Alexander G. Bruce was born April 27, 1923. He was born in Newfoundland. He was 20 years old when he joined the army. He joined the a branch of the military that dealt with with explosives and chemical, biological, and radioactive materials. He was also apart of the Army Corps of Engineers. Trained in Fort Blanding, Florida. In Florida, he did basic training and later was sent to Fort McCarthy, California.

Bruce was stationed in the Philippines in 1945 to supervise reconstruction of the war torn nation. Later he was was stationed in Germany, specifically Heidelberg where the Army Combat Headquarters was. Heidelberg was not bombed during World War II, hence why it was the headquarters for the Army. He was one of the supervisors for the rebuilding of Berlin. Berlin was demolished with nothing but debris everywhere. Bruce describes the Berlin with “sixty to seventy foot high mountains of debris.” He stated he has never seen so much death and destruction. By this point after the war, he was the rank of Sergeant First Class (E7).

When the Korean war broke out, Bruce was still in the military. In Korea, he was apart of a unit that built bridges and blew off the sides of mountains for missile placements to be shot over the mountain at the North Koreans and Chinese. He was stationed with Katusas, an unit of the U.S. military that was were made up of South Korean Soldiers. They trained, lived together and fought side by side against the Communist North Korea.

Bruce was a career soldier and eventually retired from the military. He served 20 years for his country and did a lot of work in the rebuilding portion after the war.