WWII Diary of Chick Bruns – 70 Years Ago

Not much happened today. We had the day off and all we had to do was cleaning and care of equipment. I went down to the crick and took a bath, came back, wrote a few letters, listened to the radio and went to bed.

One of my buddies was blown up yesterday while out cleaning an S-mine field. We are on our way to Philippeville. It has been a nice trip and I have seen many move interesting sights. We came across some sand dunes that were just like crossing the desert. Some of the towns along the way were just leveled to the ground by bombs. We passed a prison camp with about 150,000 prisoners in it. When we went through Bone we found out that it had just been bombed before we got there. We really have a nice bivouac area now. Plenty of trees and a stream running right at the side of it.

We worked around and did odd jobs all morning and in the afternoon went to Bizerte. We went down on the beach for a swim and tried out some German and Italian explosives. Some of them are pretty powerful. We then went up to see Bizerte and it is nothing but a gutted city. There was not a building that wasn’t shattered by bombs. Ships were all sunk in the harbors. It was a pitiful sight. There was not a single person left in the town. We are going to move again tomorrow.

I went out today to blow up a few duds. We had quite a time only some shrapnel came to close once or twice. We just messed around in the afternoon and in the evening we had mail call and some wine to drink. I am on guard from 3 to 4. Good night.

Bizerte 17

We unloaded the supply truck and straightened up things around. I did a little laundry and just messed around the rest of the day. We went over and talked to the English soldiers a while and then went to bed.

The company is out cleaning mine fields and we are moving over closer to Ferryville up on the Bizerte Lake. The land that we are bivouac on must have been a long battle field as it is carved with shell holes and equipment, I picked up a few souvenirs.

I’ll be a son-of-a-gun if the work up here didn’t end too soon and we didn’t get in on it. Some of the drivers were hauling prisoners back last night and they said that German and Italy were all finished. We moved up near Ferryville and Towalee and I went souvenir hunting. One thing you have to watch out for and that’s “booby traps”. I caught guard for an hour to night.

Chick with German Tank

Here we are laying around and waiting to go there has been all types of big guns rolling by all morning. Also the new 50 ton Churchill tank. There is plenty of excitement now, and many interesting sights to see. We passed a large airport. There have been truck load after truck load of prisoners going by, also ambulances loaded down with wounded. We saw many tanks, trucks, airplanes, and other equipment strung all along the way. There are a few graves here and there. We are camped just outside of Mateur. There are bomb craters around close here, big enough to hide a whole house in. We went across the road to see a German graveyard, and the soldier in it were all kinds of 17 to 23 years old. There was also a shack full of German 88 mm shells. I went back and went to bed early as I was tired.