Growing up in Queens, N.Y., Fred Schneider '75 listened to his father tell bedtime stories about his military service in Italy and North Africa.

"This was the late '50s and early '60s," said Schneider, a computer science professor at Cornell. "It was cool to think about the Army and World War II. People were patriotic; the U.S. and allies were honorable and had done the right thing. We all wanted to hear the stories."

And as Sidney Schneider wove bedtime tales, another man was hard at work transforming the same stories into a classic satirical novel.

Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22," served in the same squadron as Sidney Schneider. Heller transformed their experience in the U.S. Army's 488th Bombardment Squadron into a novel about war, bureaucracy and the machinations of the military.

The book, published in 1961, has sold more than 10 million copies, and its title has become a catchphrase to describe a no-win situation.

"I heard all kinds of funny stories from my dad, and they were the same stories I later read in 'Catch-22,'" Fred Schneider said. "When the book came out, my father said … he knew Heller vaguely and may have taken pictures of him."

Now, 50 years after "Catch-22" was published, Fred Schneider wanted to commemorate the anniversary. After speaking with University Archivist Elaine Engst, he donated funds to purchase a first-edition copy for Cornell University Library -- an acquisition that rounds out a collection of his father's personal letters and photographs in Cornell's archives.

"When I first read 'Catch-22,' it didn't have a personal impact; it's only much later that it took on a real significance, and I knew the library should own a copy," Fred Schneider said.

The Sidney Schneider Papers

The collection includes Sidney Schneider's photographs, negatives, medals and a yearbook-style album that documents the squadron's journey from the United States through Italy and North Africa.

The photographs depict airplanes, equipment and aerial views of bombing sites, as well as the soldiers' daily life. Many are historically significant: Mount Vesuvius erupted March 20, 1944, in full view of Schneider and his camera.

The collection also includes thousands of personal handwritten letters to his family, meticulously saved and organized. He wrote nearly every day; some of the letters show a censor's cuts, and all of them are necessarily vague about certain details of the war.

Instead, Schneider wrote about his daily life and about being Jewish in the military and celebrating Jewish holidays far from home.

"He wasn't very religious ... but he grew up in a day when being Jewish meant something, particularly insofar as he was discriminated against in various ways," Fred Schneider said.

After the war, Sidney Schneider settled in Long Island City with his family. He died in 2006, at age 86.

Although Schneider said he doesn't think his father and Heller were personal friends, Sidney Schneider's wartime experience is historically valuable on its own.

Born in 1919, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, he attended City College. He would have become an architect if he could have, his son noted, but being Jewish essentially closed off that field, so he became an accountant.

He was also an amateur photographer, and when he joined the military, he became the photographer for the squadron of nearly 500 men.

"His primary job was to load cameras that were put in the bomb bays of B-26s. These cameras would take photographs of the bomb sites, to do an assessment of whether the bombs hit their targets, and we had in our basement boxes and boxes of photos of the bombs going off," Schneider said. "But my dad was also pressed into service to take pictures of the squadron for the newsletter and other PR documents, [so we have] many pictures of the people he was serving with."

Thousands of those photographs are now preserved in the Sidney Schneider Papers in the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Fred Schneider made the donation in 1998.

"This collection offers a clear snapshot of what life was like for men serving in World War II," Engst said. "One of the most valuable and fascinating aspects of archival research is the chance to understand someone through primary-source materials -- a first-person account in a person's own words -- and this collection is even more unique because of the photographs. You can truly see Sidney Schneider's experience through his own eyes."

Gwen Glazer is the staff writer at Cornell University Library.