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0191-W2M-09/2004
Steven L. de Pyssler
Lt Col
U. S. Army Air Corps
WWII US Military
Ordnance Officer, 8th Engineer command - Ordnance
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He was born in Chicago as Steven de Clark. After his mother re-married, Steve went by her new name, de Pyssler, although de Clark remains on his birth certificate. His boyhood was filled with sports and study "and that was it," he says. He played baseball, football, and basketball, won the Illinois state boxing title, and attended Loyola University on a basketball scholarship. Steven began a thirty-eight-year military career in World War II. Sailing overseas on the Queen Mary, he first worked in ordnance in the U.S. Army Air Forces while stationed with the Eighth Bomber Command Ordinance of the Eighth Air Force. He earned his commission as a second lieutenant by attending a British military school. From there he went into the Ninth Engineer Command, a unit responsible for airfield construction. Steven saw the D-Day invasion from the air, where it looked as if "you could just walk across ship to ship to ship to ship," he says. He followed the Allied forces in the advance into Germany, helping to get vehicles and ammunition to the front. After World War II he supported air bases in Korea from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. During Vietnam he supplied aircraft parts and vehicles. Steven served in headquarters of Strategic Air Command (SAC) for more than eight years. In the Cold War, he worked with the CIA. Retired as a full colonel, Steven works in the retiree office at Barksdale Air Force Base.