9 People You May Not Know Were WWII Veterans

Jimmy Stewart was a bona fide movie star before World War II, having starred in such big-screen hits as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Philadelphia Story, for which he won an Academy Award. In early 1941, Stewart became one of the first Hollywood stars to enter the armed forces when he traded his tailored suits for a bomber jacket and joined the Army Air Corps.

He had to pack a few pounds onto his lanky frame to meet the Army’s minimum weight requirement, but Stewart eventually became a squadron commander in the 445th Bombardment Group in England. He flew 20 combat missions as a B-24 pilot and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and several other honors for leading bombing raids over Germany and France.

All the while, the everyman actor continued to send his Hollywood agent 10 percent of his meager military salary. Stewart ended the war as a colonel, and remained in the Air Force Reserve even after jumping back in front of the camera. He was later promoted to brigadier general in 1959.

Some 35 years before he counseled Luke Skywalker to “use the Force” as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness was piloting infantry landing craft in the Mediterranean. A trained thespian, Guinness put his theater career on hold in 1939 to serve in the Royal Navy. He landed some 200 British soldiers on the beaches of Sicily during the July 1943 invasion of the island, and went on to ferry arms to partisan fighters in Yugoslavia.

During one such voyage in 1944, Guinness’s boat was caught in a violent storm off the coast of Italy, and he narrowly managed to steer the vessel into a harbor before it was driven onto rocks and damaged beyond repair. Guinness would later drawn on his wartime experience when portraying military officers in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai and Tunes of Glory. He even played Adolf Hitler in Hitler: The Last Ten Days.

Mel Brooks is best known as the writer-director behind such classic comedies as Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs. But before he was writing killer one-liners, he was defusing German mines. Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, Brooks joined the Army in 1944 at age 17. He later served in the 1104th Engineer Combat Battalion, a unit that braved sniper fire and shelling to build bridges, clear blocked roads and remove landmines ahead of advancing Allied forces.

Ever the comedian, Brooks once used a bullhorn to serenade nearby enemy troops along the French-German border with the Al Jolson song “Toot, Toot, Tootsie”—and reportedly received a round of applause in return. He would go on to lampoon the Third Reich in The Producers, which includes the famous song “Springtime for Hitler.”

Before he became a countercultural icon with his no-holds-barred stand-up comedy, Lenny Bruce served as a turret gunner aboard a Navy vessel in the Mediterranean. Born in Mineola, New York, Bruce dropped out of high school at age 16 and enlisted shortly after the United States entered World War II. He spent the next several years working as a shell passer aboard the USS Brooklyn, a light cruiser that provided naval gunfire support during Allied operations in North Africa and the invasions of Sicily and Anzio, Italy.

Bruce served without major disciplinary problems for most of the war, but by 1945 he had grown tired of life at sea. He eventually obtained a discharge after claiming to experience homosexual feelings toward fellow sailors. Bruce began performing stand-up comedy shortly after returning to the United States and later won widespread acclaim—and faced repeated arrests on obscenity charges—for his satirical and profanity-laced stage performances.

Before his assassination in 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers built a career as the NAACP’s first field secretary in Mississippi, working to desegregate the state’s colleges and universities. But the fight for racial equality was not the first time he put his life on the line for a cause. Evers left high school to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1943 and served in Europe with the 325th Port Company, a segregated unit of Black soldiers who helped deliver critical supplies to Allied forces following the Normandy invasion.

Although racial segregation restricted opportunities for Black soldiers to serve in combat roles, Evers reportedly served with the “Red Ball Express,” a famous trucking operation that transported fuel and other supplies to advancing Allied forces, including those under General George S. Patton, as they pushed across France.

Renowned for his slugging prowess and such head-scratching quips as, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” and, “It’s déjà vu all over again,” New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra played in 14 World Series and enjoyed a successful career as a big league manager. The man who inspired the name of a famous picnic-stealing cartoon bear was also a veteran of the D-Day invasion. On June 6, 1944, as Allied troops stormed the beaches at Normandy, Berra and his fellow sailors manned a small Navy support craft that lobbed rockets at German defenses on Omaha Beach.

The future All-Star was later grazed by a German bullet Allied invasion of southern France, but reportedly turned down the Purple Heart because he didn’t want to alarm his mother back in the United States. Berra’s professional baseball career was just getting started when the war broke out, but he wasn’t the only major leaguer to serve. Other World War II veterans included Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Jackie Robinson.

Long before he donned his famous face paint and toured the world as “Bip the Clown,” beloved mime Marcel Marceau was serving as a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Along with his brother Alain, Marceau forged documents and doctored identity cards to help prevent French children from being conscripted into German labor camps.

He also smuggled some 70 Jewish children out of the country by posing as a Boy Scout leader and leading them through the wilderness to safety in neutral Switzerland. The silent performer later joined the Free French Forces under Charles De Gaulle, and served as a liaison offer to General George Patton’s army while entertaining Allied troops with his miming.

The crooner behind hits like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “Rags to Riches” was also a battle-tested World War II vet. Bennett was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944 and served during the final months of the war with the 63rd Infantry Division in France and Germany. Bennett’s unit took part in operations following the Battle of the Bulge, and he participated in intense urban combat while fighting German forces in bombed-out towns.

The singer also witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand when he helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp near Landsberg, Germany. Bennett would later write that his Army service transformed him into a lifelong pacifist, but it also gave him an opportunity to perform with a military band, helping launch his music career.

An American by birth, sultry stage performer Josephine Baker first won fame in 1920s Paris for her risqué dance routines—including one in which she wore a revealing dress made entirely of bananas. Baker became a French citizen in 1937, and went on to serve her adopted country during World War II as an agent in the French Resistance.

Her good looks and jet setting lifestyle served as a perfect cover, allowing her to shuttle military intelligence and secret messages in and out of the country by hiding them with her sheet music or tucking them away in her underwear. Baker also sheltered refugees in her home, and spent time entertaining troops in North Africa and the Middle East. The unlikely spy later received the French Croix de guerre for her high-risk work with the Resistance.