Bruce LaRose was born in Pennsylvania. He remembers the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. They were hungry. They ate onion sandwiches, sugar on bread, and ketchup on bread as meals. They wore shoes with holes in them. LaRose had three brothers. His father was a steelworker. In 1940, LaRose left school and joined the Army. He went to basic training in New York. He participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers [Annotator’s Note: The Louisiana Maneuvers were a series of major U.S. Army exercises held in 1941 in northern and west-central Louisiana, an area bounded by the Sabine River to the west, the Calcasieu River to the east, and by the city of Shreveport to the north. The area included Fort Polk, Camp Claiborne, and Camp Livingston]. From there they were sent to Massachusetts. While there he heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] on a Sunday morning. After that, they went into more intense training. He went overseas on 2 August 1942 [Annotator’s Note: serving in the 16th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division]. They left for England on the HMS Queen Mary. In November 1942, they were shipped to North Africa. They used Higgins boats [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP; also known as the Higgins boat] to make the landings. LaRose’s job was to go in with a five-soldier group. They had to go to the railroad tracks parallel to the coast. He had to stop anything coming in from the east. They had to help protect the city of Oran [Annotator’s Note: Oran, Algeria]. When they got to La Macta [Annotator’s Note: a small town near Oran] there were locals watching the place with shotguns. Their scout went over to talk to the men. The men pointed at the birds and when the scout looked up they put a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. LaRose and his men shot and killed them. LaRose shot at a train, and he shot at a man running across the field. After that, they went toward Oran. There was no major firefight. When they went back east they had to pitch their pup tents [Annotator’s Note: a small triangular tent, especially one with a pole at either end and room for one or two people]. LaRose remembers it was cold and miserable. They were guarding the airport. There were Arabs in there stealing gasoline. They killed the tribal son. On Christmas Eve, they could not find their bugler. A French general had been assassinated. It seemed like no one knew what was going on while they were there.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division in North Africa] took a 400-mile trip to Tunisia. He did not know where they were unless he saw a sign with a town name on it. LaRose was an acting corporal at the time. His commanding officer was named Glen Harkins [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling]. They had to move out over a hill. LaRose was carrying a bag of rockets over the hill. The men in front of him were sprayed with bullets. LaRose hit the ground trying to prevent the rockets from getting hit. The soldiers firing at them were Germans. LaRose helped carry the wounded back. Graves registration took care of the dead. When they returned, the platoon leader yelled at LaRose. Another soldier threatened the platoon leader because he was hiding behind a boulder when the fighting was happening. LaRose did not fire his gun. There was fighting in Kasserine [Annotator’s Note: The Battle of Kasserine Pass was a series of battles of the Tunisian campaign of World War II that took place in February 1943 at Kasserine Pass]. General Stauffenberg [Annotator’s Note: Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a German Army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair] was wounded in the battle there. After that, they headed for El Guettar [Annotator’s Note: El Guettar, Tunisia] and this is where Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] came in. They got into a battle near an oasis. They sent in 100 armored vehicles. Their tanks started moving forward toward the Germans. The Germans took out 26 tanks. Then there was an airstrike. The Americans took off their undershirts to get their attention. After that, they were issued green undershirts instead of white. Patton was despised. They took baths in the sulfur baths after the battle. They were loaded into trucks to go relieve the French garrison in Northern Tunisia. Before they could leave, they had to surrender all the gasoline. Patton took the gasoline for the tanks. LaRose remembers they had to hike 100 miles.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division in North Africa] had to hike 100 miles [Annotator’s Note: they were marching to Northern Tunisia]. They were faced with Hills 609 and 523. Hill 523 was attacked by the 1st Division. They were going to attack Hill 609 [Annotator’s Note: The Battle of Hill 609, 27 April to 1 May 1943; Djebel Tahent, Tunisia]. It was a tall hill. Hill 523 is where they lost a lot of men. They tried to do a bayonet charge up 609. They got presidential citations. They started up the hill shooting as they went up. LaRose was a runner. He had to go back and get a box of ammunition. They started back up the hill across the wheat field. One guy had a dagger from World War 1 [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] which had brass knuckles on it [Annotator’s Note: Mark I trench knife]. The guy hit a German soldier with it. The German soldier was dead as a doornail. Their battalion commander had been captured and was on a prisoner ship headed to Italy. The American bombers attacked the ship, and the Americans were able to take it over and sail back to Africa. Their battalion leader was waiting on the beach.