Born in Homer, Louisiana, Paul moved to Shreveport as a three-year-old. He later began studies at Centenary College, but volunteered in summer of 1943 for Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) for college students. After basic, his group was sent to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburg. When the ASTP program closed, Paul was placed in the Ninety-Fifth Infantry Division. He sailed on the USS West Point (AP-23) to England as a member of First Battalion, 379^th Infantry Regiment. As part of the Third Army, he went ashore at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D+100. Paul recalls how his unit received seventy-two replacements in a two-day period in December of 1944. He believes the average age of men in his unit was 24. As a private first class, platoon runner for a lieutenant, and radio operator, Paul remembers constant fighting through the fall and early winter of 1944-45. From September to mid-December, he says he wore the same pair of pants and shirt and never showered. He was hospitalized for frozen feet in January of 1945. He returned to his unit (by then part of the Ninth Army) but illness forced him from the frontlines by early March. Suffering with jaundice and hepatitis, he was sent to an evacuation hospital in Holland. Told his unit was going to the Pacific, Paul returned to America, arriving on Boston on July 1, 1945. After a month furlough, he reported to Camp Shelby, and was there when Japan surrendered. Paul was discharged at Fort Hancock, New Jersey on November 3, 1945. Besides earning a degree at Centenary College in 1947, Paul entered the reserves as a commissioned officer, serving one year in active duty in 1951, and retiring 1962. In his business career he worked at United Gas in Shreveport and in the land department of Union Producing Company, before retiring July 1, 1986.