Jacob (Jake) Ruser was born December 27, 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of a Great War veteran.  His parents moved to the nearby town of Conshohocken when he was young, and that is where he and his sister grew up, all against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Like many kids, Jake did not understand those economic realities:  he remembers school and the movies, and radio comedies and sledding down the hilly streets.  He does recall the news of Pearl Harbor, the event that would define him and his generation.  Jake received his letter and reported for duty when the time came, and the army trained him as a combat medic.   Jake went overseas on the Queen Mary, arriving in Glasgow en route to Liverpool.  They arrived in March 1944 and were stationed near Manchester until early June, when they were moved to Portsmouth.  Jake crossed the Channel and hit Utah Beach on D+8 – June 14, 1944.  He had been trained to set up an evacuation hospital on Utah Beach, but the exigencies of combat led to a reassignment and he was sent to the front to aid the 4th Division.  Jake moved with the division through the Brittany peninsula, and then at St-Lo he took part in the Normandy breakout, where much of the fighting took place in the infamous Bocages country, replete with hedgerows.  On one occasion Jake was knocked unconscious from the blast of a Tiger tank 88 gun, and he was reported as killed.  He was back on the front lines the next day, treating his comrades as they advanced on and liberated Paris and moved through to Belgium.  They then moved through the Siegfried Line and into Germany, where they were engaged in the intense Battle of the Hurtgen Forest in November 1944, where Jake was wounded.  They came out of that unit under strength and were sent to rest in the Luxembourg area in December 1944 – right where the Germans began the Ardennes offensive.  Now Jake found himself at the center of the Battle of the Bulge.  He remembers it as a confusing time, with considerable retreat and advance until the Americans reset the line – he also recalls a Christmas turkey dinner that took place on his 20th birthday!  Next came the drive into Germany in the final months of the war, as Jake crossed the Rhine on March 31, 1945.  Not long after he was summoned to the regiment and told that he was being sent home on a 45-day temporary duty assignment:  the SS America (the USS West Point) shipped out on May 1, so Jake was home when VE Day was declared.  He was assigned to the Thomas M. England Hospital in Atlantic City, where he worked to nurse wounded soldiers back to health.  He did that until he was discharged, at which time he returned to Conshohocken and used his GI Bill benefits to study accounting.  He also met Claire, and the two of them married and started a family, finding their way in postwar America.  Jacob Ruser was interviewed by Scott Masters at his home in Philadelphia in July 2025.