Chick saw Irving Berlin’s ‘This is the Army’ at the Rome Opera House on June 19, 1944. The pictured program was sent home to his Mom & Dad which was found in a letter.
In May 1941, ex-Sergeant Irving Berlin was on tour at Camp Upton, his old Army base in Yaphank, New York during World War I. There he spoke with the commanding officers about re-staging his original 1917 Army play, Yip! Yip! Yaphank. Gen. George Marshall approved a Broadway production of a wartime musical for the army, allowing Berlin to conduct the arrangements and rehearsals at Camp Upton much like he had done during World War I. Sgt. Ezra Stone was selected as director for the new contemporary play, and the two set up on base during the weekdays to put together the story and crew.
The retooled play ‘This is the Army’ ran on Broadway, at the Broadway Theatre from July 4, 1942 to September 26, 1942. The show was such a success that it went on the road and the national tour of the revue ended in San Francisco, CA on February 13, 1943.
In 1944, The Company toured London and then spent two weeks in North Africa. The company finally found temporary shelter in the small San Carlo Opera House in Naples, where they played for the first half of April. “The men were brought down in relays to see the show. They didn’t know what they were getting,” said Manson. “They thought they were going to see an accordion player and a broad shaking her ass. But we gave them an enormous show, with 150 men” and, of course, 
Irving Berlin, whose poignant rendition of “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” was a highlight of each performance. By this time, the song had become more than an anthem of disgust with reveille; it was a protest against the monstrous war that had overtaken all of their lives.
After Allied troops had taken Rome, Berlin’s company came into the city on trucks six days behind the victorious forces. Later that month, ‘This Is the Army’ took up residence at the Royal Opera House, performing twice daily.
Reference: National Archives
]]>
BY PAT HARMONNews Gazette Sports Editor
While Bucky Walters is setting the pace in major leagues and Joe Veltre is off to a flying start in the Eastern Illinois, a Champaign boy is the leading pitcher in a baseball league about whom 90 percent of the sport fans of the country have never heard — Anzio league.
Pfc. Bruns, former Champaign high school and E.I. league player, has pitched 5 games at Anzio, winning them all.
“As far as I know, we are playing the first baseball ever played in a combat zone,” Bruns writes his parents, Mr. and Mrs Francis B. Bruns, 303 West Maple.
Watch from Hill
“We start the games after supper and we play right under the Jerries’ noses. The Germans watch us from a nearby hill.”
Bruns started as a shortstop but went in to pitch one game with the score 4-0 against his team. The Bruns team pulled the game out of the fire, 5-4, and he has been a pitcher ever since.
When he played in this local, Bruns was an outfielder, and a fast one. He was best know for his effortless swing at the plate. He had a smooth style the resembled a budding Joe DiMaggio.
Bats .475 in Cornbelt
Bruns hit .475 with the Illinois Billiards in 1939 and was runner up for the Cornbelt batting championship to Eddie Houston of LeRoy.
Elmer Morfey’s Billiard Boys withdrew from the Cornbelt league following that season, so Bruns caught on with the Champaign Plumbers in the E.I. He hit .392 in this league and ranked third for the year, right behind Bud Wiese and Red Pace of Tuscola. He appeared in one game of the ’41 season for the Plumbers bus soon left for the army.
A recent dispatch from the front told of the baseball games which Bruns participates. The German lines are so near, the correspondents wrote, that members of the enemy can audibly criticize the play.
Once, when a player went into second base standing up and was tagged out, a German voice shot over from a nearby hill, “Vy didn’t you slide, you dumbkopf?”
In another instance, a player was called safe sliding into home. “Vat! Dot umpire iss a robber. He was out a mile!” shouted the voice.
At the Anzio beachhead, Bruns is living in one of the flack shacks recently described by Ernie Pyle in the News-Gazette. “My buddy, Mel, and I have dug into the side of a hill. We put boards up on top for a ceiling and cardboard on the floor. We sweep the floor every morning, just like mother taught us to sweep around the house when we were kids. We have burlap sides for walls and pinups all around
Room for Two Cots
“There is room for two cots and a ledge to lay our things. We have electric lights, too. Our company captured a German generator in Sicily.”
Bruns has been in combat 18 months and has participated in four invasions — Casablanca, Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio. Joe Waters of Villa Grove and Frank (Snook) Barber of Urbana are in the same division with him, and one day he met a soldier named Pryz. “Boy you look like a guy back home I used to play ball with named Tony Pryz,” Bruns informed him. “That’s my brother,” sad Joe Pyrz.
(Tony Pyrz, former Illinois baseball captain, who played on the Billiard team with Bruns, is now coach at Philo high.) Lieutenant Verne Evans, University of Illinois graduate who was killed recently, was also with Bruns.
Ship Sinks Off Shore
Bruns says he has been lucky to escape serious injury in four invasions. At Casablanca, his ship was sunk eight miles off shore. He has not been able ot reveal details of his survival.
“We in the engineers have the most interesting job in the army,” we once wrote his parents, “and there’s only one job tougher. That’s the infantry. I don’t see how those boys in the infantry can take it. We’re right behind them most of the time but some times we’re with them or just ahead of them building roads. But we get to sleep inside, and they don’t. We ride and they walk.
