ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — A longtime Orange Beach resident will be honored this spring for his service to the country during World War II.

Edward H. Borman, a Missouri Native and Gulf Coast transplant, will fly to Washington, D.C. in May to view the unveiling of a new monument. Borman will tour the National World War II Memorial. Surviving veterans from around the country will be traveling to the nation’s capital to be honored alongside Borman.

“Yeah, I like that,” Edward Borman said of being recognized for his service.

In 1944, just a day after graduating high school, a 17-year-old Edward Borman entered the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes naval training station.

“I joined up along with 17 other graduates of that high school,” he said. “We all went up to Great Lakes together but not all of us got back.”

While at the training station, he was tested and placed in radio school where he learned Morse code.

“While I was there they asked for volunteers to go into the submarine service. Some 62 volunteered, including me,” he said.

Of those 62 only two passed the physical and mental examinations, Edward Borman being one of them. He said one of the tests required he hold his breath for two to three minutes. He could hold his breath, and he was soon sent to submarine school.

“They trained us on old submarines that got your feet wet when you got down below 90 feet,” Edward Borman said.

“Isn’t that awful?” Jan Borman, his wife, asked laughing.

Edward Borman was then sent to radar school at the Coast Guard Academy. Next came sonar school.

“Then they sent me overseas,” Edward Borman said. He took a trip to Pearl Harbor, arriving a few years after Japan’s attack.

“There was still damage and ship’s sunk in the harbor,” Edward Borman said.

“You told me how horrible the beaches looked — oily and barbwired,” Jan Borman said.

At Pearl Harbor he experienced escape training. Edward Borman and other trainees faced a 100-foot cylinder, full of water.

“At the very base was a little door, and outside that was a steel round room,” Edward Borman said. “They wanted you to stick your nose at the ceiling of the chamber and then they would open the bottom and all that water would come as fast as it could.”

The men were expected to breathe through a Munson lung and reach the top of the cylinder by climbing a rope slowly, to regulate the pressure, to get out.

“They lost several people on those,” Edward Borman said.

After facing treacherous training missions, Edward Borman went to serve on a destroyer. While on the warship he was sent to Guam where he worked in the radio room copying codes sent out by the U.S. Navy.

“On the way out to Guam I happened to copy the news and there was an interesting message in plain language,” Edward Borman said. “The Army Air Force had dropped a bomb on Japan and it was the equivalent of 2,000 tons of TNT. They didn’t say it was atomic or the two targets they had dropped on.”

Those two spots were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Edward Borman continued to serve on the USS Carp and was stationed near Guam as the U.S. took over, bombed Japan again and Japan surrendered.

After the war ended, Edward Borman returned home and attended college on the GI bill.

“I could have not afford (college) and the government gave me that,” Edward Borman said of what honors him most about being a veteran.

He continued on to law school, passed the bar and practiced law in Missouri for the majority of his life.

His retirement, and his wife who wanted to be close to her sister, brought him to Orange Beach even before it was a city. He has spent the latter of his life living on the water and broadcasting across the world with a ham radio.