By William Emes
Special to the Herald

Joe Bruggman is a very special sort of soldier. He isn’t the sort of man the Army can train to become the soldier an army usually wants. He is the sort of soldier every army needs but cannot train.
General Douglas McArthur was often accused of being pompous. He once said, “I have seen war as few men have seen it.” That of course isn’t true. Many soldiers fought on the front lines, many died, and many more were alongside those who died.. At times, many hoped that McArthur would have been one of them. I gather that Joe might have been among those. However, in truth, fewer men knew war as a commander who had ordered men into battle knowing that they were to die. Yet, everyman knew war in his own way. Joe’s brother and 27 other sailors were killed in a Kamikaze attack on the USS Dakota.
This is Joe’s story:
In the ’30s, the Great Depression had devastated the economy across the world. In the Central Valley, Joe’s family lost the farm to the bank. Although Joe knew that “War was coming,” he joined the Army Air Corp in 1940. He graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1941 and in 1942 his squadron was deployed to North Africa.
Joe didn’t fly in combat, or so he says. It took me awhile to get him to tell me his rank. I don’t believe that he never went on a mission. He was an intelligence officer whose duty it was to interview the pilots so that they could perfect particular bombings techniques.
Wikipedia tells us that the British developed a bombing technique called “skip bombing”. Wikipedia says that it was difficult to learn. Don’t believe everything on the internet. When Joe saw the B 26’s leave their airstrip, he knew that the young pilots could actually bomb their own plane if the pilot, navigator and bombardier miscalculated
and the ordinance skipped off the ocean surface and returned up to strike the bomber. Even though it was impossible to know the exact conditions above the ocean’s surface, it was hoped that the bomb would skip along the water and strike the ship just above the armor plate.
Some of the pilots had less time in the cockpit than many of today’s high school students have behind the wheel before they receive their driver’s license. Fourteen thousand airmen died training within the continental United States before they saw any combat. One afternoon, one of his squadron’s bombers returned. The front landing gear was damaged and couldn’t be lowered. It had never been demonstrated that the B-26 could land on only on the two rear wheels. The pilot circled the field, emptied the fuel tanks, and ordered the crew to bail out. They knew that the plane couldn’t land if it wasn’t properly ballasted. They knew that the pilot couldn’t safely jump if he was the last man out. No one jumped. The navigator positioned the crew for a landing. With Joe and the ground crew standing by, the pilot landed the plane safely. The crew was able to write home to their mothers that they had a good pilot and that they had to fly one less mission before they could come home. Joe recommended the pilot for a medal. All of them knew that
every fortunate airman had a story that he would rather not tell.
I have come to know Joe as being very wise. He understands that we we are far worse than foolish in believing that our weapons have any worth. He sees things as they are, yet has never been defeated by anger or bitterness. He sometimes punctuates his comments about war by remarking with disgust that General Robert E. Lee somehow felt it was reasonable to apologize for the slaughter that he caused at Gettysburg. He is dismayed that we can’t acknowledge that we are currently at war. He is greatly frustrated that that “We are still throwing rocks at each other.”
Unlike most of us, Joe knows full well that the best armament isn’t the rifles shoulders shouldered by our soldiers. Joe served as a deacon in the Presbyterian Church. The most important part of his military career wasn’t when he when he was commissioned as an officer, nor when he went on bombing runs with his squadron, but rather when the Supreme Allied Commander (Ret.) Dwight Eisenhower awarded him his doctorate in music at Columbia University.
Although Joe is getting old, he remains a great and humble spirit. He knows that getting old is tough, but he
Also knows it is even tougher to live in the world we have created and to still have the courage to hold out for a better one.
Having met Joe, it seems possible to believe that each of us might be able to become the sort of soldier he is and that we might yet build a build a better world.

William Emes is a Benicia resident

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