As a final note in his book "For Love of Their Country," North County Times columnist Tom Morrow writes that World War II veterans are dying at a rate of about 1,800 a week.

That statistic alone was motivation for Morrow to compile some of the columns and articles he has written about veterans during the past 10 years. Even the otherwise pleasant task of revisiting some of his favorite articles was a sobering reminder of mortality, as some of the men he had interviewed had died. Others he cannot even find.

"You learn what they went through," he said. "Everybody's got a different story. This is just a small fraction of the stories out there. Every time I talk to someone who served in World War II, I question them about what they did. When you talk to these guys, you learn something new. You learn a different perspective on the war."

"For Love of Their Country" is available for $9.95 from Morrow's Web site, OldWarriorBooks.com. The stories in the 119-page book are brief, but contain all the drama and action of a World War II movie. One veteran, Bill Ryherd of Oceanside, did live through an experience that was documented in a two-hour TV show called "Shot from the Sky" on the History Channel.

"He was one of 182 Allied fliers put into a concentration camp," Morrow said. "Most of them were betrayed by Capt. Jacques (a Belgian double agent), and he ended up being hanged as a war criminal. He was supposed to be with the French resistance, but he turned these guys in for money."

In his book, Morrow tells of how Ryherd was shot down during a bombing mission targeting a Seine river bridge.

Ryherd escaped death more than once after the mission. Bailing out of his plane through the bomb bay doors, he had to tear his parachute open with his hands after it jammed.

On the ground, Ryherd met members of the French resistance and ditched his uniform for civilian clothes in an attempt to reach Spain, but he was betrayed by his driver, Capt. Jacques, who took him and his co-pilot to Gestapo headquarters.

Because they were thought to be civilians, they were not taken to a prisoner of war camp, but instead to Buchenwald concentration camp. A German commandant learned they were American military prisoners and took them from the camp about 24 hours before they were to be executed, Morrow wrote.

In another of his favorite stories, Morrow wrote about Oceanside resident Bert Messerschmitt, a German soldier, who was wounded in a battle in the Caucasus Mountains south of Chechnya.

Also suffering from malaria, Messerschmitt was taken by truck from the front lines and dropped off at a fork in the road, coincidentally near the home of a Chechnyan girl he had met and befriended. As his malaria grew worse, he told the girl he needed to go to a German hospital. Nearly in a coma, he regained consciousness one day to find he indeed was in a German hospital, and he can only speculate that his girlfriend's brother had flown him there.

Once recovered, Messerschmitt was sent back into battle. Captured, he served the rest of the war and then some in a POW camp. After the Americans released him in February 1946, he was marched into a French POW camp, where he stayed until that July, when he and three other Germans escaped while French guards were celebrating Bastille Day.

After 13 days, they finally made it into Germany, but again were in hiding because they had no papers. He was to make one more escape when he and the others were at a train station and they noticed American military police.

Some young women next to them at a table noticed their nervous looks and offered to hide them from the Americans. The MPs never imagined that three escaped Germans were hiding under the skirts of the girls at the table. Messerschmitt was home within the hour.

Not all the stories in the book are about great escapes and the horrors of war. Morrow also wrote about how Murray Davison of Carlsbad, who was in the Army as a special service musician entertaining troops, came upon 300 Italian soldiers while traveling with his 17-member orchestra in North Africa.

"We all thought we were dead," Morrow quoted Davison saying. "We were scared to death, but then we spotted a white flag."

The Italians had been deserted by the Germans and were looking to surrender, and the major handed Murray his Beretta semiautomatic pistol. Murray kept the gun until he died in 2005.

Jerry Stapp and Ben Records, who were from Oceanside and landed at Normandy in the D-Day invasion, are included in the book. Both have since died. Clarence Baer, a former Oceanside resident also included in the book, died three months ago in Colorado.

While each man has his own story and unique perspective, Morrow said the trait most shared was humility; almost all of the men in the book came to his attention because their wives called to say their husbands had a story to tell, he said.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.