In 1920 Colonel Orr was born in the coalfields of West Virginia to well to do parents. His grandfather owned all the coalmines in Preston County. In 1928 repeated strikes by the miners almost ruined the coal business and the depression of 1929 finished the job! The market for coal was destroyed! The author’s father went bankrupt and was forced to take a job in far off Ajo, Arizona. Ajo was a frontier mining camp of shacks and outdoor plumbing! Schools were a cruel joke! The author worked in the mines and finished his junior year in mining engineering when Pearl Harbor struck! He was an ROTC cadet and was commissioned second Lt. In horse cavalry in May of 1942.