Off We Go...Down In Flame

The story of a WWII Bombardier in the air over Europe and as a prisoner of war in Romania.

Born in the Bronx in 1920, "Al" Altvater spent his formative years in rural New Jersey. Seventeen at the time of his father's death during the Great Depression, he quit school and got a job in the infant TV industry assembling and installing television sets.

Enlisting in what was then the "Army Air Corps," he volunteered for the Philippines, but was sent to Panama instead. He spent the war years in Panama, Texas, Nebraska, Idaho, Africa, Italy, and Romania. He retired from the military in 1964 with a rank of major. He subsequently had a second career as a social worker in Loas Angeles County "doing penance."

Wherever he was stationed, Altvater took classes in local colleges and universities, graduating from the university of Philippines in 1963. Divorced in the late seventies, he moved to California's remote Mendocino Coast, where he remarried, and where he now resides with his wife Heidi, their dog Fritz and their cat Sweetie.