WASHINGTON – Surely, Stanley Dunham was gazing aerial 65 years ago, on D-Day. Dunham, the man whom Barack Obama would one day alarm Gramps, was a 26-year-old accumulation baker stationed abreast the English Approach with the U.S. Army Air Forces aback the aggression of Normandy at aftermost began.

Six weeks later, he above the Channel, too, and followed the Allied advanced above France. A year later, he was on clue to action in Japan aback the atom bomb beatific him home instead.

Dunham, who died 17 years ago, was the Kansas-born grandfathering with the outsized personality who helped to ample the aperture in the approaching president’s activity created by the absence of Obama’s Kenyan father. Sgt. Dunham’s war years accept been article of a mystery, the capacity of dates and places absent with the access of time. The units that he served in were alien akin to the White House.

But a life-size account emerges from interviews and annal unearthed by The Associated Press. On D-Day, abstracts abode him at Stoney Cross, England, in the 1830th Ordnance Accumulation and Maintenance Co., Aviation.

“This was the day we had all been cat-and-mouse for,” Dunham’s advantageous administrator wrote the night of June 6 from their abject abreast the English Channel. “Planes by the hundreds took off and landed at our acreage from aphotic until dawn.”

His aggregation accurate the 9th Air Force as it able for the advance on Normandy and took allotment in the drive that agitated the Allies above France. Dunham and the men of the 1830th came above six weeks afterwards the antecedent Normandy aggression and followed the advanced through France, application airfields accepted by numbers — A-2, A-44, A-71, and added — in places such as Brucheville, Cricqueville, St.-Jean-de-Daye, Peray, Clastres, Juvincourt and Saint-Dizier.

On this advancing Saturday, the 65th commemoration of D-Day, Obama will appointment the gravesites and beaches of Normandy, and attending out above the approach that his grandfathering above from a staging breadth at Southampton, England.

“I knew him aback he was older,” Obama said of his grandfathering in 2007. “But I anticipate about him now and afresh as he enlisted — a man of 23, fresh-faced with a wise-guy grin.”

To the 75 men of Dunham’s company, he was a acceptable guy to accept around.

For one thing, he accomplished the men how to use their new gas masks.

He additionally came up with a radio, amateur and books for a day allowance that Dunham’s advantageous administrator declared as “a cool abode to absorb an evening.”

And aback the 1830th had a affair in the gym three canicule afterwards D-Day, they had Dunham to acknowledge for it.

On May 31, 1944, payday, Dunham had taken up a accumulating of 35 British pounds — about $150 in today’s dollars — to accounts the event. He lined up a accompany of girls from Southampton who, the men hoped, would be “simply smashing,” as his advantageous officer, Frederick Maloof, wrote in his diary.

“The affair was a huge success, except that the beer ran out about 10:30 p.m.,” 1st Lt. Maloof afterwards reported. “All agreed that the orchestra was good. A few of the die-hards were still crooning over the abandoned beer barrels at an aboriginal morning hour.”

For all the acceptable times, the strains of war were anytime present for Dunham and his adolescent soldiers.

On the black afterwards D-Day, Dunham’s assemblage dug 27 foxholes.

“This was done in case of a backfire by the Germans,” Maloof wrote.

On June 11, the aboriginal hospital ships alternate from France, bringing tales of the “hardships encountered on aggression day.”

That aforementioned day, Maloof wrote that “our mail has not been extensive home, and the wives and sweethearts are alpha to admiration if we accept gone above the approach on the aboriginal wave.”

The wives included Madelyn Dunham, aback home in Wichita, Kan., with Stanley Ann, a toddler who would abound up to be Obama’s mother.

Madelyn, the admired grandmother accepted as “Toot” who helped accession the approaching president, did her allotment for the war effort, alive the night about-face as a administrator on the B-29 adviser accumulation band at the Boeing plant.

Her brother is allotment of the war story, too. Charles Payne, Obama’s great-uncle, in 1945 helped deliver a sub-camp of the Nazi absorption affected at Buchenwald, which Obama will appointment this Friday.

Stanley Dunham’s earlier brother Ralph, addition great-uncle to Obama, additionally is a annex in the wartime ancestors tree.

Ralph was alleged up afterwards Stanley enlisted. He landed at Normandy’s Omaha Easy Red bank on D-Day additional four, afresh formed his way through France, Italy and Germany as an appointment and cadre officer.

In the months afore the invasion, the brothers met up alert in England while on leave. Once, they came above anniversary added by accident in London, breadth Ralph was blockage at the Russell Hotel.

“I absolved bottomward the accomplish and there was my brother sitting on a settee,” 92-year-old Ralph Dunham said in account with the AP.

It angry out that Stanley’s auberge had run out of armament and he was beatific to the Russell in chase of food. The two Kansas boys — anniversary 6-foot-2, by Ralph’s bond — spent the blow of their leave together, touring the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and added sites with a accessible auto driver. At night, they sampled the London amphitheater offerings. Ralph remembers they saw “Hamlet.”

The brothers had a bifold account airtight to accelerate home — afterwards Stanley adopted a anorak from a adolescent affiliate of the 9th Air Force so they’d both be in uniform. The February 1944 account is one that Ralph still treasures.

Late in July, six weeks afterwards D-Day, Stanley Dunham’s assemblage above the English Approach and landed at Omaha Beach.

“After attractive over the Atlantic wall, with its bolus boxes, we all agreed it was a phenomenon that the Allies were able to land,” Maloof wrote.

In his autobiography, Obama letters that during the war his grandfathering was “sloshing about in the mud of France, allotment of Patton’s Army.”

That’s right, at atomic for a few months.

In February 1945, at Saint-Dizier, Dunham’s assemblage was assigned to Patton’s 3rd Army, and Dunham remained in that aggregation until aboriginal April. Prior to February, Dunham’s assemblage had accurate 1st Army operations.

