Exclusive Portrait Series: Ken Burns' The War

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Doroteo Cruz, 86
U.S. Army

They say all’s fair in love and war, but Doroteo Cruz had no idea that walking down the aisle in 1942 would lead to the front lines. Cruz was a restaurant dishwasher and a chef in Galveston, Texas. Every day, he would bring food home to his sisters and brothers. He provided for his family, which meant he could not be drafted. When he married his girlfriend, Hope, his classification changed to 1A, a prime candidate for military service.
    “I had no idea that would happen,” Cruz says. “I was in love. And the next month I was gone.”
    As an operational driver for the 2nd Armored Division — a.k.a. “Hell on Wheels” — Cruz, the only Hispanic in the division, manned 42-ton tanks, trains, trucks and jeeps with 50-caliber machine guns. In north Africa, he worked as an interpreter, explaining to the Spanish-speaking landowners why troops had been trespassing on private property. The division landed in Sicily and then Normandy and raced across France and Germany. Many times, Cruz, a sergeant, could only watch as some of his tank commanders were fatally shot in the head by snipers.
    “All these years I put it in the back of my mind,” he says. “We believed in our government and we praised our government. But the service will forget you once you’re out. I don’t remember being in a parade or anything. Soldiers are forgotten.”
    After his tour, he received a social science degree from Sacramento State and worked at McClellan Air Force Base as a truck driver until he retired in 1980. He lives in east Sacramento with his wife to whom he has been married for 65 years. Every morning he brings her breakfast in bed.

Earl Burke, 84
U.S. Air Force

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