Curt West is 96. The other day, he sat in his brown recliner staring out the window at the bright goldfinches twittering in a bush outside the Edgecomb Green retirement home.

He is a smallish man who grew up in the family of a lobsterman from Steuben, Maine that featured 12 brothers and sisters.

Many days, he waits for his pals to visit. Some do, like Don Hale, a regular. Others … well.

A month or so ago, he had a heart attack and is trying to recover from it. Reading and spelling are a problem for him as are some names. He wonders if he will be able to join his regular golf gang this summer.

But his memory is sharp when asked about his time as a U.S. Army corporal during the bloody South Pacific island campaigns during World War II. His story began on Dec. 7, 1939, when he joined a Maine National Guard unit stationed at Bar Harbor. Two years later,  the Japanese attacked the Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, and he found himself in the regular Army on board an ocean liner bound for New Zealand.

In the days before smartphones and computers controlled everything over the air, people, like him, provided communication by stringing phone lines between primitive phones so soldiers could talk to each other.

After a couple of months of training, West was assigned to a unit that sailed for a major Japanese island base called Guadalcanal. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

“The Marines landed on one side and we (the Army) on the other. We were tasked with pushing the enemy from two sides. It was a slaughter,” he said.

As the island-hopping campaign moved from one base to another, frequently targeting airfields, West and his signal pals spent a lot of time around pilots. He liked them. “I had learned to fly a Piper Cub at the Ellsworth airfield. I would talk to the pilots of the heavy Army bombers (the B-24 and B-17s) and asked them to take me for a ride. Finally, one said OK.”

He had informed the B-24 pilot he could fly a plane. So, after takeoff, the pilot had him sit in the co-pilot’s seat and showed him how to fly the bomber. West admits the controls were about the same as the Piper Cub.

The word got around that he could fly, and soon he was a regular passenger. The pilots would fly the plane and do the bombing run; then he would fly it back home while they took naps.

One day, while on a jungle foot patrol with three other guys on the island called New Georgia, he said he stepped in a puddle, and his boot filed up with water. He stopped, took it off and poured the water out. But it was blood, not water. He saw a hole in his boot and sock and realized he had been shot. It was time to head back to the shore and see a doctor.

“There was a hole in the back of my foot. The doc took an iodine swab and pushed it in the wound. It hurt like heck, and I yelled. But I was lucky. It (the bullet) went clear though and didn’t hurt anything (major). He said if it had been an eighth of an inch in any other direction, I would have lost a foot.

Later he was part of the invasion of the Philippines where he said he saw a bomber sling a torpedo into the mouth of an enemy coastal artillery cave blowing off the top of the hill.

As his unit prepped for the invasion of Japan, his boss told him he had been in combat too long and sent him home.

“We were sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge when the Captain announced that the Japanese had surrendered.”

From San Francisco, he was put on a train for Boston where he got on a bus for Bangor. When he sat down, he looked up and saw his father. It was a great surprise for both of them.

After the war, he moved to Boothbay, and spent 35 years as a lineman for Central Maine Power. Then he opened a lawnmower repair shop, joined service clubs, made lots of friends, was a faithful churchgoer and lived a good life.

Then came the heart attack and he had to move out of his home. He is a bit slower now, worries about his memory and is careful to walk and exercise.

Today, the old soldier is planning for another invasion. The primary objective is the kitchen. Once the evening meal is over, and the kitchen help leaves, he plans to take over the stove and make popovers.