For those of you who have looked for a “profile” before, I apologize. At first I didn’t realize I should/was supposed to post one. Then it was the question of what to say. I don’t know if I have the answer to that yet, but here goes.

Like some/many of you, I watched “Combat!” as a kid with my father, a WWII veteran. After each show I would ask, “Is that how it really was?” He would always say, “Close enough.” Like most of the men of his generation, he never talked about his time in the ETO, except to occasionally tell us things that were, to me as a kid, funny. I tried to incorporate a few of those tidbits into the “Lydecker” stories.

After I retired, I rediscovered “Combat!” on YouTube. I started making up my own story as I took a daily walk, even saying the dialogue I’d concocted as I went along. (Luckily, I live in the country so nobody was around to hear it!) Eventually, the story got so long that even though I hadn’t written any fiction since high school, I decided to put it down on paper – hence the “Lydecker” saga. I thought I was the only one who indulged in this type of fantasy until I discovered the “Combat! Fan Club” and learned that I was not alone. (In case you haven’t guessed by now, I’m not the most Internet-savvy person.)

Through the fan club, I got connected with Les Backus who did a yeoman’s job of editing “Lydecker.” About a year after the stories were written, I got my nerve up and posted the first one, “Nine Rules.”

Since then I’ve continued to walk and write. I wouldn’t keep on writing if I didn’t enjoy it, but it does take quite a bit of time reading over and then re-writing a story until I’m satisfied. So, getting feedback (what you liked/didn’t like) is great. It lets me know that all that effort is appreciated. (I would imagine that everyone who posts a story feels the same way.)

What else can I say? Well, four things Les told me are:

(1) I put in too much ‘extraneous’ stuff, like the Saunders flash-backs, into my stories. Sorry about that. “The guys” weren’t on patrol 24/7 so I l do like to have them interacting in little vignettes. I also like back-stories. (Since I had to construct my own bio for Saunders to explain why he “is the way he is,” I thought others might enjoy little pieces of it. If you don’t, skip the parts.);

(2) At times I write like a girl. I can’t help that; as Popeye says, “I yam what I yam…” But, then again, it has been said that men wage war and women suffer it;

(3) These are my stories, so in the end, do what you want to do. So I have; and

(4) “Combat!” fans like to see little references to the show in the story. Hence I named myself…

Queen’s Bishop.