On the last day of January 1915, in the second year of the Great War, down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into this world.

The Second World War simplified things like race, and people came down on very clear lines.

There was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister. He rides my shoulders I cannot lose him.

Well, I came the second year. I mean I just fit right in. They wrote a great person and I'm so lucky that I got to be part of the family.

In the early hours of 16 December 1944, the Germans launched their last great offensive of the Second World War against weakly held U.S. positions in the Ardennes Forest, the site of their original Blitzkrieg success against the French in 1940.

When I came into the gym, I wasn't just some guy. I was a two-time Olympian.