Joy remembers all of it—the sickening sight of death, the fear, and the unavoidable hunger, sleeplessness, and scum surrounding the troops—and he has recorded it in his memoir, Sixty Days in Combat, which will be published in March by the Random House Publishing Group.

With a swift and matter-of-fact voice, Joy, a Los Gatos resident, gives an account of war that is neither romanticized nor vilified. It is what it is, and is given with an astonishing amount of detail.

As a 19-year-old combat infantryman with the U.S. Army, Joy served in France and Germany during the last two months of World War II. "I saw just enough of the infantry to talk about it," he says. "Some men saw too much to ever talk."

In his memoir, Joy not only recalls the locations and events of each day, but nearly every name of fellow troops and officials. "I have a good memory and kept my mind sharp over the years," he says. He also had help from the 150 letters his mother and father saved from the war and a notebook he kept during his service. Joy says that although it was illegal to carry (in case he was captured), he needed the notebook to keep his mind busy.

After the war, Joy used the GI Bill to earn his bachelor's and master's degrees in aeronautical engineering from the University of Colorado. He spent 42 years in the aerospace defense industry, working as a flight test engineer in Palo Alto, as an operations consultant in Tucson, and then 30 years with Lockheed Martin on high profile systems, including U.S. Army combat vehicle design and the U.S. Space Defense Initiative. He retired from Lockheed in 1992, sold his house in Saratoga and moved with his wife to Los Gatos.

Roughly two years ago, Joy decided to write a book about the war, although he doesn't remember what triggered the decision. "I always wanted to write," he says. "So I started writing, read my letters again and again, and it began flowing."

Once he had completed seven chapters, Joy contacted Presidio Press, which showed interest in the book and eventually decided to publish it.

Senior editor Ron Doering of Presidio Press—now owned by Random House—says he was interested in the book because Joy "saw some significant violent action and has the ability to recall that and express it in a story that is riveting," he says. "It's just one of those great, great memoirs. A lot of people write them, but there are very few that work. Dean was on the frontline from the get-go and he brings it back to life."

In addition to the text, Joy sketched dozens of war renderings to accompany the story. This, Doering felt, added "another dimension," he says. "It makes the book very unique and I'm very happy with it."

The memoir covers all terrain, from Joy's initial training in the U.S. to serving under General George S. Patton in Germany, touching on both the light and dark sides of war.

With fondness he remembers Camp Old Gold in Doudeville, France, where he encountered a large French family that welcomed him and several friends for dinner.

Yet weeks later, Joy was embroiled in one of his closest brushes with the enemy in the Budinger Wald forest in Germany, where he witnessed a German soldier savagely killed by an American sergeant after forfeiting.

"There are always atrocities," he says. "There are reasons for them, but they are atrocities still."

Serving in the infantry was not what Joy had in mind when he volunteered for the draft as a "gung-ho, patriotic young man." He signed up to be a pilot, but his eyesight made him unfit to fly, and he was assigned to infantry duty.

"I hated the infantry, they were the dog soldiers," he says. "That was a blow—being in infantry. I tried not to show my low morale in my letters."

However, decades later, Joy takes his experience in stride, feeling fortunate just to have survived.

"I was agnostic, but I said a few prayers anyway," he says with a smile. "I was very lucky—I ducked when they said to duck and I came out with one scratch on my leg and one on my hand."

"Sixty Days in Combat" is scheduled for release on March 2. For more information, visit http://www.presidiopress.com.