By today’s standards, Eric Fisher Wood Sr. would probably not have joined the National Guard, let alone join two armies to fight in the trenches of World War I.

Wood Sr. was born into a prominent New York City family, educated in private schools and a graduate of both Yale and l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. With a Ph.D. in civil engineering and with his socioeconomic pedigree, Wood could have just returned to New York and sat out the Great War entirely. Rather than sit out the war, he first joined the American Ambulance Corps, then in 1917, moved on to the British Naval Reserve. When the United States entered the war, he then joined the U.S. Army. As assistant chief of staff for the 88th Division, he was wounded at Meuse-Argonne. He also served as a colonel in the 107th Field Artillery. By the time the war ended, Wood Sr. received the Legion of Merit and a Purple Heart as well as the French Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor.

In the years after WWI, Wood Sr. was instrumental in the creation of the American Legion. Under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Wood was one of the original members of the executive committee that would oversee the founding of the veterans organization, establishing a provisional central office and serving as secretary of its first caucus in Paris in 1919 and its second in St. Louis later that year.

But Wood Sr’s proudest achievement may have been having a son who would make his own name in the next world war.

Like his father, Eric Wood Jr. could also have avoided serving. He was born in Santa Barbara, California, to his storied father and Baroness Vera de Ropp, daughter of a Russian noble. When World War II broke out, the elder Wood joined Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s general staff. Likely because of his WWI experience of being gassed on the battlefields of France, he tried to get his son to sit out the Second World War at the family farm in Pennsylvania.

The younger Wood did as he was told, but every bit his father’s son, he still joined the Pennsylvania National Guard. An artillery officer, he was eventually called to active duty in 1943, and by December 1944, he was on the front lines in Belgium.

Wood Jr. was part of the 106th Infantry Division, spread thin across the Schnee Eifel sector of the Ardennes Forest. When the Germans launched their last major offensive of the war, the Battle of the Bulge, on Dec. 16, 1944, the 106th was in the center of their onslaught. The day after the attack was launched, his 589th Field Artillery Battalion found themselves surrounded. A detachment tried to make its way to St. Vith, but were blocked by a tank. As some of his fellow soldiers put up their hands in surrender, Lt. Wood zigzagged a path to the nearest treeline and escaped under heavy enemy fire.

Alone in the woods and surrounded on all sides amid freezing temperatures, Wood gathered a force of other stragglers making their way through the dense and remote forest. Rather than attempt to evade the Germans and make their way to friendly lines, Wood and his band of soldiers started making guerrilla attacks behind the Nazi advance. They ambushed communications, supply lines, ammo dumps and enemy patrols as they collected food and supplies and disappeared back into the forest. Belgian civilians testified that they heard small arms and mortar fire from the area for weeks following his disappearance.

Wood’s ragtag fighters notched off more than 200 enemy troops in just a few weeks. Nazi SS Gen. Josef “Sepp” Dietrich, commander of the 6th Panzer Army, got so fed up with the attacks that he dispatched the Waffen-SS to find and kill them. In January 1944, they finally did.

German soldiers caught up to Wood Jr. on a logging trail near the village of Meyerode. No one knows exactly which day he died, but the scene implied a fierce, last-stand battle. His body was found on Jan. 23, 1945, surrounded by seven dead enemy soldiers and carrying 4,000 francs. For his gallantry and intrepidity, Lt. Wood was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but since there were no surviving eyewitness accounts of his actions, he received a Distinguished Service Cross.

His date of death is listed as Dec. 17, the day he disappeared behind enemy lines. He was interred at Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial near Liège, Belgium.

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