LIVE OAK — It wasn’t a typical birthday celebration.

But with Earl Mills turning 99 years old Sunday, family friends still showed up to Mills’ house on County Road 49 to help celebrate.

Trying to keep their social distance during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the celebration remained in the yard with more well-wishers honking their horns as they drove by.

“They’re afraid I’m going to get this virus,” Mills said about his birthday, which he said was going to include some birthday cake. “They’ll come in my yard and I can talk to them.”

While the family is worried about Mills catching the COVID-19 coronavirus, he said he doesn’t really fear much.

And after serving as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division in the U.S. Army in World War II, including at Normandy as well as the Battle of Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium, that makes sense.

Even jumping out of a plane didn’t really scare Mills, who enlisted in the National Guard in July 1940 before being inducted into the Army in November 1940.

In June 1943, Mills volunteered for airborne school and assigned to the 101st Airborne.

A year later and they were sent in to Normandy, France, to help lead the D-Day invasion.

“We landed close to Utah Beach in Normandy,” Mills recalled. “That was part of our first mission was to clear the beaches for the men and artillery and tanks and so forth that were coming in by sea.

“We did that. And helped them get ashore.”

It came at a heavy cost, though.

Of the 6,600 men that parachuted into Normandy, 868 were killed, 2,000 more were wounded and hundreds were captured by the Germans.

Mills said the company got split up during the jump and he had to dodge Germans all night just to get back with his outfit. From there, it became constant fighting.

The Headquarters Company 502nd Parachute Regiment that included Mills then jumped into Holland in September 1944 near Best. Battling continued until late November when they were sent to France to be re-equipped.

“A lot of people were afraid, but I wasn’t actually afraid,” Mills said. “I was real concerned with what was going to happen to me when I hit the ground. But as far as jumping out of an airplane, that didn’t scare me.

“Parachuting is exciting. But combat is not too exciting.”

However the Germans, meanwhile, had overrun the Allied Forces in Bastogne, Belgium, in the Battle of the Bulge.

So the 101st was sent right back to battle.

Mills said they battled day and night for several days and actually were surrounded by the Germans on Dec. 21, 1944, at which point the German general asked Gen. McAuliffe of the 101st to surrender.

“Our general told him he was nuts, we would not surrender,” Mills said. “So we continued with the Germans and had a pretty fierce fight with them.”

It was a fight that ended up with Mills being injured by an artillery blast in January 1945.

After a short stint in the hospital in France, a bandaged Mills returned to fight with his outfit until the war was over, and even after the May 18, 1945, surrender.

“They didn’t know there was a truce and kept attacking us,” Mills said. “We captured them.”

Mills was sent home from Europe in September 1945 and was discharged from the Army on Sept. 28, 1945. In January 1946, he then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for 20 more years.

He then returned home with his wife, Myrtle, to the family farm in Live Oak where Mills worked for the U.S. Postal Service in addition to farming.

As for a secret to a long, healthy life, Mills said there isn’t one. All he has known is hard work but the credit for his health belongs to God.

“I got to give my God who created me all the credit for me living this long,” he said. “A lot of people did similar things like me died real early in life.

“I believe that He is the one responsible for me living this long because my Bible tells me that He’s in control of our lives. He put us here and He’ll take us out when the time is right. We’ll stay here as long as He wants us here. That’s what I believe.”

George Burnham, a friend of Mills, said he is constantly amazed at what his friend has accomplished and still does accomplish.

“Earl is the dream,” Burnham said. “We all want to be like Earl. Be like him physically, mentally and spiritually.”