News 12 at 6 o'clock, July 23, 2009

AUGUSTA, Ga. --- They're part of "The Greatest Generation", World War II veterans who left Augusta and fought for our country overseas for years.

Today, less than a handful are left here locally, and this afternoon they had a reunion. They invited News 12's Lynnsey Gardner along for the stories.

The year was 1940 when 210 young men from Augusta signed up for the National Guard. Ten are still living, and today we spoke with three of the four still living here locally to remember.

Almost 70 years later, Pete Tjovaras still rattles off names, faces and places, not forgotten at 90-years-old. A snapshot of a moment in time that would go down in our history books; the second World War that took 210 Augusta boys to foreign lands under enemy fire.

"I'm going to tell you best friends I ever had," says Pete, who was technician four at the time, specializing as a radar operator.

Friendships formed in high school at Richmond Academy, then made rock solid in the 214th National Guard Battery.

First Sgt. Kasper Fulghum, "We were supposed to be discharged on December 1941, but unfortunately, they bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941."

At 93, Fulghum still remembers when his one year of active duty turned into five. "We were in Italy two solid years, they were pretty bloody."

They saw the Parthenon, and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Verona brought hardships, German snipers killed a comrade while their battery worked to build this bridge.

"They were bombing us daily," remembers Fulghum.

The whole time, Augusta, not far from their minds even Fulghum says while in North Africa. "I was homesick anyway, I hadn't seen home for over a year, I was walking down a street paved with Augusta brick and I saw that and it was even worse, made me more homesick."

But all three would see home again for good. And Pete says life has never been better. "We would do anything for each other. One of the greatest things of living was knowing these people."

The men say they've always met four times a year, but recently it's gone from 25 survivors down to three, including Raymond McKinney. And all three men hope today wasn't their last chance to break bread.