It was a torrid summer's day in Casablanca in 1943. American troops double-timed across a sandy parade square, rifles held aloft, heavy packs on their backs. Sweat ran down their faces as they pounded under the Moroccan sun. As they passed the barracks office, teenage infantryman Larry Allen saw a sign on the door: 'If you can sing or play the piano, see the sergeant,' it said.
Allen chuckles. It sounded like a great alternative. The young soldier could certainly pound out music. He handed in his carbine, was assigned to a group called Harlem in Cadence, and tinkled his way across North Africa and up the Italian peninsula during the Allies' long and bloody advance.
Today, he still plays some of the tunes with which he entertained the troops, timeless favourites such as Sophisticated Lady, a song he adores. But next month, Allen closes the lid: 55 years - and a million songs - after he marched away to war, he is going home.
Behind him, the amiable music-maker will leave an army of friends, scattered across Asia in the bars, clubs, hotels and lounges where he has performed. 'It's time to leave,' he rumbled at the Foreign Correspondents Club, one of his regular workplaces for four decades.
Hong Kong is getting too expensive and, at 75, Allen is slowing down, although his slightly risque, gently ribald versions of popular tunes are sprightly as ever.
Allen learned to play when he was a boy in Indiana - and that is a favoured tune, too - where his father was pastor at the Amer-Zion Methodist Church in South Bend. Musicians were sometimes hard to find in church, so Reverend Allen made sure all nine of his children could perform to accompany the hymns.