"Nat Peck, the trombonist, who has died aged 90, was the youngest, and last surviving, member of Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Orchestra, which was based in England during the closing stages of the Second World War; in his later career Peck played and recorded with many of the greatest names in jazz, as well as being a valued studio musician in Britain and Europe. Nathan Peck was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 13 1925, the son of a cinema projectionist. Despite receiving no encouragement, he took up the trombone as a teenager. On leaving high school and receiving his draft papers, he wrote to Glenn Miller, volunteering for a place in his band. To his surprise and delight he found himself posted to Miller’s base in New Haven and, in June 1944, on a ship bound for Liverpool. “We had been told that the war was practically over,” he recalled half a century later. “But when we got to London there were these doodle-bugs (V1 flying bombs) falling out of the sky all over. Gee, thanks, Captain Miller!” In December, after many shows and BBC broadcasts, the band was scheduled to move to newly liberated Paris. Miller flew on ahead but never arrived, his plane having gone missing over the Channel. The band continued under the leadership of the drummer, Ray McKinley, and Peck remained with it until the war’s end." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11965812/Nat-Peck-jazz-trombonist-obituary.html
