Las Vegas resident and Army veteran shares his story of World War II

Still in his pajamas, he scaled an outer wall of the barracks as a plane slowly flew by -- it was so low that the 25-year-old Army soldier could see the pilot's face. Beneath the wings, smoke spewed out of the machine guns' barrels aimed straight at him.

Aside from the tattered discharge certificate he keeps folded away, he has no pictures, no mementos from his decades-old Army days. He doesn't need anything to recall the details of that scene -- Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

That "date which will live in infamy" is forever etched in now-95-year-old Morton Rovner's memory.

The Las Vegas resident calls his war story "simple," a tired tale that friends call on him to share.

"It's no big deal," he said. "I was just there."

His friend of 16 years, Valerie Martini, labels him as humble but noted that he doesn't mind talking about the war if you ask him.

"He's real nonchalant about it," said Martini, whose mother used to live next door to Rovner. "He says, 'Oh, it's no big deal. The war is over.' "

But with so few Pearl Harbor survivors left to tell their stories -- fewer than a dozen in Las Vegas -- his friends remind him it is a big deal that he was a part of history.

Less than 20 miles from the harbor where more than 2,000 people were killed, Rovner and other soldiers were at Schofield Barracks with no clue of the surprise attack on the U.S. Navy battleships when the Japanese planes started to descend on them.

"We didn't expect it," he said. "We didn't even know there was talk of a war."

Rovner said the planes firing off rounds of bullets and dropping bombs on the nearby water tower was short-lived at the barracks, and the Army was not prepared to fight back.

The following day, Rovner patrolled the island as he drove around a 93-mile stretch twice.

At nightfall, he stood guard over his generals.

"It was a black night," he said. "You couldn't see anything."

So when he left his post for dinner, he unknowingly walked off a 40-foot cliff and fell to the underground base.

The soldier was sent to various hospitals to recover for the next seven months before he was given an honorable discharge that kept him out of World War II.

Then, it was back to life before the draft -- standing guard over a manufacturing plant that made war weapons in Philadelphia.

He later owned a punch press for 15 years but sold the business after his partner died.

Rovner moved to Los Angeles with the hopes of making a better living and worked there for 20 years before moving in the late '80s to Spring Valley, where he has lived since.

Contact Southwest and Spring Valley View reporter Jessica Fryman at jfryman@viewnews.com or 380-4535.