Edward Donald Grant, Jr. was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1923. His father worked in the Presbyterian Church. He was selected as the moderator of the General Assembly of the church. His family moved from Nashville to Richmond, Virginia, where he grew up before joining the Air Corps. In Richmond, his father was the head of a foreign missionary group. His parents went to the orient [Annotator's Note: Asia] for eight months while Grant was young. During that time, he lived in Texas with his grandmother. Grant was attending college in North Carolina when Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. During his sophomore year, he was told college students were being drafted. Grant decided he did not want to be in the infantry, so he went to Charlotte [Annotator's Note: Charlotte, North Carolina] and applied to join the Air Corps. He was called up for active duty in 1943 and graduated from flight school in 1944. He trained in several places, mostly in Florida. He was classified in Nashville and was told he would be a bomber pilot because of his size. He trained in multi-engine planes in advanced school in Albany, Georgia. In Nashville, Grant took all of his examinations to be classified. In directional flight school, he was given an education in flight. In Florida, he learned how to fly single engine planes, but eventually trained in multi-engine planes. Grant had no experience in flying when he decided to join the Air Corps. He did not finish his sophomore year of college, instead he dropped out and worked until he was called up.

After receiving his commission, Edward Grant worked in Florida as a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] pilot. He did not have a choice on what kind of plane he flew. The military assigned him to multi-engine school because of his body type. After his commission and certification, he picked up his crew in Tampa [Annotator's Note: Tampa, Florida]. Grant thought the B-17 was a marvelous airplane. On one mission he was not able to get back to England because one of his engines was blown out. He lost oil pressure and his propeller started going faster than he could handle. While over Germany, Grant called in for fighter escorts. Two P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] appeared on either side of his plane and flew with the stricken bomber until it was outside of Germany. Grant managed to put the plane down in Holland [Annotator's Note: the Netherlands], where the Allies had just captured an airfield. Grant was married when he went overseas. He barely got to see his wife while he was training. In Florida, the crew trained for about six weeks then he received his orders to go to England. The flight over was very cold. One night he was woken up and told to put the wing covers on to keep the snow off the plane. The crews could only be out for three minutes at a time. Two crew members came back with frostbite. Grant flew from Goose Bay [Annotator's Note: Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada] to Iceland. From Iceland, he flew to England. To stay warm in the high altitude, they kept the planes closed up and wore electric clothes to keep warm. In combat, Grant wore a flak vest for protection.

Edward Grant was assigned to his unit [Annotator's Note: 412th Bombardment Squadron, 95th Bombardment Group. 8th Air Force] before shipping out to England. He was stationed in Horam [Annotator's Note: Horam, England]. He never received a false signal from the Germans prior to him going to England. He lived in a nissen hut [Annotator's Note: prefabricated, cylindrical steel structure used by the military as barracks] with the other officers of his plane. There was a small stove in the hut, but Grant built a stove that used an engine, which gave more power. He was treated well. He did not have much contact with the English people. Every three or four missions he was given a few days off. During one of those days, Grant went to London [Annotator's Note: London, England] for the first time. He met Winston Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill; British Prime Minister] while eating breakfast at a hotel. Churchill sat down at his table for tea. He sat with Grant for roughly ten minutes. Grant thought he was a delightful person. Churchill thanked them for being there, then went to a meeting.

Edward Grant flew his first mission in March 1945. He took for granted that he might be shot down. His airfield did not have tremendous casualties. While he was there, only two planes and crews were lost. When there was a mission, Grant would be woken up early in the morning to get breakfast before a mission briefing. He then met with his crew at the plane. The tower would give him takeoff instructions, then he would join the circling formation. Grant did not think about flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] or fighters much, but he always knew they were there. The German flak would pop black smoke. The bomber train was miles long. French people told him they did not see the last plane in the formation until the first plane was returning. For most of a bombing, Grant was active. There was no bombardier aboard his plane, but other planes had one. The bombardier board was located in his cockpit. Grant was near the front of the bomb group, so if the lead plane was knocked out, he would take over. Grant followed the lead of the front plane when it came to bombing runs. Everyone tried to drop their bombs at the same time. Grant thought about what the bombs were doing when they hit the ground, but he paid no attention to it. He tried to keep a tight formation to ward off enemy fighters. He only remembers fighters coming into his formation a few times. The plane had several gun position. Grant's plane was never attacked, but his gunners shot their guns occasionally. The only time he thought he would not get back to his base was when he lost an engine. He did not think about not getting back to his base.

