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THE DAILY ILLINI
THURSDAY November 9, 2017
The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
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Vol. 147 Issue 22
Returning home LONGFORM
Champaign-Urbana veterans recount wartime experiences, struggles
Chapter One:
Three quarters of a century later BY FATIMA FARHA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
At 98 years old, Charles “Chick” Bruns was still fit and active, with a slightly crooked smile, wisps of white hair and large-rimmed glasses. Although he required the use of a walker, he had no problem standing up straight for a picture.
Chick’s war
Reminiscing about another day and time 75 years in the past, Bruns recounted the stories of when he was just a young man in his 20s, living in camps and bunkers with his fellow comrades during World War II. “(Bruns) was a great father to my brother and I, and he taught me how to be patriotic,” said John Bruns, his youngest son. Bruns died Sept. 10. At the end of his life, he lived at the Carriage Crossing Senior Living in Champaign. Bruns was eager to speak about his experience in World War II, even with the infirmities of old age. “Dad has a hard time hearing, but loves the attention,” John said. The United States entered the war in 1941. Bruns volunteered that same year, after enlisting in the military before the war began. Bruns said he considered himself pretty lucky and he volunteered to not have to worry about it anymore. Bruns trained as an army engineer and served in the 3rd Infantry Division in the European Theater. Despite not fighting on the front lines, Bruns said he still found himself under threat of attack because of his team’s responsibilities. “He was a soldier whose job was to prepare the roads, clear minefields, build a bridge if they needed to get across the river, that’s kind of what his job was,” John said. “Not that he was never shot at, but he was not the one on the frontline fighting fire.” Bruns also suffered wounds and injuries from the five invasions his division was involved in, along with sicknesses like jaundice and malaria. However, Bruns said he remembers the hospitals being “very efficient” because they would “sew him up right away.”
Bruns called his invasion experiences simply hell. His first was the invasion of North Africa. Bruns said he remembered men losing their lives not on the battlefield, but in the water, where boats capsized in the rush of massive waves. Even though fighting the French Senegalese soldiers was a challenge, he said he mostly recalled losing comrades to drowning, something that was not the case in the other invasions. Bruns said the invasion of Sicily was a “rough one.” However, he said the invasion of Anzio was interesting because barely any shots were fired, at first. He recounted how the bombardment eventually started when the Germans started to back out, and his division continued to fight until they finally got through. This invasion eventually led to the invasion of Rome, after which Bruns said they continued on to southern France. He remembered clearly a venture into Hitler’s home in Berchtesgaden, which sat atop a hill on the side of a mountain. Bruns said he remembers many soldiers and smoke coming out of the house, but not Hitler. When the war ended in 1945, Bruns and his fellow troops were in Salzburg, Austria. Although many people assume that upon hearing that the war was over, the soldiers had gone out to party and cheer, Bruns said that was not the case. “We just went along with it like nothing had happened,” Bruns said. “When the war was over, it took me about two months to get back home. Once I left Germany, they flew me home, and everybody was coming by boat. But I was one of them that got to fly home. Within 15 days, I was out of service.” Bruns said he is grateful for recording daily events during the war in a diary. Although he was not supposed to carry anything with him, Bruns said he used to write on any paper he could find, whenever he got the chance. “I wouldn’t write very much, but I would just write a little bit about what’s going on. Not everything that was going on because there was no
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES ‘CHICK’ BURNS AND RITA MARIE FLESHNER COURTESY OF JOHN BURNS
way I could write about everything,” he said. “I wrote on different kinds of paper. Every time I got a little bit of paper, I would save it and I would use it.” He also carried a small camera, which he used to capture many photos. He took the camera with him everywhere, and even though many photos from Africa were ruined by the heat, he was still able to salvage others.
Remembering Chick
These photos and journal entries were already decades old before John found them in high school. John said he had always been interested in his dad’s war stories, and he had grown up hearing them since he was a child. In the last 15 years, John started to transcribe his father’s diary, which he said was a big challenge but worth it. And in 2012, he decided to officially start a blog to display the dia-
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Since January, the ChampaignUrbana Public Health District has inspected 41 Greek houses, with all but one passing. On Sept. 28, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, located at 211 E. Daniel St. in Champaign, failed its health inspection. Jack Lenihan, Sigma Alpha Epsilon president, said their problems started when they hired a new chef. “Our chef last year was a phe-
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John said these diary entries provide a detailed look into Brun’s invasion experiences. In an entry from Sept. 20, 1943, Bruns wrote,“We saw a lot of German tanks that were destroyed. They were to have had some rugged fighting. We are near an airfield and the P-51s keep coming in and taking off with their bombs…The mosquitoes are terrible.” Later entries, like those from January 1944, detailed less positive experiences. In one entry, dated Jan. 25, 1944, while he was in Italy, Bruns wrote: “Boy oh boy what a night. I’m telling you I was so scared that I shook like a leaf. I prayed just as hard as I could pray. Some bombs jarred the plaster out of the walls and I was sure one bomb was going to hit us right in the middle. You could hear it whistle as it came down.” The entries dated from 1942 to 1945, when Bruns was given the SEE VETERANS | 3A
UI fraternity fails health inspection
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ry entries. “We went on this honor flight in 2012, and Dad was 93 when we went on the honor flight,” John said. “And I thought, if I am going to do this, I got to do it now because I am lucky he is still here now. I can’t keep going on about doing it next year because I don’t know if he will be here.” This new motivation led John to launch the blog “70 Years Ago,” after the 70 years it had been since Bruns had left for war. John said he posted in this blog every single day, 70 years to the date, with each diary entry for that date. He continued the blog for the 3 ½ years that Bruns’ diary entries had been written, while also posting all of the photos he could scan from the developed film. “And as sad as it is that he is no longer with me, the time that I spent with him over the last five years working with his diary really brought me a lot closer to him,” John said.
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nomenal guy, but he decided to take a job up in Minnesota so we lost him. Before the school year started, we hired a new chef spontaneously and after a couple weeks, it was pretty clear the new chef was not up to par,” Lenihan said. Ashley Dye, senior assistant dean of students and the director for Fraternity & Sorority Affairs, said in an email that certified fraternities and sororities on campus have annual inspections conducted
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by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District. “Both of these inspections are required elements of the certified housing standards,” Dye said. Sarah Michaels, food program coordinator for the ChampaignUrbana Public Health District, said she came in for a routine inspection after receiving a call that there were issues in the house. SEE HEALTH | 3A
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