On July 20, 1943, he wrote “We had a bad day for us today, but we did a good job on the target. We lost 3 B-25’s.”

On July 27, he wrote, “A very successful mission… no flak… no fighters… we got news yesterday Mussolini surrendered but nobody knew anything about it.”

As I read through my uncle’s memoirs in the Navigator’s log, you could not help but note the respect he had for the opposition. He never referred to the enemy in derogatory terms, but I could not help but notice that he never once spelled Germany with a capital “G.”

Before boarding for a critical mission in December of 1943, a Captain Schwartz queried Renard: “How many missions do you have Sergeant?” My uncle answered “Forty eight sir and how many do you have?” He only had three or four, and that fact caused a lot of uneasy laughter, but it put an end to the Captain’s piercing questions.

After the fact, a Major Keller, whose “Leaking Lucy” airplane was used on that critical mission, chewed Schwartz out and told him if he didn’t have Renard they would have to fly 30 planes back to find that turnstile and destroy it.”

You have to have the paperwork! My uncle does!