"I told the doc I'd been shot in the neck and he didn't believe me. 

At the breakfast table the next day he saw the shrapnel and pulled it out and I said, 'I told you!'

Fred Bozard keeps pictures of his seven brothers among other framed family photos in his living room.

He's actually not related to the men, but they share a bond just as strong as family.

Bozard, 88, and 33 other young fighter pilots entered World War II as buddies and came home a family. Decades later, seven of the men, whose photos he displays, are still alive.

"It just makes me tingle all over," Bozard said of his annual reunion with his squadron. "I just love these guys. It's just one, big, happy family. There's not too many of us left."

Bozard was a lieutenant in the war and spent seven months as an F6F Hellcat fighter pilot with the BF5 Squadron. He was 23 when he entered the war in late 1941. He was stationed in the Pacific Ocean on board the USS Yorktown.

"I can remember standing on the flight deck waving goodbye and my parents were crying and all the men were crying and we were headed off to the Pacific," he said.

Bozard was the first Hellcat pilot to be shot down in the war. He was in a battle over Marcus Island, the easternmost territory belonging to Japan. He made it back to his ship, but he had shrapnel imbedded in his left side.

"They just wiped the blood off me and sent me back out the same day," he said. "I told the doc I'd been shot in the neck and he didn't believe me. At the breakfast table the next day he saw the shrapnel and pulled it out and I said, 'I told you!' ''

He vividly recalls when his squadron invaded Japan's naval base Truc Atoll, which Bozard said represented to the Japanese what Pearl Harbor is to the United States.

"We were all scared to death of Truc," he said. "There were U.S. destroyers and aircraft everywhere. God, I'd never seen so much air craft in my life. You couldn't see nothin' there was so much (shooting)."

According to the book, Pilots, Man Your Planes!, written by James Campbell, Bozard's roommate on the ship, there were 70 fighter pilots, nine fast carriers, seven battleships, 10 cruisers and 30 destroyers in the battle.

"I got up the next morning and saw the U.S. was everywhere and I thought, 'Oh my Lord, what must these poor natives think,'" he said.

The Japanese lost 150 planes in the battle and Bozard's squadron lost one, Campbell's book said.

Months later, Bozard's squadron struck the Truc base again as their last target before heading home.

"After the second time we hit it we really puffed our chests out and said, 'We're not afraid of nothin','" he said with a proud smile.

Bozard continued to serve on the Jacksonville Naval Air Station until 1947 performing various jobs such as ordnance gunnery officer.

He then married his wife, Josephine, and in 1949 moved to St. Augustine and opened a car dealership. The Bozard Ford dealership continues in business today.

Since 1975, Bozard has been on the board of directors for the museum for the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C.

He continues to meet with his squadron each year, including taking trips to the museum.

Josephine said she is amazed at how many widows come every year to meet with the group.

"They're so close," she said. "When the widows come, it shows it was part of their lives just as much as it was their husbands."

© The St. Augustine Record