Robert Baldwin was a pilot in the Air Force during World War II. Photo by: Courtesy to the Ledger Dispatch Bob Baltz fought in the U.S. Army in the European Theater during World War II. Photo by: Stephanie Minasian

Editor's note: This is the last in a five-part series featuring Amador's World War II veterans.

Eisenhower called it the great crusade, but to American men who clashed with the Nazis between 1943 and 1945, this crusade to liberate Europe often came with tremendous personal losses. Today, many young faces that vanished in battle live in the memories of World War II vets like Bob Baltz of Sutter Creek and Robert Baldwin of Pine Grove - faces that paved a costly road to victory.

They sent him a notice. Baltz was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. "I'm just a kid, you know. I was just about 21 or so. To any young guys, you got a letter right away. 'We need you' is what it said," remembered Baltz. "I was not in the slightest bit scared."

Under the blazing heat of the Mojave Desert near Barstow, Calif., Baltz and his outfit learned to run over the desert and operate 40-mm anti-aircraft guns. "The gun has to be level," explained Baltz. "It takes about five or six men to be shooting it." Baltz's company was eventually sent to a new base in the South. He was in for a surprise."I saw my brother, Lester, in Tennessee. He was in a different Army altogether," said Baltz. "My outfit was in a separate battalion. We weren't attached to any Army at that time." Baltz had also met Lester's captain on the base. That meeting would prove fateful on D-Day.

"Everything was momentary, you know," Baltz said of the encounters. "Just short visits."

Now a young soldier, Baltz was sent off to the European Theater of the war, where he would soon witness an incomparable battle on the shores of western France. He would be part of the Normandy landings on the first day of the invasion - June 6, 1944.

"Utah beach wasn't any picnic," said Baltz. "Utah was bad enough, I'll tell you."

Baltz's infantry stayed on Utah Beach during the second and third day of the invasion. His brother Lester's 99th Infantry Division, comprised of 16,000 men, landed in flat-bottom ships that were able to run up onto the beach. The troops came scattered out - not all at once - for safety from German fire.

During a break between battles, Baltz encountered something he thought was nearly impossible. "(The 99th Infantry) came off the ship by our gun," said Baltz. "There was a row of men coming off and (Lester's) captain went right by. I mean, there was maybe a hundred guys that went by, but his captain went by our gun." Baltz, who can always remember a face, shouted out to the captain. "I said, 'Hello, Captain Bricker.' And he said, 'How in the hell do you know me? With you being an anti-aircraft gunner on the beach in France?'" Baltz reminded the captain they had met in Tennessee. "I told him that Sgt. Baltz is my brother," the veteran remembered. Baltz went to ask the captain if his brother was behind him somewhere. Acknowledging Lester, the captain said that he didn't know where anybody was and kept marching. Baltz knew that the 99th infantry was planning to stay overnight, dig in and then cut off the peninsula the next morning. After seeing the captain continue to run down the beach, 10 more soldiers followed before Lester ran right by Baltz.

"Here we are, he's in a different part of the Army altogether, and we had no idea where each other was," said Baltz. "We didn't even know if each other was in England. You have no idea how surprised you can be when they're unloading 16,000 men ... and here he comes right by my gun." After a quick brotherly reunion, Lester followed his outfit to where they were going to dig in and stay the night.

One of Baltz's lieutenants came by in a Jeep later that evening, and Baltz mentioned seeing his brother to him. The lieutenant knew where Lester's outfit was going and he offered to let Baltz borrow the Jeep for a few minutes to drive down the beach for a short visit with his brother.

"I drove up there and found out where my brother was, and we had a little visit for 10 or 15 minutes, and then I had to get back right away," said Baltz. The quick family reunion would be the last time Baltz would see Lester. "The next morning, they kicked off and cut off that peninsula and did what they were supposed to do."

Baltz's troop was attached to Lester's 99th Infantry, and protected their light artillery - which Lester was part of. Every time the artillery would move up into new territory, the infantry would make sure that they weren't too far ahead. "He got killed," Baltz said of Lester. "He got wounded pretty bad." Baltz would always be thankful for the brief reunion at Normandy "It was so amazing, I couldn't believe it," he said about his seeing his brother on Utah Beach. "Here we are talking about a million men, or however many people they had over there, and then he just walks by my gun on the beach. You couldn't believe such a thing, but here he was."

Baltz went on to fight in the famous Battle of the Bulge, one of the most vicious and casualty-laden encounters of the entire war. He was awarded a good conduct service medal, one bronze arrowhead with five bronze stars representing each of the battles he fought in.

