The future Private Roy was born three years before the crash, in 1926, in a hamlet at the northeast corner of Oneida County in Central New York, to a family of French-Canadian origin. Private Roy enlisted on December 19, 1944. On land, American soldiers saw, and did, the barely imaginable. The cancellation of Operation Downfall undoubtedly saved the lives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of American soldiers (and Japanese soldiers, too). It was said that the former Private Roy was an exceptional shot.