The former paratrooper, now 83, had no such problems earlier this week when he traveled to a tattoo parlor in Nampa and received a multicolored tattoo of a parachute with wings and a screaming eagle.

As a 19-year-old, Keim and some of his fellow soldiers went to a pub in London where they agreed to get tattoos of the 101st Airborne on their arms.

But while they were on the way, the city came under attack by German bombers, forcing the soldiers to take cover in an air-raid shelter. By the time the bombing was over, tattoos didn't seem so important.

''We were all sober and we changed our minds about the tattoo,'' Keim told the Idaho Press-Tribune.

Sixty-four years later, he traveled from his home in Ontario, Ore., to get the tattoo.