Bill Barbour

I grew up south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, graduated from Lehigh University, then went into the Air Force and was a fighter pilot. When I was in sixth grade, my teacher had us write a page about our summer vacation. We turned them in, and shortly after that, she called me up to her desk to tell me I was a good writer. That made a lasting impression on me. I wrote a couple of plays in my twenties that were produced at a local college. I also wrote a screenplay that was shown on a local cable television station in Oklahoma. Prior to retiring from my day job in 2011, I started work on my first book: The Wind-The Story of Arnald.

Arnald was born in Germany in 1927. I met him at the small Methodist church we both attended, and we became great friends. He told me about his former life in Germany. My first thought was that it was worth telling the world. Arnald was very matter-of-fact, so I had to elicit the emotions he had during his childhood and time in the German Wehrmacht (army) in World War II. We worked together on the book until 2016, when he ironically died on December seventh. I put the book aside until 2019 when I retired, then decided to finish it because I thought it was what he would have wanted.

The book covers his life from when he was essentially orphaned at age two and raised by his Great Aunt Maybell who lived in America prior to World War I. She educated him on American culture so that he never believed the Nazi propaganda. At age fifteen, he was drafted, with his entire school class, and served in anti-aircraft artillery and then infantry. I’m not aware of another book from a German soldier’s viewpoint in World War II.

Many people who have read The Wind wanted to know what happened to Arnald after the war, so I wrote The Rain-The Story of Horst which is a separate story on its own. It is set in post-World War II, and also lets the reader know what happened to Arnald.

I’m currently working on my third book, set in the United States in modern times, which should be published in the Spring of 2024. Its title will be The Club-The Story of Ray.

Thank you for reading my biography. I hope you enjoy my books.

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