"For what feels like much longer than it truly was," Steve admits. It is strange to think that those years, defining as they were, barely comprised a fourth of his waking life. Then agan, if surviving seven decades underwater with naught but icy nightmares for company taught him anythings, it's that time is abstract, the mind able to create the illusion of longer or shorter periods regardless of the actual minutes passed. "This was during the second world war," he adds for fear of being misleading.