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, veteran of the North Africa campaign, landing in Algeria and moving through Tunisia] landed in Sicily [Annotator’s Note: Sicily, Italy; Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, 9 July to 17 August 1943] during a bad storm. The ships were jumping. After the African campaigns, they were sent back into training. He had to help load the ships in Algiers [Annotator’s Note: Algiers, the capitla city of Algeria] for the invasion. LaRose was a rifleman all through the war. He went aboard with a cannon company and was made a demolition man. He had to fire and load the cannons. It was a short cannon with no bullet shield or fragment shield. It was an M3 [Annotator’s Note: The 105 mm Howitzer M3 was a U.S. light howitzer designed for use by airborne troops]. When the campaign ended, LaRose was still in the cannon company. He was put on a ship and sent back to Algiers and then to England to get ready for Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They hit the beach at Omaha. They left out of Scotland and went down the west coast of France. They anchored 11 miles out from the beach. At 3:30 in the morning they were loaded onto Ducks [Annotator's Note: DUKW; six-wheel-drive amphibious truck; also known as a Duck]. LaRose was still in the cannon company. There were six guns in each Duck. The waves were six feet high. LaRose was part of the first wave. The Duck sank and LaRose pulled all his equipment off as he stepped into the ocean. He was on boat number two. Another boat came by and pulled him out of the water. Then that boat was hit and sunk. The next Duck loaded down with ammunition did not sink. LaRose ended up on a flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] ship, then he was put on a PT boat [Annotator’s Note: A PT boat was a motor torpedo boat used by the United States Navy in World War II]. They could not go to shore in the PT boat, so they put him on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. Then they made it to the beach. A new German division had been brought into the Normandy beaches and they had new ammunition and shot the hell out of them.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division in Normandy after serving in North Africa and Sicily] left the mothership at 3:30 in the morning [Annotator’s Note: for the landing at Normandy; D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. A lot of the men were killed in the water as the boats were heading to the beach. It was late as they made it to the crest. A P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] had landed in the high country and it looked okay other than the canopy being opened. Eventually, LaRose and his men ended up in the hedgerows [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation]. He was still a cannoneer. They lost five of the six cannons in the water. They had to fight as a rifle company with the 1st Battalion. Before the hedgerows, they had to clear the coastal villages. The hedgerows were great protection for them and the Germans. The tanks had a hard time there. Once they were past the beach, there were fields and a road. Men were getting killed until a couple of pieces of equipment made it to shore. LaRose saw a bulldozer blown up from hitting a mine. The S-mine [Annotator’s Note: also known as the "Bouncing Betty", a type of mine that when triggered is launched into the air] is about the size of an automobile oil filter.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division in Normandy after serving in North Africa and Sicily] was still in a cannon company when they fought in the hedgerows [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation]. They had to dig through them and crawl around them to get through. LaRose was sent to protect the bivouac area [Annotator's Note: a bivouac is a temporary campsite]. They went into a house to liberate the wine. There was food and wine in the cellar. One of his friends was a BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] man and LaRose put his finger on the trigger and 20 rounds went straight up into the air. LaRose was reassigned to Company E [Annotator’s Note: from Company C]. He fought the rest of the war in E Company. They went across France together. The hedgerows were formidable for whoever used them. They were barriers of stone. The cannon company was behind the infantry shooting over their heads. When they got to the Aachen area [Annotator’s Note: Aachen, Germany] they knew they were in Germany. The Germans used briquettes in their stoves. Then they went through the Dragon’s Teeth [Annotator’s Note: Dragon's teeth (German: Drachenzähne), square-pyramidal fortifications of reinforced concrete first used during the Second World War to impede the movement of tanks and mechanized infantry]. There was a hedge with barbed wire inside it. LaRose crawled through the barbed wire and he got stuck halfway through. A cow saw him and mooed at him. He did not get shot at. The pillbox [Annotator’s Note: A pillbox is a type of blockhouse, or concrete dug-in guard-post, normally equipped with loopholes through which defenders can fire weapons. It is in effect a trench firing step, hardened to protect against small-arms fire and grenades, and raised to improve the field of fire] in front of him was empty. Once they got to the top of the hill they could see for miles. They could see the whole city of Aachen. The Germans started to come up the knob after they knew the Americans were there.