BUFFALO, N.Y. – A 102-year-old World War II veteran officially graduated high school on Friday in a ceremony that also honored the former U.S. Army pilot with 10 belated war medals.

Congressman Brian Higgins helped to arrange the ceremony for U.S. Army Capt. Sydney Cole, who was a star athlete at Buffalo’s Fosdick-Masten Park High School before leaving without his diploma in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression, WIVB reports.

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Cole initially attempted to join the U.S. Army Air Corps before the U.S. entered World War II, but was rejected and traveled to Canada to join the Canadian Royal Air Force, instead. After Pearl Harbor, he was discharged and joined the U.S. Army in 1943, according to the Associated Press.

“This is like a movie script, and he is such a handsome, charismatic guy, he could star as himself in this great movie,” Higgins said.

Cole was piloting an artillery observation plane in January 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge when he was shot down by enemy gunfire and wounded, then taken a prisoner of war by the Nazis. He spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp where he endured beatings, and ate grass and rotten potato soup to keep himself alive, WKBW reports.

Cole also ditched his military dog tags before he was captured by German soldiers because they identified him as Jewish. He spent a year in the POW camp, where he witnesses mass graves of victims of the Holocaust before it was liberated by the Russian Military, the Daily Mail reports.

“Capt. Cole’s heroism, at the risk of his own life, his dedication to the principals of freedom, his exemplary devotion to his duty as an American fighting man, are in keeping with the highest tradition of the American military,” Higgins said in describing Cole as “a living example of the Greatest Generation.”

“I didn’t expect this,” said Cole, a son of Russian immigrants. “I really and truly knew nothing about it.”

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On Friday, Cole was presented with a total of 10 military medals of honor, from both Canada and the United States, including the Purple Heart for those wounded in battle, and the Bronze Star for his heroic service.

“My dad deserves everything that was said today and I’m extremely proud of my dad,” Richard Cole told WKBW.

Cole’s younger brother, 97-year-old Irving Cole, is also a World War II veteran and attended the surprise ceremony.

City Honors School Principal William Kresse presented Sydney Cole with a diploma Friday and formally inducted the World War II veteran into the school’s Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame. Foskick-Masten Park High School became City Honors School in the 1970s.

Cole was a star swimmer at the school and qualified for the Olympics before leaving without his diploma.

“This is your Foskick-Masten Park High School Diploma, Sydney, and it is sealed with the same seal that (then) Principal Hersey would have used in 1934,” Kresse said.

Cole graciously accepted the accolades, and was overwhelmed by the recognition, WIVB reports.

“This time of my life, right now, is the most I have ever had a group that really appreciated what I did with my life,” he said.