WWII Veteran Rev. Art Brown '50 Shares His Extraordinary Story
Speaking to the classes of 1950, 1955, and 1960 at Wheaton’s Alumni Weekend Heritage Dinner in May 2025, Rev. Art Brown ’50 shared an extraordinary story about his experiences serving in Italy and France during World War II, including his "foxhole dream" of one day being able to study at Wheaton College. Introduced by Math Professor Emeritus Dr. Bob Brabanec ’60, Rev.
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Audio Transcript
Bob Brabenec:
At a Blanchard Society meeting I sat at the same table with him and realized through the talk that he is over 100 years old now and he fought in the Second World War before he came to Wheaton as a student.
And though he's 15 years older than I am, he's 15 years younger than I am according to his schedule that he keeps. And so Art is a remarkable person. And I'll let you share with us a few-
Art Brown:
Thank you, Bob.
Bob Brabenec:
10 minutes is the max. I'm going to pull you away.
Art Brown:
When I came to Wheaton, I was 22 years old and I discovered I was almost the oldest of all the freshmen that year that came to Wheaton. And there was a reason for that. And as Bob said, uncle Sam drafted me when I was 19 and they sent me off for not basic training, but combat training.
Was in Camp Landing. It only trained soldiers to become killing machines. And for four months I was trained to be a killing machine. And then I was sent across the ocean to Italy and assigned to the 36th Infantry Division, and I became a combat soldier in one day. And for the next four months, I lived in what I referred to a number of times as hell on earth.
And that's what it was. Fighting day after day in towns, door-to-door sometimes, in the mountains, in the woods and so on, surrounded by death, especially at Anzio Beachhead, which was just a killer for Americans. And I discovered how you could be reduced to primitive lifestyle.
I was four months in combat straight. I don't think I had a shower in four months. And we had diarrhea and I had malaria several times. That never got you off the front lines. I lived in foxholes. I never saw a bed for four months.
We were on rations, C-rations. I never had a hot meal in four months. We lived in the most primitive style and I learned what hell on earth could be like. And it really was.
And then we were trained for amphibious training, and I was in the first wave of the invasion of Southern France, 10 weeks after D, I mean the D-Day in Normandy. I was in the first wave, dumped out into the water. Approached a beach with pounds of TNT on my back to sneak up and blow up a pillbox on a beach.
And four months of combat and two more battle campaigns, I learned through that that if I didn't have something to support me emotionally, spiritually, I was dead. I lost most of my buddies. I found their bodies, some of them ripped up by shrapnel or shot by snipers. And I concluded that I had three things that kept me going.
Number one was mail from home. That was really important. The second thing was I carried a New Testament and I was memorizing the book of Romans through that year. And that just kept me buoyed emotionally and actually made me kind of fearless through it all. Maybe that's one reason I survived World War II.
The third thing was Congress passed a bill. It was called the G.I. Bill. And when I heard of that, I said, "Wonderful." They would pay my tuition and my board and room to go to college. And I immediately began to have what I called my foxhole dream.
You know what I dreamt about? Going to Wheaton College when I got out of the military, if I survived. And I lived with that growing dream while I was surrounded by hell on earth, I was thinking about heaven at Wheaton College.
I was finally taken off to an evacuation hospital up near the German border and for one week I fought for my life. Told by the doctor I wouldn't last a week. I had everything wrong with me. And I started three months in four hospitals, one after another, and finally discharged with unlimited service. I would never see combat anymore.
I returned home to America and I applied to Wheaton College. And there I stood as a freshman, my first day here, and I thought, "I've come to heaven." And by contrast, it certainly was a preview of heaven. Four years of living all that I had dreamed about Wheaton came to pass.
Profs and peers and chapel services. Oh, I was in heaven for four years. And then to have organize a gospel team to class of 50 years, Bud Schaefer and Bill Wyrm, we went out every weekend for a couple of years and then we came to graduation day.
There was one other thing that was a grand serendipity for me, the Wheaton Revival. It had such a huge influence on the lives of us who were seniors and certainly on mine. And then we graduated. And as I walked down the aisle and got my diploma, I realized my dream had only begun. Had only begun.
And so for all the 80-some years since that day, I've been living my foxhole dream. This morning I talked to the Lord when I got up. I live in a nice spacious townhouse. I get up and the Lord, my awesome God, my magnanimous, gracious God is also my best friend.
And I get up and I talk to him aloud and I begin the day with saying, and I personalize all scripture, make it mine. "This is the day that you, Lord, have made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Thank you for the fabulous gift of this day. What a wonderful gift." T.
Then I quote Isaiah 61:10. "I greatly delight in you, oh Lord. My soul rejoices in you my God, right Lord? For you have dressed me in garments of salvation and arrayed me in a royal robe of righteousness."
And then I sing at chorus. "I love you Lord." And sometimes I say, "Oh yes, I love you Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you." Two things make up worship I discovered. Praise to God for who He is and all He means to us and thanks for all that He has done for us.
And the sounds are very clear. Those are the only two things that make up worship. Not what we give, not what we do, service, who we are deep inside of ourselves, that is worship. And worship is, of course, the expression of love. How much do I love God? How much do I praise Him every day? How much, many times do I use that word thank you every day?
So, I talk to the Lord and I have my breakfast and I sing like Isaiah 51:3 says, "I want my house to be a place of thanksgiving with the sound of singing. Make your home that way." I've made my home that way. There's a sound of singing in thanksgiving and talking aloud to the Lord every day.
And in all the prayer time, I finally come to my request and one of those requests is, "Lord, thank you for Wheaton College. And I pray today that the administration, the staff, all the faculty, all the students and all the alumni," because I've met them working in countries around the world.
"All the alumni, will you do this for them today by your spirit stir up a firing passion in every single one of us so that we might fulfill the model of Wheaton College: For Christ and His Kingdom." I love you all. Even though I don't know many, I still love you. God bless you.