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry division, veteran of North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy] remembers their lieutenant was a great officer. He did everything they suggested to do. LaRose got a letter after the war to confirm a couple of officers’ deaths in North Africa. LaRose also had to get a report of Germans who died during a battle for the knob [Annotator’s Note: they were fighting near Aachen, Germany]. The grenades showed up by the truckload. They went through boxes of grenades to throw at the Germans. There were about 300 dead Germans on the hill. One of LaRose’s sons was murdered in Detroit. After they fought on the knob they got mauled. Then they went to a rest camp, and on to Belgium and took the town without any fighting. They took over a farm owned by a woman. She had a cellar where she stored all the food. They did not touch her food. A German crept up on them while they were. LaRose shot him through a hole in the roof. The German was crawling through deep snow. LaRose returned to Belgium several times after the war.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, veteran of North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy] remembers Hurtgen Forest [Annotator’s Note: The Battle of Hürtgen Forest was a series of fierce battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between American and German forces on the Western Front during World War II]. This was the worst of all the battles. The men were deeply entrenched. They did not have clothing or food. They ate what they could scrounge up. They were hit by mortar fire. LaRose was close to a German heavy machine gun. He put a bazooka [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher weapon] on them and killed all three Germans. He got a Silver Star [Annotator's Note: the Silver Star Medal is the third-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] for this action. His squadron leader was killed by mortar fire to the head. When they first got into the Hurtgen they were marching in a line with skirmish fire. When they came to the end of the fighting the Germans acted like they were going to surrender, but they were killed. LaRose fell asleep walking across the open field after the battle. They knew not to leave the Germans alive because they would kill the Americans. LaRose got a couple of Bronze Stars [Annotator's Note: the Bronze Star Medal is the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy], which he thinks are more of a pat on the back because he does not know why he received them.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division] would go out to do patrols with one other guy. They were scared to death to go out, but they had a job to do [Annotator’s Note: he is referring to The Battle of Hürtgen Forest, a series of fierce battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between American and German forces on the Western Front]. He does not remember too many of the other men because they were all too new. LaRose was in a hospital in Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] for seven months. He does not know what happened. He was then sent to a field hospital, and subsequently on to England. On VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] he was on a hospital ship and sent to New York to another hospital. He was given a uniform and sent to Virginia. He was released in July. After that, he still worked for the War Department. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter-Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was not as bad as Hurtgen. LaRose remembers everyone was fighting everywhere and they were being mauled. They were not doing good until replacements were being sent in. He does not think they were trained enough for the Battle of the Bulge.

Bruce LaRose [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, veteran of North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy] fought his final battle with two other members of his squad [Annotator’s Note: he is referring to the Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter-Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. LaRose remembers an explosion and seeing body parts. They went in with 12 men and almost all of them were killed or wounded. LaRose was a scout at times. It was not a fun job. They were fighting in the snow. He only saw one tank. He saw the turret swing around. LaRose got to talk to a family member of one of the men and told them the man was killed by cannon fire. The tanks were up ahead of them. The Germans knew the American bazooka [Annotator's Note: man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher weapon] would take out their tanks. He remembers going to a hospital in Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] and all he had on was a gas mask. He was very skinny. The doctor told him he was going home. He did not have any open wounds. Then he was in a medical tent waiting to be put on a ship. He remembers seeing a lot of stretchers getting off the ship and guys with missing limbs. They could make free telephone calls. He went to a hospital in New York and was then sent to Virginia. He received his medals and other decorations. He received a Silver Star medal [Annotator's Note: the Silver Star Medal is the third-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy].

Bruce LaRose thinks the military did an amazing job during World War 2. LaRose had great penmanship when he was younger. He thinks the war changed the world for the better. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] was nutty. He thinks the United States helped the world and is still helping the rest of the world. He does not think another country would start a war with the United States. He does not think the war caused anything negative. He thinks museums are a good idea to show how people endured the war. The bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] at Nagasaki were big bombs.