![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/D-day-stuff-300x225.jpg\")
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This one is a little unusual. Well, really, it’s quite unusual, but it’s true.<\/p>\n
Our friends at Military Phony checked this story thoroughly, because the late Jonn Lilyea did not believe it was true.<\/p>\n
But it is true.<\/p>\n
The young man in the photo below was 14 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Army to go fight in World War II. \u00a0According to his story, he dropped out of grammar school, and told the recruiters he was 16. He was 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds at the time he enlisted, which gave him an appearance older than he really was.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/J-schmidt-14-300x203.jpg\")
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Just looks like an affable soul, doesn’t he?<\/p>\n
He enlisted at the age of 14, spent a year in training including going to paratrooper training, and made the jump into Sicily in the dark of night when he was 15. He is now retired from the military.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/thumbnail_SCHMIDT_005-231x300.jpg\")
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He did get slightly hurt on landing, but found his cricket clicker, which all the airborne soldiers were given to find each other in the dark, and quickly found his unit. Below, you will see his assignments and his training for WWII.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/thumbnail_SCHMIDT_011-231x300.jpg\")
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He was literally following in his father’s footsteps. After the CCC was ended, Ove Schmidt enlisted in the Army ahead of his son, on the eve of World War II.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Ove-Schmit-obit-James-VN-1963-218x300.jpg\")
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When the Army discovered through a letter from his mother that Jim Schmidt was ‘just a kid’, he was sent home. \u00a0They wouldn’t take him back, so he joined the Navy, because the war was still underway and he was assigned to a munitions ship. Then the Navy found out his real age and sent him home (again). When he reached his 18th birthday, he re-upped with the Army and went to Germany, stayed there until 1946, and after that to Japan, to fight in Korea. In 1962, he was sent to Laos as an American advisor. The war in Viet Nam was yet to be an undeclared war.<\/p>\n
He was the sergeant major of all 7th Special Forces A Teams in Vietnam until he was\u00a0reassigned to 5th Special Forces Group in 1964. He retired in 1965.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/thumbnail_SCHMIDT_006-1-231x300.jpg\")
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Among his awards and decorations, Schmidt received the Silver Star with one Oak Leaf\u00a0Cluster, Bronze Star Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Purple Heart Medal with one Oak Leaf\u00a0Cluster, Air Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, World War II Victory Medal, European-Africa Middle\u00a0Eastern Campaign Medal and Army of Occupation Medal with Germany and Japan\u00a0Clasp. – Article.<\/p>\n
The peeps at Military Phony sent mostly the WWII stuff, so some things are just not included here. \u00a0I did not see a full list of his awards in what they sent.<\/p>\n
After three wars and 22 years of military service and going into retirement, he decided a desk job was not what he wanted, and he went to work for the CIA’s Air America in Vietnam. In 1969, he left SE Asia for home.<\/p>\n
He is now in his 90s. His 14 year old grandson, in awe of his granddad being part of a war at the same age, started a letter writing campaign for his grandpa’s birthday.<\/p>\n