Donald J. Rich, a World War II Veteran from Wayland, Iowa, will read from his memoir Glider Infantryman at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 5 in a free Prairie Lights reading streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website www.writinguniversity.org.

Rich, who served in 1943 and 1944 with the 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, G Company, 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, narrates his experience in vivid detail, including an especially rare account of arriving at a combat landing zone by glider.

A member of the famed Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division, Rich went ashore on D-Day at Utah Beach, was wounded in the bloody conflict at Carentan, landed in a flimsy plywood-and-canvas glider on the battlefields of Holland, and survived the grim siege with the "Battling Bastards of Bastogne" during the Battle of the Bulge.

Coauthored by Kevin Brooks, the son of Rich's best friend and World War II comrade, Glider Infantryman covers a span of nearly three years, including his return home, five months after the war's end, as a toughened bazooka gunner and veteran of five campaigns.

Rich’s reading coincides with the celebration in May of “Older Americans Month.”

For more information or special accommodations to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights, 319-337-2681.