Time is running out for the last living U.S. veterans of World War II.

At 102 years old — “103 next month,” he said with a grin — Robert Heiss spends his afternoons playing cribbage and devouring murder mysteries at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville, where he’s lived since 2008. At first glance, he’s a cheerful centenarian enjoying the quiet routines of retirement. But as one of the last World War II veterans in the Bay Area, Heiss carries memories that still weigh heavily eight decades later.

Before he was drafted into the war, Heiss was just another young boy growing up in San Francisco, biking through the city, catching a new movie for a dime, and always making it back by 5 p.m. for dinner, just as his mother told him.

Then, he grew up a little.

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