When he turned 18, he enlisted in the British army and, after doing
menial work for a couple of years, he volunteered for an elite 87-man
commando troop (X Troop) composed of refugees from countries overrun
by Nazi forces. All of them spoke fluent German, and most of them were
Jewish.
He took the name Masters and, like everyone else in his unit, burned
all documents, letters and books that might have revealed his Jewish
and central European origins. On D-Day in 1944, he and his unit were
part of the first wave attacking the coast of Normandy. Carrying a
folding bicycle on his back, he was the second soldier to jump off his
boat and wade ashore.