Alex Lopez was born in May 1926 in Los Angeles, California, the son of a barber. He grew up in a safe neighborhood among 60 other kids who all played games in the street. Lopez said he had a good early childhood. When he was 11, his parents were separated, and he was living with his grandmother and two sisters. He went out on his own for a while, and lived on garbage until he got a job at a bowling alley, and his family took him back in. At school, they never discussed what was going on in Europe, and when he heard the radio announcement about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he doesn't remember having much of a reaction. At the time, he was 14 and diving off the pier for quarters at Venice Beach, and he contends that the declaration of war didn't have any effect on him until he got his draft notice. The notice came two weeks before he turned 18, and Lopez claimed that because he was the type of person who never took anything seriously, it didn't matter much to him. Lopez's basic training was at Camp Hood, Texas. Of his training he remembers little more than marching long distances, before being deployed overseas.

After nine weeks' training, Alex Lopez sailed on the Ile de France [Annotator's Note: the SS Ile de France was a French luxury ocean liner converted to a troop ship for service during World War 2] along with many other seasick troops, to France. When he arrived, there was a big hill of duffle bags, and Lopez remembers getting all new clothes. He was assigned to the 79th Infantry Division as a machine gunner. He learned how to operate the weapon on the spot. It wasn't until he was sent out in the cold to a foxhole, sidestepping a dead German in a white snowsuit, that he realized he was in a war. Lopez said he really "got down to it" then. He saw his comrades dropping, and he was mad as hell. He tried to protect himself and his friends and what they were doing. The enemy came at him and he used his machine gun, not knowing how many went down in the distance. He remembers the face of only one person he killed, a woman sniper shooting from a window. When she fell from the window, Lopez retrieved her Luger and kept it.

Going through the Haguenau Forest, Alex Lopez observed the area was torn up and mostly gone. He participated in a mop-up action before hearing that the war was almost over. He was amazed to encounter a civilian chopping wood to run his Model T Ford pickup truck. Lopez was ordered to go by himself to a castle on a mountain top, where he set up his machine gun on a table at a window on the first floor, overlooking a river. He watched, with shells flying right by his head, as a German tank and an American tank faced off on either side of the river. While he was herding prisoners into the castle, a German bomb hit next to him. The explosion knocked him down and he was unconscious for six hours. His eardrums were damaged, and he still has the effects of that injury. Soon afterward, a treeburst damaged his leg, and Lopez was in a field hospital, being treated with penicillin shots every six hours. His unit [Annotator's Note: the 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division] crossed the Rhine, and at one point had to face an antiaircraft gun before taking the farmhouse in the field where it was located. When the density of a hedge wall prevented their forward progress, Lopez shot through it with his machine gun to clear the path to their next target.

Alex Lopez remembers having a difficult time when he was in Czechoslovakia. His unit [Annotator's Note: the 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division] was going up a road, and had to dive into a ditch when a bomb dropped in the very place in the road where they had been. He had been keeping a little dog that heard the bomb coming, and warned him of the danger. His division came across a prisoner of war camp, opened the gates, fed the inmates and helped them into trucks. Lopez described them as all men, nearly naked, with bones and ribs sticking out, teeth protruding. He clearly recalls was when he and another G.I. were sitting in a hole, guarding the Palace of Justice, when a radio announcement made them aware that the war in Europe was over. Lopez emptied 30 rounds of machine gun ammunition into the air.

After the German surrender, Alex Lopez was posted with his machine gun in a guard tower at a prison camp in Furth Nurnberg. One day his captain told him to clean up and look sharp, and report to Nuremberg, where the exterior guards were rotated by nationality every day. Lopez heard that he was chosen for the job because he had eyes and a chin that "don't give up to nobody." Among the prisoners was Rudolf Hess, who "died normally," according to Lopez. He said everybody wanted to steal Hess' boots, which were beautiful. Lopez said he doesn't see why they kept him in prison. Lopez would stand watch for hours, keeping an eye on the prisoners through a small window in the cell door. He remembers, too, that gallows were being constructed on what used to be a basketball court. The first night he was on an overnight shift, Hermann Goering started screaming for a shot. "He was a doper," according to Lopez. Occasionally, when he was working at his nice little bench, Goering would nod at Lopez, and once signed a dollar bill that Lopez sent home to his mother. Lopez was typically assigned to watch Goering when he was interviewed. All the guards carried a leather sack full of BBs for correctional purposes, and once during the court proceedings Goering took one of his earphones off, and began to take it apart. It contained a sharp white disc. Lopez ordered him to "put it back!" When Goering refused, Lopez struck him with the sack, which elicited from Goering the expletive, "schweinhund," which Lopez translated as "pig-dog." Otherwise, Lopez said, Goering was a great guy with him.

Alex Lopez noted that one day while he was a guard at Nuremburg, he was hungry and snitched a piece of pumpernickel bread from the prisoners' ample breakfast tray. He said the prisoners were exceptionally well fed. Lopez had no idea what crimes Goering [Annotator's Note: Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering)] was accused of committing, but knew he "did a lot," and agreed that he should have been on trial. Lopez had been stationed in the mountains, where there was a scarcity of food, and once stole a cow from a nearby farm, slaughtered it, and had a steak dinner. Lopez spent his nineteenth birthday in Nice, France, where he enjoyed staying in a hotel and taking in the sights at the nude beaches. He had sold the clothes in his duffle bag to get some cash, but was disappointed that the Casinos were not letting soldiers enter, and instead of losing the money he was carrying at the gambling tables, he was mugged, and it was stolen from him.

Alex Lopez was already out of the Army when he read that Hermann Goering had committed suicide, and he thought what happened "wasn't right." Lopez said that when he guarded Goering's door, his orders were to let no one enter but the lieutenant who interrogated him. Goering's suitcase containing "the pill" should have never been brought in, and according to Lopez, Goering should have been hung. As one of the last living guards at the Nuremberg trials, he feels that punishment was requisite for the German war perpetrators. He thinks about all he went through in the war and sees what he fought for being lost today. He feels it important to teach today's generation about the war, because they should learn that life is not a joy forever; there are good and bad times.

After the war, Alex Lopez had but one dream about being in combat, and that one dream was recent. In it, he was in a fight for his life, and was scared to death, but knew that he had to do it. Getting back to civilian life was not easy because jobs were scarce, and for a while he lived on 52-20 [Annotator's Note: a provision of the G.I. Bill wherein the U.S. Government paid veterans unemployment benefits of 20 dollars per week for 52 weeks]. He married his old girlfriend, and had a daughter, but that marriage didn't last. Lopez feels the war made him a "defiant person."