W.E.B. Griffin became America's master of military fiction by demonstrating how the worst of times often brings out the best in men and women.

A hell-raiser as a kid growing up in New York and Philadelphia, William Edmund Butterworth III enlisted in the Army in 1946. Following training stateside in counterintelligence, he served with the constabulary in the Army of Occupation in Germany, where one of his duties was to deliver food to former Nazi officers and their families.

After completing his service commitment, he remained in Germany and enrolled at Phillips University in Marburg an der Lahn. His studies were cut short in 1951 when he was recalled to serve in Korea as an Army war correspondent and public information officer on the front lines with several Marine divisions.

It was in Korea that a friend suggested he try his hand at fiction. His novels, which focused on ordinary Joes caught in extraordinary circumstances, were an immediate hit. Though he continued to work for the Army as the civilian chief of publications at Fort Rucker, Ala., during the ramp-up to the Vietnam War, his growing success writing military novels in his spare time soon rendered his day job unnecessary.

With some 130 works of fiction written under a handful of pen names to his credit, Griffin -- a pseudonym -- has been hailed as the consummate voice of the military. He has written six successful series, including "The Brotherhood of War" (Army), "The Corps" (Marines), "Men at War" (the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, precursor to the CIA), "Badge of Honor" (Philadelphia police), "By Order of the President" (contemporary counter-terrorism) and" Honor Bound" (the OSS in Argentina during World War II). He also contributed to the successful "M*A*S*H" series.

Today, the 77-year-old master of war novels and his Argentine wife divide their time between Buenos Aires and the Alabama Gulf Coast home where Bankrate bivouacked with him for a chat about his fascinating past.

Bankrate: Though your military books are about men at war, you rarely write about actual combat. Why?

Griffin: Yeah, well, I was in combat. People say I write well about combat, but the truth is, I don't write much about it. My theory is, the people who have been there don't want to read about it, and it's impossible to describe to somebody who hasn't been there.

Bankrate: Did you come from a military family?

W.E.B. Griffin: (Laughs) Oh no, no. My father was a charming scoundrel. He was a salesman of expensive women's shoes, a traveling one. It was like a caravan when he went out and crisscrossed the country; I used to put him on the train and there would be a whole platoon of red caps carrying his sample cases and stuff. It kept us in food during the Depression. The rich always had money. I didn't realize how many other people were really in bad shape during that period because we lived very well.

Bankrate: You marched to a different drummer however.

Griffin: I was a bad kid. I got kicked out of every school on the eastern seaboard and joined the Army when I was 16. I never went to jail, but I just didn't get along with schools.