Dan Pappas was born in 1978 and raised in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1997. Dan joined the US Merchant Marines after high school and sailed around the world for five years. He then pursued a career with District Council Twenty-One Painters and Allied Trades as a union painter. Dan continues to work as a painter and lives with his wife and three daughters in Aston, Pennsylvania. When Dan received his grandfather's World War II journals from his father, he took an immense interest in them, and so did other family members and friends. Dan decided to publish his grandfather's journals so others could enjoy reading a firsthand account of events of the… war.