Bountiful, Utah (CNN) -- It was two weeks after D-Day, a few miles from the bloody shores of Omaha Beach. An airstrip had been carved out of the Normandy countryside, costing the lives of 28 Army engineers at the hands of German snipers.



A lone sniper still remained in the nighttime distance.



Despite the risk, Capt. Jack Tueller felt compelled to play his trumpet.



That afternoon, his P-47 fighter group had caught up with a retreating German Panzer division. As the U.S. Thunderbolts descended on their targets, they saw French women and children on top of the tanks. After an initial fly-by, the order was given to attack anyway.



"We were told those human shields were expendable," Tueller said.



Back at the airstrip, Tueller took out his trumpet. He'd used it on many a starlit night to entertain the men of the 508th Squadron 404th Fighter Group.



"I was told, 'Captain, don't play tonight; your trumpet makes the most glorious sound,' but I was stressed," he said. He was so troubled that he was willing to take a chance the sniper wouldn't fire.



"I thought to myself, that German sniper is as lonely and scared as I am. How can I stop him from firing? So I played that German's love song, 'Lilly Marlene,' made famous in the late '30s by Marlene Dietrich, the famous German actress. And I wailed that trumpet over those apple orchards of Normandy, and he didn't fire."



The next morning, the military police came up to Tueller and told him they had a German prisoner on the beach who kept asking, "Who played that trumpet last night?"



"I grabbed my trumpet and went down to the beach. There was a 19-year-old German, scared and lonesome. He was dressed like a French peasant to cloak his role as a sniper. And, crying, he said, 'I couldn't fire because I thought of my fiancé. I thought of my mother and father,' and he says, 'My role is finished.'



"He stuck out his hand, and I shook the hand of the enemy," Tueller said. "[But] he was no enemy, because music had soothed the savage beast."



"Boy, you have strong lips"



Tueller had learned to play the trumpet as a child growing up in Wyoming. His mother, a nurse, died at 29, and his father, a bartender and alcoholic, left the next day -- leaving Jack and his brother, Bob, orphans.



They left their home in Superior to live with an aunt in nearby Evanston. She gave Jack his first trumpet, and he quickly discovered he had a musical ear.



"In 1939, I was playing in Yellowstone Park in a dance band of 22 musicians at Lake Hotel. The famous trumpet player Louis Armstrong came up to the band during intermission and said, 'You sound pretty good for white cats,' " Tueller recalled.



He asked Armstrong what advice he would give a young trumpet player. "He said, 'Always play the melody, man. Look at them, see their age group, play their love songs, and you'll carry all the money to the bank.' "



Tueller enrolled at Brigham Young University, where he met his future wife and fellow trumpeter, Marjorie.



"This beautiful brown-haired gal with luscious lips said, 'Did you play the trumpet solo at the freshman assembly?' And I said, 'Yes, ma'am, I did.' She said, 'Boy, you have strong lips.' Being a sophomore, I said, 'Would you like to try me?' She nodded, and I went over and kissed her."



In 1941, as war clouds gathered, Jack enlisted in the Army and was sent to fighter school because he was an "individualist," he said.



"I wanted to fly it, fire it, navigate
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