Born in the little Kansas town of Broughton, Ernest Haden worked for Firestone Tire in Wichita, Kansas, until he was drafted in 1942.
Ernest Haden was four years as a U.S. Army combat medic in Europe during World War II. As a member of he 103rd infantry division of Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army, he was sent to war-ravaged towns and cities and finally to the very heart of Hitler's Nazi Germany, where his division came upon survivors of concentration camps.
"My job was fixing people up," Haden said. "Even on the front lines I got through without a scratch. That's the way war works."
After the War, he returned to Firestone. With his uncle working as an electrician in Southern California, Haden decided to move his wife, Elsie Mae, and their three children to the San Gabriel Valley. There he earned his electrical contractor's license and operated his own business for about 40 years.
On Christmas Day 2004, Elsie Mae died of a degenerative disease known as Crest Syndrome, ending their marriage of 62 years. Haden left Arizona, where they had been living, and moved to a Sun City retirement community to be closer to his children.
Even with macular degeneration, which has left him blind in his right eye and with limited vision in his left eye, Haden started almost immediately to write about his life. His experiences where the inspiration for the novel, "Time Out for War", which tells the story of newlywed Matt Lowe, who was drafted during World War II and joined Patton on the European front. While patching together wounded soldiers, Matt dreams of one day returning home to his bride and the son he hardly knows.
