"I was drafted into the Army. I went in and took my physical, and they turned me down because I only weighed 117 pounds and I was five foot 10. And you had to weigh at least 126 pounds. It took me nine months, and then I finally got the draft board to accept me. I went in and took my physical, and they passed me that time. I went into the Army, and I took my basic training and then was shipped over to the east coast of the United States. I still only weighed 117 pounds, and they told me they were going to keep me in the United States because I wouldn't be able to survive the rigors of war. I said 'No, no, I gotta go. I gotta go!' And they sent me to a psychiatrist, and he asked me why I wanted to go. I said I wanted to do what I could for my country to protect them and stop those people from enslaving and killing people over there. He said 'Well, there's something wrong with you, because a lot of guys don't want to go over there and do what they can to get out of going over there.' So I told him 'No, I want to go over there!' And so I got on a ship, and they sent me over. Incidentally, I only weighed 124 pounds when I was discharged two years later."

It took Victor Cross two years to gain acceptance into the Army, and he wasn’t about to take a desk job during World War II. Cross, wanted to be on the front lines. As a rifleman with the 87th Infantry Division, he got just that in the waning months of the war, serving from January to July 1945. He said his unit liberated several towns in Belgium, where citizens were hiding in basements and cellars when they arrived. He was among the first troops to march into the towns, searching for and capturing any German stragglers.
And then they moved on. Cross wasn’t there for the celebrations. He never received any thanks from the liberated Belgians. It wasn’t what he was after anyway.
“We never got to socialize with the people,” he said. “We never witnessed any of that.”