Don’t call him a hero. It’s OK to marvel that, at 95, he plays bridge five times a week, has a daily exercise regimen that includes 25 against-the-wall pushups and that he reads a book a week, usually a mystery.

But do not tell Ralph Goldsticker Jr. of Creve Coeur, a World War II bombardier who flew the maximum of 35 missions in 1944, that he’s a hero. He’ll bristle.

One of about 16 million men and women — an estimated 500,000 of them Jewish — then serving in the U.S. military, he says: “My job might have been more dangerous than some, but we were all doing something to win the war.

“Scared to death every day. I was just doing my job.”

Part of the fabled Greatest Generation of American World War II veterans, only about 550,000 million are still alive, according to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Nearly 75 years after the war, Goldsticker’s memory is astonishing. He can still describe what he wore, layer by layer, as he attempted to stay warm in the plexiglass nose cone of a B-17. At an altitude of 25,000 to 27,000 feet, the 10 crewman aboard endured temperatures of 30 to 40 degrees below zero.

Goldsticker, a first lieutenant in what was then known as the U.S. Army 8^th Air Force, said his wartime gear usually began with two pair of socks and long underwear, then regular pants, a shirt, a fleece jacket, silk gloves, fur-lined gloves, fleece-lined boots, a fur helmet with a metal helmet on top, a Mae West inflatable life jacket (named for the buxom “bombshell” of vaudeville and Broadway), a parachute and a flak suit (form of body armor). Goldsticker was also equipped with an oxygen mask and hose, headset, throat microphone, heated suit,binoculars and a 45-caliber gun.

He’d remove the cotter pins holding in place the detonators on each ofhis planeload of bombs, either “six 1,000-pound bombs or 10  500-pound bombs or 28 100-pound bombs,” he said.

B-17s measured close to 75 feet long and 104 feet wide.

“It was hard to move, huh?” asked Dick Scharnhorst, who was attending a recent talk by Goldsticker at Congregation Shaare Emeth.

“It was, and we didn’t move much,” acknowledged Goldsticker, who retired as a children’s clothing sales rep.

With “pinch me, we can’t believe we’re hearing this from someone who lived it” reverence, the audience at Shaare Emeth sat enraptured.

Was it tough to fly in close formations? (“I don’t know,” Goldsticker responded. “I wasn’t the pilot. But we had six planes in a squadron, 18 in a group.”) Could you hear the bombs drop? (“There was too much other noise.”)

Ever since making headlines in 2015 as one of the American recipients of the French Legion of Honor medal, given for helping liberate France from Nazi control, Goldsticker has been in demand as a speaker.

He earlier receivedthe Distinguished Flying Cross and five other air medals from the Army Air Corps. Another medal, from the Russian government, recognized that after a mission, his plane landed in the Soviet Union, where it was destroyed on the ground by German bombers.

Augmented by his own research and air-combat footage from the documentary “Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress,”   Goldsticker tells his story. A savorer of history, he counts among personal souvenirs his wartime paychecks (the Army’s $75 a month dwarfed his previous St. Louis wages as a 50-cent-an-hour clerk), his train tickets and flying records.

Goldsticker tailors his sharing to particular audiences, whether schoolchildren, pilots or senior citizens, and talks about:

• Friday nights at Royal Air Force’s Deopham Green airfield in England, where the 15 or 20 Jews on base, without benefit of a rabbi, conducted religious services. A twice-a-year-to-temple Jew at home, serviceman Goldsticker discovered that “a little praying never hurt.” Raised at Shaare Emeth, he’s a longtime member of Congregation Temple Israel.

• His experiences, using photos, maps and other visuals that his son Bob has turned into a PowerPoint presentation.

Instead of lecturing, the elder Goldsticker — father of three, grandfather of five and great-grandfather of one — makes eye contact with listeners. Rarely does he look at his notes.

His speeches, about a dozen to date, have proved something of a mixed blessing. With occasional pauses as his emotions surge, he relives the two missions he flew on D-Day, June 6, 1944, remaining in the air for 14½ hours. His voice wavers.

During his first D-Day mission, on a stormy morning shrouded in clouds, his plane bombed big coastal guns. In the clearer afternoon, he witnessed the magnitude of the Allied fleet, invading France on the Normandy coastline.

Goldsticker emerged from the war with no major injuries. But he talks firsthand of returning to a Quonset hut acutely aware that 40 percent of the beds that had been filled the day before  were now empty.

Half of the Army Air Force’s casualties during World War II were taken by the 8^th Air Force, in which Goldsticker served. About 26,000 airmen died.

Goldsticker was one of the lucky ones. His and his wife, Helen, a kindergarten teacher and tour guide, were married for 63 years. She passed away at age 86 in 2012.

Although his father had a stroke at age 75 and died six years later, his mother lived to age 96 and 8 months.

“She was fine, right to the very end,” he says.

On his own calendar, he’s marked June 28. So hopeful is he of surpassing his mother’s longevity that on that day, he’ll be 96 years, eight months and one day old.