“He was in the war, son”: More on my cousin Sgt. Bruce Elliott
In the process of researching World War II veterans’ records for those who served or for their family members, I thought of my cousin Bruce Elliott’s service with the 741st Tank Battalion from D-Day on to the end of the war in Europe.
My cousin, Bruce Elliott, in his WWII Army uniform
I mentioned him to Bert Caloud, a retired Marine sergeant major who has helped me with military and historical research several times. He’s tenacious. The time that sticks in my mind was when I made an inquiry on behalf of an Iwo Jima veteran about a Marine flame-thrower who was thought to have been buried in an unmarked grave under one of the airstrips on the island. I emailed Bert, who was the assistant superintendent at the Manila American Cemetery, told him what I knew, and gave him the name and the unit.
Not long afterward, I was in Manila with a group touring the World War II battle sites in the Philippines, and Bert took me to the man’s grave. Bert had tracked him from when he was killed on Iwo Jima to his transfer to the cemetery in Manila. I took a photo and sent it to the Iwo Jima veteran in Colorado, Al Jennings, who had initially contacted me and was relieved to know that his buddy was properly buried rather than being in a hastily dug and unmarked grave on Iwo Jima.
“I’ve thought about him every day since he was killed,” Jennings said, “wondering where he was.”
Later, Bert (now superintendent of the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial in northern France) put me in contact with Erik Albertson, head of training and plans for WW2 Armor, which says it is “an educational outfit seeking to educate the wider public in U.S. armor tactics, training, vehicles and personnel. In short, our goal is to allow a taste of what it meant to be a tank crewmember during that time and to show what those soldiers endured and accomplished.”
I gave him some background about my cousin Bruce and sent a photo of him in uniform during World War II. Albertson sent me some information, then asked if I’d like for Bruce to be listed and honored in the “Tinker Tidbit” segment on the WW2 Armor Facebook page.
Of course, I said yes.
“Attached is (the) Tanker Tidbit in honor of Bruce,” Albertson emailed me about the piece on Facebook. “We focused on his D-Day landing, as that is a major ordeal to have been part of and survived to say the least, as we all know. A book alone could be written about him as he made it through the entire ETO (European Theater of Operations) with the 741st from Omaha Beach to (the) Czech Republic. Honestly, I can’t even imagine that and what he experienced, as it’s not too common to have made it all the way through as a combat arms troop. In the words of one senior NCO (noncommissioned officer) from the 66th Armor who fought in the MTO (Mediterranean Theater of Operations) and ETO, ‘By the end of the war, we only had nine of our original unit members that were with us from when we left the U.S. in 1943.’”
The piece honoring Bruce with his photo was posted with the following comment:
“Today we honor Sgt. Bruce Elliott, who served with the 741st Tank Battalion during World War II. As you all know, we seek to educate about, and honor, the men and steel steeds that overcame tyranny on the fields of battle during WWII. As part of that mission, we honor the individuals [who] risked life and limb to take that fight to our enemies. Some are known by many, some were part of our personal families, and we meet many veterans on our quest to honor the memory of those [who] served.”
Bruce’s service in the war was extraordinary, given that he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day: June 6, 1944, was in the Battle of the Bulge and was still there at the end in Pilsen, Czech Republic, on May 6, 1945, when the war was about over.
He drove a truck for my father for several years after the war. As a young boy, I looked up to him, rode with him and spent as much time with him as I could during those years. He never talked to me about the war unless I asked him something. But I saw evidence of his experiences when he dove off the unloading ramp at the Indianapolis stockyards during a loud thunder storm and again under the truck while he was loading a veal calf at a farmer’s barn to take to Indianapolis.
As a little boy, I didn’t know what to think of those times. But the farmer, who was the father of a soldier Bruce had served with in Europe, said quietly, “He was in the war, son.”
Bruce got up and loaded the calf. We were all quiet and said nothing. But as we drove away, I asked him, “Were you in the war, Bruce?”
He jerked his head and looked over at me with a startled look of sorts and a shine in his eyes I still remember, and said, “Oh, I reckon, you little dickens.”
Another time as we rode along in the truck I asked him about the war, and I don’t remember exactly what he said, except that he wouldn’t take a million dollars for what he’d been through, but he wouldn’t do it again for a million dollars, either. Those conversations stuck with me and, years later, I relied on some of them for my novel, “Wild Hands Toward the Sky,” about a 5-year-old boy who lost his father on Guadalcanal before he could remember him—as many children of those who died in the war live with that loss throughout their lives.
Sadly, Bruce was on disability and still suffering from a combat injury to his neck and the lingering, horrific memories of the war, when he took his own life on June 6, 1982, the anniversary of one of the most memorable days in his life.