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These Stars Traded Hollywood Glamor for Wartime Glory

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2022 37 min

9. Before Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks Was a WWII Combat Engineer

Mel Brooks was sent to Europe in 1944, and there, the qualifications that got him into ASTP marked him out as a soldier of high intelligence. So his first assignment was as a forward artillery observer – a job that requires an ability to think quickly and on the fly. He was then assigned to a combat engineer unit, the 1104^th Engineer Combat Battalion (ECB), attached to the 78^th Infantry Division. Combat engineers often went out ahead of the main assaults, to clear out obstacles for follow on troops.

Brooks’ unit used demolitions to blast a path clear for the main forces, repaired bridges destroyed by the Germans in a bid to slow the Allied advance, and built bridges from scratch. They also helped lay out and construct field fortifications, and otherwise offered whatever support they could. The combat engineers often did their work under the enemy’s noses, while artillery shells rained down on them, and German snipers did their best to pick them off. The 1104^th ECB became the first unit to throw a bridge across the Roer River, and later on, it built bridges across the Rhine. Brooks’ tasks included minefield clearance and defusing land mines.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.