Ryan Stevens, Taylor Loop,
Ashley Goldsmith, Sarah Davis
Period 6
5/15/03
Bruce Wilson
Bruce Wilson is from the city that we call Riverside,
but back then it was much different then it is now.
Back
then Riverside was known for it’s oranges and orange
groves.
During the time Bruce was growing up, Riverside
only had about 36,000 people.
So as you can imagine,
Riverside use to be much different then it is now.
Bruce
graduated in 1943 as Poly High School’s Athlete of the
Year, lettering in four sports.
Then in June 1943, Bruce
was drafted, and became part of the 517th Airborne Infantry
regiment.
The troops went through rigorous training to prepare
them for different war situations.
The first training
facility Bruce attended was in Georgia at Fort Benning.
The troops trained mostly with some firearms, such as the
M1 rifle, but they also trained with the 30-caliber machine
gun and bazooka.
The M1 was the best primary weapon for
their unit because it was small, easy to carry, and
accurate.
After that, Bruce was taken up to a camp in
North Carolina to receive final training before entering
the war.
Since Bruce was a paratrooper, they were often dropped
into areas behind enemy lines.
The first jump that Bruce
made was shaky, “I was scarred as hell that my ‘chute
wouldn’t open,” said Bruce.
Although all of his jumps were
successful ones, the fourteenth jump Bruce did landed 20
miles away from where they were supposed to be.
The troops
then had to hike back 20 miles under heavy artillery and
machine gun fire.
Under the command of Colonel Ruppert Graves, Bruce
entered battle in 1944 in Anzio, Italy.
After the battle
of Anzio, the 517th Airborne division was then a part of the
invasion of southern France.
Bruce and his unit fought
through France, Blgium and all the way up to Germany.
Bruce and his unit had been on the front lines for 94
straight days and were scheduled to spend Christmas of 1944
in the barracks.
Then the Battle of the Bulge came, and
during that battle is when Bruce had contact with his first
German Tiger Tank.
Bruce said the German Tiger Tanks were
so much bigger and heavily armored then the small and
lightly armored American tanks.
Once the Battle of the
Bulge was over, Bruce was on his way to the Pacific, but
the dropping the A-bombs prevented that.
“I was extremely
pleased that the bomb was dropped, thousands of lives were
saved, including my own,” said Mr. Wilson.
Once his service ended in 1945, Bruce came back to
Riverside and attended RCC then finished his schooling at
U.S.C.
After looking back at what he did and the war,
Bruce said, “I regretted nothing I did, absolutely not.”
Although he didn not enjoy taking lives of others, he knew
it was what he needed to do.
He didn’t look at it as
killing, but as simply surviving and accomplishing your
mission.
When asked how he felt about war movies, Bruce
commented, “Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers were
pretty accurate, but most of the other movies were all
Hollywood.”
Currently Bruce is enjoying the rest of his
days in Riverside as a retired teacher and athletic coach.
He has no regrets about what happened or what he did.