Fame kind of found 92-year-old Ty Fleming Sr. at an early age.

“This is a short bio of when I my life from the time I became famous at the age of 18 months,” he said from his home office last week. “I got out the front door naked and went uptown, Greer, S.C.”

More recently he has been sharing correspondence with a place called St. James Palace.

“Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince William’s uncle, I sent him one of my books and this is the letter I got from him,” Fleming said. “I got stories about his uncle in my book before he was born. He was going on his honeymoon so he hasn’t had time to read my book yet.”

Royal honeymoons have a way keeping a fellow’s schedule filled.

Perhaps what Fleming is most renowned for is his book about his time in India and China during World War II titled “We Served Also.” During that stint he had an opportunity to spend time with the famous and ill-fated Mountbatten.

“Lord Louis Mountbatten was a fine gentleman,” Fleming said. “He was a soldier’s gentleman. He came to our camp one time and was going to make a speech to 6,000 of us, but he didn’t have a podium to stand on. That’s how I got to know him personally.”

The bigwig made an impression on Fleming immediately with his down-to-earth attitude.

“He came to our outfit and borrowed a big bread box to stand up on as a podium,” he said. “He didn’t ask for somebody to get it for him, he got it himself. Can you imagine a fellow like Eisenhower doing that?”

Mountbatten is also well known for serving as a mentor to Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and father of Prince William.

“This is a handwritten letter I wrote to Prince William inviting him to Orange Beach,” Fleming said. “It was handwritten because I wanted him to know it was a personal thing. I got an answer back from his secretary. I sent a letter from our mayor, Tony Kennon, to tell him when he came down by Orange Beach we’d treat him royally.”

On Aug. 12 at his shop, Old Wagon Wheel Arts and Craft on Canal Road in Orange Beach, friends and family gathered to royally celebrate his birthday. The shop is only open on Fridays and Saturdays.

But that’s because it’s pretty much the only time he can spare from his busy schedule of meetings, senior activities and even competing in Senior Olympics.

And driving to doctor’s appointments. Other people’s appointments.

“My stepson, Ronnie, one of my wife’s boys, is on dialysis and we have to take him to different places,” Fleming said. “I try to stay open on Fridays and Saturdays. I’m pretty busy.”

Fleming has been a resident of Orange Beach since the 1960s while also moving around the south Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle working for an insurance company.

“My business, after I got out was the insurance business,” he said waving to a wall filled with plaques from those years. “Everywhere I went, wherever the company sent me I joined civic clubs and all. Lions Club, Kiwanis Club, American Legion.

“I bought a place over on Marina Road where my son is. Everybody calls me captain, he’s the captain,” Fleming said. Capt. Ty Fleming Jr. is a legendary charter boat captain and works out of that home today.

“Jim Folsom made me a colonel in the Alabama National Guard when I got out of the service,” the senior Fleming said. “These are all the GIs in my outfit, the 72nd Service Squadron. I was a staff sergeant,” he said waving at a picture on his office wall.

Those were the defining years of Fleming’s life, serving in a theater of operation that didn’t get as much publicity as Europe and the Pacific. He served in Burma, India and China. Disappointed with the recognition those who fought in the area received, he wrote “We Served Also” about his comrades.

“China and India, that’s what the book’s about,” he said.

Fleming was playing minor league baseball in Cocoa, Fla., in the White Sox organization when he got drafted.

“I was in the old Army Air Corps then they changed it over to the U.S. Army Air Corps. I went in in 1941,” he said. “And I got right on the baseball team at Gunter Field in Alabama. When I got up there the captain read my story you know. They put me on the baseball team there and I also played in Burma and India every time we had a ball game.”

Those friendships forged in the jungle have lasted until this day.

“We’ve been meeting and having conventions for 65 years,” he said. “All of them that’s still living now, they getting mighty few. There was four of us that hung out together all the time and all four of us are still living. Holden, Mathis, Chester Crocker and myself.” The others live in California, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

Fleming’s job as a carpenter took him from constructing all the buildings at a post to reflooring all kinds of aircraft.

“Everything that was in the Air Force from B-29s down,” he said. “Everything had wood in them back then. They had wooden floors. I had to repair all of those. We had to make patterns. They’d call in and say we got 10 B-25s coming in got to have new floors. The crews would take them out and we’d have them made when they got there and they’d put ‘em in.”

Many of the planes flew over “the Hump” or the Himalayan Mountains to bring supplies to those trying to stem the tide of the Japanese army.

“The C-46s, we lost over half of them through that hump,” he said. “We called it aluminum alley. On a clear day you could just follow the trail of the planes that had crashed.”

Because of the excessive heat in the summer, working on aluminum could be hazardous.

“Average temperature over there in the summer was 120 to 140 degrees,” he said. “If you put your hand on that aluminum in the middle of the day it’d take the hide off of you. “

Even all these years later you can hear the pain in Fleming’s voice when he talks about those who didn’t come home.

“We lost a lot of good men over there, Merrill’s Marauders especially,” he said. “They were one of the groups fighting through the jungle there. I knew a lot of those good boys. There was 300 that started out and only 23 of the original ones left.

“I got to work with a lot of people over there, a lot of British and a lot of them got killed.  And all the stories are in my book on all of them. The book’s not about me, it’s about everybody that served over there. I kept a diary the whole time I was over there.”

In his ending bio, Fleming encourages anyone to come by his shop and talk on the days he is open “as I might have something for you, my friendship.”

In the postscript of the bio, Fleming writes: “My favorite quote by ole Abe Lincoln – I don’t like that man, guess I’ll have to get to know him better.”