This volume is a collection of stories (some of them true!) from the writings of Robert Huddleston. Themes, both fiction and nonfiction, revolve around Bob's life experiences coming of age during World War II and his subsequent time in various US military and federal government positions. His tales capture the spirit and the chicanery of twentieth-century American boom times.
ROBERT HUDDLESTON was awarded the coveted silver wings of an Army Air Corps pilot while still a teenager. This was followed by extensive training in the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, the aircraft he would pilot in combat against German military forces in the air and on the ground.
After the war, a university education under the GI Bill was followed by employment at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range, where German rocket experts were employed. He then moved onto Washington, DC, to work at the Pentagon before joining the newly established space agency NASA, first at the Goddard Space Flight Center in nearby Maryland, later at NASA headquarters. Huddleston has degrees from the University of Missouri and George Washington University, and he graduated from the National Defense University in Washington, DC, as a representative of NASA.
He married Pepita Lasalle on September 18, 1974. Departing federal service, he became a freelance writer publishing articles, essays, book reviews, and short stories. For ten years, he was a columnist for the Federal Times. He has also published a biography of a Mexican-American patriot, Edmundo: From Chiapas, Mexico, to Park Avenue (2007); the novella An American Pilot with the Luftwaffe (2014); the novel Love and War: A Father and Son in Two World Wars (2020); and Satan's Henchman: Whatever Became of SS General Hans Kammler? (2023), a work of historical fiction. He now resides in a retirement community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The fact that he is fast approaching his 100th birthday in 2024 has in no way slowed down his writing.