WATCH: Former US soldier and TikTok star Papa Jake returns to Northern Ireland after 80 years and explains why he’s the luckiest man in the world

Eighty years have passed since Jake Larson set foot on Ulster soil, and having survived six battles, a stroke and a heart attack, the Minnesota farm boy can’t believe he’s still alive.

“Someone up there must be helping me,” said the 99-year-old, who has been in NI since Friday with his family including son Karlan and granddaugther McKaela.

It was McKaela who turned her ‘Papa Jake’ into a star on TikTok by setting up a channel for him to share his stories.

Through @storytimewithpapajake the ex-soldier was able to find out the name of the castle he stayed in while he was stationed in NI.

McKaela said: “He could only remember he was stationed at a castle but he couldn’t remember the name. He remembered there were lots of chimneys. We posted the photos and one of the followers said, ‘oh, that looks like the Brownlow House’ and they sent us pictures.

“We found a video on YouTube of drone footage, once we saw that we matched the stairs to the photo.”

On Friday, Jake will be guest of honour upon his return to Brownlow House.

He said he had fond memories of his time in Northern Ireland in 1942, coming here as a lowly infantry man and leaving with G3 V Corps.

It was a picture taken at Brownlow House that led to Jake marrying the love of his life, though he knew nothing of the photo until three years after they were married.

Jake and Lola started dating in May 1945, married in November, and in 1948 he saw a familiar face in her wallet: “I said to her, ‘where on earth did you get that picture?’ She had cut it out from the local newspaper in 1942 and said, ‘that’s the guy I’m going to marry, so help me God’.”

Jake also spent some time in Ballymena selling insurance to GIs before being shipped to North Africa.

Later in the war, Jake was part of the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach in Normandy.

He recalled: “When we landed on Omaha Beach V Corps was in command. At night I ran G3, I was charge of Omaha Beach from 7.30 at night to 7.30 in the morning.”

Jake describes himself as “the luckiest man in the world’, which is also the title of the book he released last year.

In it, he details his near-death experiences at a number of Second World War battles including the Battle of the Bulge during which there were 90,000 American casualties.

He said: “I went through six battles. Can you believe that?

“I’m going to be 100 in December without an ache or a pain, how is that possible?

“All these things that have happened to me, how am I still here?”

Bringing wife back to life got 19million views on TikTok

McKaela said that fate conspired to make her grandfather Jake a social media star on TikTok.

She said: “I was a performer on a cruise ship, but when coronavirus hit I lost my job. I was back home in lockdown and I was able to spend a lot more time with Papa Jake.

“I posted a video to my TikTok of Papa Jake and it got a lot of views, people didn’t want to see me, they wanted Papa Jake, so I gave him his own channel.”

In one video which has got 18.9million views Jake’s late wife Lola comes back to life in front of his eyes.

The veteran, who has almost 500,000 followers on TikTok, is brought to tears as, using computer software, McKaela was able to animate a snap of her grandmother when she was at high school.

Through a GoFundMe campaign, £10,000 was raised towards Papa Jake’s return to Northern Ireland.

McKaela said: “This was the light at the end of the tunnel. As soon as coronavirus was over we were going to go on this trip.”

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