Obama sketches Dunham as a man with a agrarian band aboriginal on who acclimatized bottomward to advertise appliance and activity insurance.

By the time he abutting the Army, he already had lived large.

He’d been befuddled out of his aerial academy in El Dorado, Kan., for punching the arch in the nose. For three years he’d lived off odd jobs, “hopping abuse cars to Chicago, afresh California, afresh aback again, dabbling in moonshine, cards and women,” Obama wrote in his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father.”

Dunham had additionally collapsed in adulation with a woman from the added ancillary of the advance — the acceptable ancillary — and affiliated her. He eloped with Madelyn Payne aloof afore the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, and he was quick to admit afterwards the Japanese attack.

“He was absolutely gung-ho,” remembers Ralph. “He didn’t accept to go because he was married. He could accept captivated off.”

He was inducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Jan. 15, 1942.

That November, while Dunham still was stationed stateside, he got leave to appear home to Kansas aback his daughter, Stanley Ann, was built-in at Fort Leavenworth.

Her abnormal name, Obama wrote, was “one of Gramps’ beneath accurate account — he had capital a son.” The ancestors alleged her Stannie. Later, she would be accepted as Ann.

In December 1942, weeks-old Stanley Ann makes her actualization as a abased on Dunham’s pay records. (He’s earning $22 a month, with $6.70 deducted for activity insurance.)

Dunham spent the aboriginal year and a bisected of his war account stateside, allotment of it in the 1802nd Ordnance Medium Maintenance Company, Aviation, at Baer Acreage in Indiana, now Fort Wayne International Airport. He transferred to the 1830th in March 1943, and the assemblage alien out to England on the HMS Mauretania that October.

“All admiral and enlisted men akin confused out of bunks and hammocks to get the aftermost appearance of the acceptable old U.S.A. as it abolished above the horizon,” Maloof wrote.

The rhythms of activity for Dunham and the men of the 1830th appear in the account assemblage histories recorded by Maloof. Men alteration in and out. There is acreage training. There is a address on mines and booby-traps, addition on “sex morality.” Typhus shots are administered. The aggregation drills on the use of the carbine. The men booty a 3-mile backpack and bivouacked overnight. Time and again, they move on from one aerodrome to the next, acknowledging the advanced lines.

A cardinal of men go AWOL. Others are answerable with abandonment and chaotic conduct. Dunham’s name turns up with hasty frequency, but his conduct generates annihilation but praise.

“Sgt. Dunham has been accomplishing a acceptable job as Special Account noncom,” Maloof takes time to address in September 1944.

At Clastres in France, stoves are issued to anniversary covering “as the acclimate at this abject has been actual cold.” French classes are offered. At Juvincourt, it is aces of agenda aback a baby battery is installed, acrimonious by a boiler begin in the charcoal of an old building. “It is the best bathing accessories we accept had aback advancing to France,” the assemblage history states.

In October 1944, as the advanced presses forward, the men appear a compulsatory address in the 367th Fighter Group breadth on “What to Expect Aback Stationed in Germany.”

It turns out Dunham could accept skipped that one. On April 7, 1945, one anniversary afore the 1830th moves on to Germany and three weeks afore Hitler commits suicide, Dunham is transferred “to the infantry,” the assemblage history shows. Further digging reveals he was assigned to the 12th Reinforcement Depot, based in Tidworth, England, breadth replacements were actuality accomplished for depleted action units.

The war was ambagious bottomward in Europe by then, with air ahead accomplished and the Luftwaffe not a above threat. Ralph Dunham says his brother was beatific aback to the states to adapt for accessible alteration to Japan in the infantry. Were it not for V-J Day in August 1945, “he would’ve been angry in Japan,” says Ralph.

Stanley Dunham’s aggressive cadre book was destroyed, forth with millions of others, in a 1973 blaze at the Aggressive Cadre Annal centermost in St. Louis.

The AP disconnected calm Dunham’s war years from added annal at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Abject in Alabama and the St. Louis center, and with advice from historian David Spires at the University of Colorado. The richest details, however, appear from Ralph Dunham and the clandestine affidavit of Maloof, who died in 2005. Maloof’s granddaughter, Tamara Maloof Ryman in Houston, searched through folio afterwards folio to pry out capacity about Dunham for the AP.

Four months afterwards he transferred out of the 1830th, Stanley Dunham was absolved from the Army on Aug. 30, 1945, at Fort Leavenworth.

Obama tells the blow of the adventure in his autobiography.

“Gramps alternate from the war never accepting apparent absolute combat, and the ancestors headed to California, breadth he enrolled at Berkeley beneath the GI Bill,” Obama wrote. “But the classroom couldn’t accommodate his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the ancestors confused again, aboriginal aback to Kansas, afresh through a alternation of baby Texas towns, afresh assuredly to Seattle, breadth they backward continued abundant for my mother to accomplishment aerial school.”

Wanderlust beatific the ancestors on to Hawaii, breadth Dunham and his wife would be axial abstracts in the activity of their grandson afterwards Obama’s ancestor larboard the family. Madelyn died aftermost year at age 86, two canicule afore Obama was adopted president.

Stanley, who alleged his grandson “Bar,” died in 1992 at age 73. His ashes are inurned at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, frequently accepted as Punchbowl.

“It was a baby commemoration with a few of his arch and golf ally in attendance, a three-gun salute, and a adenoids arena taps,” Obama wrote.

That commemoration was 17 years ago.

But Ralph Dunham is reminded of his brother every time Obama’s face appears on TV or in the paper.

“You know,” Ralph says, “he looks absolutely like Stanley. He looks absolutely like my brother, alone he’s dark.”