WWII Diary of Chick Bruns – 70 Years Ago

Here we have been here about a week now and I have forgot to mention that we are bivouac in a cork Forrest. It takes so many years for it to be time to cut the cork loose again. They are shipping it back to the states. I wrote a letter home but it came back as most of it was censored. You just can’t say a thing in your letter. It makes it awful hard to write them too. Not much is happening today. We straightened out the gas proof clothes and found out that most of them were wet from being dumped in the sea when we landed. Now we have a good job of drying them out. e played foot ball till dark and then played cribbage till the lights went on the blink. We then hit the hay and I do mean hay as we sleep on straw ticks to keep us off the wound. A lot of the fellows are getting sick from the damp ground. We have it lucky as we sleep in the supply room large tent. Its better than a pup tent but suppose it will leak when it rains as it is an I.C. tent.

Well I went to town today and I had a sell time. Its a nice town but not quite as big as Casablanca. Its a much prettier town though. I had some stuff to drink but I don’t know what it was. It was good but boy did it knock you back on your heels. They had just started a US service club and it was sure swell. We get to go to town about once a month. Sot it was quite a treat. I bought a few things and then came home and went to bed.

Not much happened today. It was just about the same as yesterday. They have all of the brush cleaned away around camp now and it looks pretty nice. There is a rumor going around that we are to stay here until the first of the year. We played a little cribbage and then went to bed. The nights are getting very cold here now but the days are swell. It is getting near the rainy season so I don’t know what to expect. Badali (Vincent Badali) went to town today so I guess I’ll go tomorrow. They had a presentation of awards today. Four of the men in our company received the Order of the purple heart for being wounded in action. We only had one killed and one is still missing. We also had two fellows that were shot up pretty bad and they were sent back to the states.

One year ago today the war started. Let’s hope that in another year the war will be all over. We have been busy around the camp getting things all fixed up. I would sure like to know how long we will be here before we move on. We are getting closer to the battle game and it is also getting a little colder.

It rained part of the night last night and the fellow I slept with went to town and got plastered. When he came home he fell over the tent and pulled some of the pins out. He fixed them once and then fell over it again so we just let it go. So this morning all of our clothes were wet. We have to parade four miles so it’s going to be tough. Well here we are out to our bivouac area and I feel good, My feet hurt a little, but out side of that I came though this last 15 miles in good shape. None of the men fell out so every one though we were pretty good men. I think we felt better than they did as about 15 or 20 of the straight duty men fell out and they should be used to hiking. So you can imagine it was pretty tough. This is not a very good place here but it’s not bad. We are ten miles on the other side of Rabat.

We only have a short kike of 8 miles today and will start at 9:30am. Here we are and it is in a race track where we are camped. We arrived here before chow and will spend the rest of the afternoon bucking up our equipment for the parade tomorrow. I feel pretty good but my feet hurt. There are four of us that made the hike from headquarters platoon and none of his had fell out yet. I played fast ball for a while, then washed my feet and went to bed.

Well we only have 15 miles to do today but boy my feet are killing me. Last night I was so tired that I had a rock as big as my two fists right in the middle of my back so I just moved it and then I didn’t even notice the small ones. We will start at 8:00am today. Here it is in the evening again and boy do my muscles ache. After we fell out for chow at noon and then started up again. I thought I was never going to get started. It would take me a mile to get my legs warmed up so I could walk. We camped out side of an old Casba that was over 400 years old. It was taken over by the French soldiers and was used as a cavalry stables. We went over and looked around and saw all of the horses and other interesting things. They had a big temple tower that had a winding stair case to the top of it. It had no stair step but a hard dirt path was used to get to the top and it was very narrow. There was also a Arab temple or Masque in there but we a same as the French, we are forbidden to go near them. Guess I will turn in.

Today is the start of the hike to Rabat. We will leave camp at 9:00am. We have our tents taken down and are just waiting for the time to start. It is now 6:30 PM and I am dead tired. We walked 18 miles the first day and that was the first time I had been on a hike since last June. The last four miles I walked pigeon toed on the side of my feet and every other way except the way I should. I was going to give up for a while but I knew the fellow on line duty would laugh so I could not let headquarters platoon down. I just gritted my teeth and kept on . I read a story, washed my feet and then went to bed.