GRAFTON (AP) - Paul Campbell grew up on a farm near Grafton, and spent the harvest season helping his family with the potato crop. When he was 20, he joined up with the war effort and had a few remarkable years in Europe doing a job that not long before seemed unimaginable to a boy from the Midwest.

After World War II began, Campbell applied for Aviation Cadets but almost didn't make the cut. He didn't have the required college education, so he needed to take a pilot aptitude test.

His fluent French probably was the only reason he passed the test and was accepted into the Army Air Force, he said - the Campbells came from Canada and all spoke French at home.

At the age of 20, he began his training to be a pilot of the B-17 bomber, often referred to as the "Flying Fortress" because of the ten 50-caliber guns that defended the aircraft. Campbell said he really didn't know why he decided to become a pilot, but said it was a dramatic change to go from Grafton to a military base in England.

"You forget the farm," he said. "The war started and everybody was joining up my age."

Campbell served in the 401st Bomb Group and was stationed in Deenethorpe "just across the channel from Germany." His missions usually sent him and a crew of nine other co-pilots, bombardiers and gunners on bombing runs against aircraft factories.

He said many other countries had their bombing missions during the night because it was harder for the enemy to shoot their planes down, but the 401st only flew daytime missions. It was an incredibly dangerous job that got many fellow pilots and plane crew members killed or captured.

Each mission was anywhere from five hours to 12 hours long. The B-17s burned up about 200 gallons of fuel in an hour, and a typical day at work would result in the 2,700 gallon fuel tank being run almost dry.

In the first year of missions, about half the planes that would leave England wouldn't make it back to the base by the end of the day - some modifications, including the addition of a rotating ball turret to increase defense, did improve the numbers over time. But the average pilot only made it through seven or eight missions.

Campbell said he would fly at a maximum altitude of about 33,000 or 34,000 feet, which had benefits and one major disadvantage. "The higher you could get, the less accurate their guns were," he said.

The high elevation also meant the planes were unbelievably cold, especially for the crew sitting inside the cramped quarters for several hours at a time. Campbell laughed at the suggestion that his endurance of frigid North Dakota winters before the war made him more tolerant of the cold conditions during missions.

"Not when it gets to 45 below," he said. "It had heaters, but you couldn't tell they were there. Oh boy, you've got to be dressed."

Campbell flew a complete tour, 25 missions, and was given the option to go back home. But he began another tour and finished about 15 more missions before the war ended.