Again I don't remember the details, but this was addressed in Carr's
bio. Basically, Beam was too young for WWI and a bit old for WWII. I
suppose he could have still enlisted in his late 30s but he did not. I
seem to recall that later regretted it, that he really felt like he
had missed a rite of passage in his generation.

I think I'll re-read Carr's bio. I read it the first time in 2019 and
really enjoyed it.

On Thu, Aug 14, 2025 at 3:33 PM Tim - pzmcgwire at yahoo.com (via
H_Beam_Piper list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
> What did Piper do during WW2? I don't recall any details from his biography. He would have been 38 in 1942, probably over the age limit and his lack of college education would have precluded any reserve appointments or special commissioning.
>
> Perhaps there's an alternate history yarn to be written about him starting his writing career earlier and being part of a special military unit with Heinlein and Asimov responsible for assessing super-science efforts during WW2.
>
> Heinlein and Asimov did work as civilians for the Navy.
>
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