“We were sure burned up about the 3d Engineers not getting much credit until one day there was a piece in the paper about what what we were doing in Italy and how ‘the eyes of the world are upon the 3rd Engineers.’ I read that in The News Gazette, and, boy, they’re not kidding when they say the eyes of the world are upon us. The eyes of those Krauts are upon us, and they’re looking right down our neck.
‘Wouldn’t Settle Down’
“I want to get the war over with and get back to a good, clean decent, respectable country. I wouldn’t settle down over here for all the dough in the world.”
Being in the engineers, Bruns has had much of the cleanup work around the battlefield and has sent home a wealth of souvenirs. German and Italian insignia, pamphlets, maps, books, medals, captured battle flags and articles fill a deep 4×1 packing box at the Bruns home on West Maple.
‘Eats Fresh Egg’
In a letter March 27, Bruns said “P.S. Mother: Had a bath and a shave today. First since January 21. “Snook (Barber) is farther back from the front lines than us and is living in a house. They bought some cows and chickens off Italians who were evacuating. I was over for dinner the other night and had my first glass of milk since went into combat 18 months ago. Also had a fresh egg.”
Pfc. Charles Bruns, son of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Bruns, 303 West Maple street, has written from “somewhere in Italy” describing a visit with his brother-in-law, Technical Sergeant Frank Barber, son of Mr. and Mrs. William Barber. Pfc. Bruns has been overseas since October, 1942 and Barber has been overseas since last October.
Frank ‘Snook’ Barber
Brother-in-law to Chick
]]>
Charles Bruns
Photo: john Dixon, News Gazette
As part of their Veteran’s Day tribute, the News Gazette has a front page story about Charles ‘Chick’ Bruns and his WWII online diary. You can read the entire story entitled: “THROUGH THE EYES OF A SOLDIER”
]]>
With the American Seventh Army east of San Stefano, Sicily, Aug. 3 – (Delayed) – (AP) – American combat engineers during battle lulls have turned the vast Mediterranean into a combination “old swimming hole” and laundry.Within the sound of enemy artillery, firing in the hills only four miles away, a group of them paddled happily along a small strip of beach which they reached by clearing a narrow path through Italian barbed wire barriers and heavy minefields. To have taken a step in any direction pas the narrow ribbon-marked lanes would have invited instant death – but these men are used to living in an atmosphere of danger.
“We had to take out about 50 mines in this little spot, alone, to make a swimming beach – but ain’t it a dinger,” said Sergeant Quentin Swanson, Roscoe, Ill. “It looks like every time those Italians and Germans get tired of carrying mines, they stick them in the ground.”
Bruns Watches From Bank
As Pfc. Charles F. Bruns, Champaign, watched from a bank, tall, lanky red haired Private Thomas Richmond of Chicago, Ill, as naked as his birth day, lay on his back in the watter called, “ Look, I can float in this salt water if I keep wiggling.” By “wiggling” like a threshing machine, he managed to stay on top.
(Bruns is the son of Mr. and Mrs Francis Bruns, 303 West Maple street, and is a former Champaign high school athlete who formerly played baseball in the Eastern Illinois League. He has been overseas since Nov. 8, 1942, when he arrived at Casablanca and has been in many of the major battles of the north Africa campaign.)
More Sandy Back Home
“The beaches back home have more sand and less rocks and there are more pretty gals there and no mines” said Private John Oneto of Santa Cruz, Calif., who was lying in the hot sun. “but we’re glad to get a place like this even if it doesn’t have much surf.”
Risking the wrath of all of California’s natives sons, Private Victor Richter, Fontana, Calif., disputed him saying, “This beach beats any in California, It’s lots calmer then the Pacific.”
“Well it’s pretty nice to have a private beach this close to the front, but yesterday, the enemy was dropping artillery shells over our head,” said Fifth Class Technician Noriss Butts, Galesburg, Ill. Who was swimming with Sergeant Marsh Wynegarde, Lasalle, Ill. “It’s too bad we can’t carry some of this water to the infantry. Those boys could really use a swim,” he added.
Chick Bruns, who batted .300 consistently while he played in the Eastern Illinois Corn Belt baseball leagues here, is now hitting .300 or better for Uncle Sam. Private First Class Bruns was in his first battle November 8, in French Morocco and he is now stationed in Casablanca.“I came through my first battle in good shape.” he writes his parents, Mr. and Mrs F. B. Bruns, 303 West Maple. “It started at 5 a.m., November 8. I didn’t get scared until the aircraft came over. Then I turned green. I suppose Brother is out hunting these days; well, I have been hunting, too, only these animals shoot back. Now I know how a rabbit feels.”
“The French and the natives were so glad to see us they cried. They sure like American gum, cigarettes, and candy – any sweets. You don’t know how lucky you are to live back in America. All the houses are blown up here. It is something the people back home should see. I’m glad I’m fighting over here.
“the natives are surprised to find the Americans so big and strong. You should see the Arabs. What a people! The men ride mules, the women walk and carry things on their heads. Just like in the movies. The climate here is perfect – better than California.”
Editor note: Publish date is not know but context is taken from a letter dated November 18, 1942
]]>