Edward Grant flew two liberation missions in Hungary. People were being forced to work in ammunition factories making flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire], but some of the shells did not work. Grant believes the conscripts messed with the ammunition. Someone in Grant's formation was hit by a faulty flak shell. In Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], the Nazis would kidnap healthy looking men to work in their factories. In Linz [Annotator's Note: Linz, Austria], there was an airfield that people lived in. People were sent there to farm the land. Grant flew two missions there to liberate those people. The people were sprayed with DDT [Annotator's Note: dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane; an insecticide] to get rid of lice before they were allowed in the plane. Many of those people were from Paris. Grant felt good to do those missions, but he was not able to communicate with the people. His copilot tried to talk to some of the people, but they were not receptive. When the plane landed, the group was greeted by other French people. Grant and his crew discussed the mission later and talked about how docile the people were. Grant knew the war would be ending soon, but he does not remember how or when he was told it ended. He flew food to Holland [Annotator's Note: the Netherlands] on two different missions. The Germans took over all of the fields in the area, and when the food ran out, the Germans would destroy the fields using salt water from the ocean. Grant would drop food from the bomb bay of his plane. The plane had to get low to the ground to make a successful drop. Occasionally people would run out during missions, making it more difficult to drop the packages. Grant flew one mission where he brought an Air Corps staff over bombed areas so they could survey the damage.

Edward Grant did not think he would be sent to the Pacific. He remained in England for 60 days after the end of the war before receiving orders to return to the United States. He never got a chance to see the cities he bombed. He believes that many of the people he had to kill did not want the war in the first place. He flew his plane back to the United States. During the trip, he landed in Greenland. He remembered how mountainous the country was. He used a sunken ship as a guide to where he had to land. The runway went right into the water for the boat planes [Annotator's Note: flying boats]. He knew the war was over when all of the shooting stopped and his flights were all for good reasons. When he returned to the United States, he started a chemical manufacturing company. He went back to Europe to hire some people to represent the company on the continent. In Holland [Annotator's Note: the Netherlands], he met a man who was a boy getting food Grant was dropping. On another, he went to France to work. While eating with the law firm he was working with, Grant met a man who said his father may have been in his plane when he flew from Linz, Austria back to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France]. Grant remembered those two events fondly.

After returning to the United States, Edward Grant remained in the military for some time as an instructor. He was married and sent to Panama because he was told there were quarters for married people. He worked in an air-sea rescue group for roughly seven months. He flew a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] with an A-1 lifeboat underneath it. The boats were filled with food and first aid materials. He never had to drop the boat. One day, a colonel told him to go out and spend two days with a friend on the boat. He learned to never drink the juice from a ripe coconut. He went ashore a few times to get food. Grant decided to leave the military after that and was discharged in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana]. Grant thought the boat was an ingenious device because it had everything a stranded person needed, including a working engine. One day, Grant dropped an unequipped boat from his plane for a review board.

After he left the military, Edward Grant did not use the G.I. Bill because he was married with a child. School did not interest Grant. He thinks World War 2 slowed his life down. When he was a kid, he operated a ham radio [Annotator's Note: amateur radio]. He enjoyed building equipment. Grant got a job making laboratory equipment. He tried to work in a lab at a tobacco company, but it ended up not being an appealing job. Instead, he decided to work at university laboratories. Grant started his own chemical company with two customers. He started making chemicals to combat cholera in turkeys. He enjoyed the work and started expanding into other fields like fabric chemicals. Local companies would buy his products. He ended up moving to Louisiana when his father relocated for work. He met the governor [Annotator's Note: Governor Robert Floyd Kennon Sr., 1952 to 1956], who helped him get a job in the oil company Exxon. Grant also started another business in Louisiana, which flourished. When he eventually sold his business, it was doing over a million dollars in sales a week. He made tires, chemicals, and nylon. He became good friends with Governor Kennon.

Because of his involvement in the war, Edward Grant does not feel like The National WWII Museum is for him. He believes The Museum shows people what was going on in the war. He thinks it is important for people to know what happened and why. He hopes the country never has to go through an event like that again. Grant thinks educating people on how terrible the war was is important. While stationed in Nebraska, Grant briefly flew B-25s [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. An officer who out ranked him flew a B-25 into the Empire State Building. [Annotator's Note: On 28 July 28, US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith, Jr. crashed into the Empire State Building while flying in bad weather.] Grant thought the B-25 was a good airplane. While Grant was in school in Georgia, he trained with the B-25s that flew in North Africa. One day while Grant was returning from a mission, the propeller on his number three engine stopped then restarted. However, it was turning faster than the other propellers, causing drag. Grant was afraid it would break off and damage the plane. Several times he had to pull the plane into a stall position, trying to break the propeller off safely. He was directed to an airfield in Holland [Annotator's Note: the Netherlands], that the Allies had just liberated. He landed without the propeller breaking. That evening, Grant went out with some friends to get a drink. He saw a girl wearing a mop as a wig. Grant found out her hair had been shaved for working with the Germans. His radioman was active in the unit's association.