Born in Minden, Louisiana, George tried to join the U.S. Army Air Forces in February of 1942, but doctors turned him down because of an old skull fracture and brain concussion. Enlisting in the Marines the following August, he was first assigned to an anti-tank battalion, and then was switched to motor transport. When George learned that his former outfit was heading overseas, he stowed away on its ship to New Zealand. As a soldier in the Twenty-sixth Regiment, Fifth Marine Division, George served at New Caledonia and Iwo Jima, where he was badly wounded. He ended his service in October of 1945 as a (rank). After the war he worked for the railroad, retiring after 37 years.