At the same time that soldiers like Baltz were shooting down planes from the German Luftwaffe, American pilots were risking their lives in the same skies, trying to put an end to Hitler's war machine. One of those "fly boys" was Robert Baldwin, who sat in the co-pilot's chair of a B-24 Liberator. Time and again, Baldwin and his crew would steer their heavy bomber through exploding aerial shells and enemy fighter planes. Death in the sky became a common sight.

Assigned to the 454th Bomb Group, Baldwin was one of countless pilots who attacked German targets from an airbase in Cerignola, Italy. When he first arrived to see the cold, drafty tents that he and his men would be living in, Baldwin discovered the quarters had belonged to a bomber crew that was just killed. "They'd been shot down," he recalled. "We had to go through their stuff, which was a strange feeling." The peculiar feelings wouldn't end that night for the pilot, who quickly realized just how run-down the conditions were in Cerignola. "I crawled into a sleeping sack and there was a huge rat inside it," he added. "It tore my leg up and I fell out of the tent into the mud." From that moment on, Baldwin's crew would make hunting giant rats on base their number one pastime between missions. Their record was 12 rats shot in one day.

The B-24 crews in Italy formed tight brotherhoods as the war went on and claimed more pilots. Baldwin's crew took in a stray Italian dog, which they named Moosebeerbomb. Baldwin remembers fun and friendships as the cornerstones of morale, particularly when the dreaded "Dear John" letters began pouring in. His funniest memory of the war has to do with the way "the guys" helped one of their own deal with a Dear John letter. "Most of us were getting them," Baldwin said of the breakup messages from back home. "This friend of mine got a letter from his girlfriend saying it was too long to wait. He was really broken up over the whole thing because she also wanted him to mail her photograph back. Well, we couldn't believe that, so we all rounded up as many pictures as we could find of our girlfriends and ex-girlfriends and gave them to him. He sent her back the entire stack of pictures with a note that read, 'Sorry, I can't remember which one you were.'"

But the laughter on base, or the comfort of a little adopted dog, couldn't shield Baldwin from the pain of losing friends. Back when he was training to become a pilot, he'd become close to another flyboy named Skip. He'd even attended Skip's wedding before the pilots were shipped out to Italy. During Baldwin's first air battle, he witnessed Skip's death. "It was my first mission and his 13th mission," Baldwin said. "I saw his plane get hit and explode. There were no parachutes coming down. I knew Skip was gone. His wife got a letter saying that he was missing in action. She kept writing us to ask if he was a prisoner somewhere. The military had a policy that we couldn't reveal he was dead for the first 90 days. We weren't allowed to let her know the truth."

As the war progressed, Baldwin and his crew would see more and more American pilots lost. For him, the fighting culminated in a deadly mission to bomb Kern, Austria - Adolf Hitler's birthplace. Flying over the industrial center, the crews realized that the Germans were moving 88-mm guns around on rail cars, throwing a huge box barrage of deadly flak up into the sky. For most American pilots, flak had a harsh psychological impact. "It was terrible," Baldwin said of the battle over Kern. "The Germans didn't even aim at your plane. They just sent waves of flak up. Flak was the worst thing to confront. At least with the German fighter planes, you could shoot back. The flak was something you literally couldn't do anything about. You had to fly straight through it. Most of the time, when you got back to base they'd give you a two-ounce shot of liquor. You would just go to bed and try to forget about the mission until the next one."

Baldwin's luck over Germany finally ran out when the hydraulic system of his B-24 was shot to pieces, sending an engine propeller through the cockpit, nearly taking his and the other pilot's heads off. Baldwin managed to crash-land. His arm was shredded. His spine had come out through his back. A flight surgeon Baldwin hated operated on him without anesthetics, almost choking him to death with the whisky being poured down his throat. The same surgeon later cleared him to fly before he'd recovered, causing Baldwin to suffer from extreme infections.

More than six decades later, Baldwin believes the pain he went through was worth it. "I think we had no choice but to fight that war," he said. "We had that maniac Hitler killing millions of Jews and other people. If that's not evil, I don't know what is. I hate war, I absolutely hate it. But when there's evil in the world, I guess there's no alternative. The Nazis had to be stopped. In that sense, I'm proud I was able to participate."

Part 1: Local Marines recall 'hell in the Pacific'

Part 2: Navy couple remembers supporting WWII troops

Part 3: Okinawa - the War in the Pacific draws to a close

Part 4: Facing the guns of the Japanese