Billed as “Charles Buchinsky,” he struggled to find work. After a few years of wandering, he decided to use the G.I. In February 1946, Charles was honorably discharged from Camp Atterbury, Indiana. His time in the cramped gun turrets (and his prior gig in the coal mines) led to periodic bouts with claustrophobia that lasted for the rest of his life. I got six months hard labor, carrying sides of beef into the mess hall and cans of garbage out of it.”Īfter the mess hall assignment, Charles served as a tail gunner on a B-29 bomber in the South Pacific. At one point he took a bullet in the shoulder, which added another scar to his already-creviced torso. For some screwy reason, I thought if I didn’t hit him, I wouldn’t get in trouble. So I picked the bastard up and threw him. I back all the way down the dance floor, until I’m against the wall and I can’t back any further. Fight a sergeant when I’m a private? I didn’t need that and I knew it. I told him I hadn’t propositioned her, and I wasn’t interested in her that way or any other way. Apparently, she’d gone over and told him I’d been after her. Little later, the sergeant comes over to me and wants to know why I’ve been propositioning his wife. This sergeant’s wife wanted to dance with me. “I remember back during World War II, when I was in gunnery school at Kingman, Arizona, the squadron had a party. Who knows where I’d be today if I hadn’t gone into the Army? I met my share of sonofabitches in the service. But I was eating and sleeping well, and I thought: ‘Jeez! This is great!’ For me, being drafted was like having a fairy godfather change me into a prince. I never had it so good as when I entered the Army. “You have to even ask people how to tie your tie. “You come out of a coal-mine town and you’re frightened,” Bronson recalled. Several superiors called him a “Polack” and also ridiculed him because of his limited vocabulary and broken-English style of speech.Ībove - Bronson in The Great Escape. The young man’s time in the coal mines built up his later-to-be-famous physique, but the grueling work also left him with permanent scars on his back.Ĭharles was drafted into the Army in early 1943 and was assigned as a truck driver for the 760th Mess Squadron in Kingsman, Arizona. It really was delicious.”Īt 16, he went into the family business. Then I’d chop off its head, gut the chicken, pack it in mud and cook it slowly over a fire. Every once in a while, I’d spot a chicken that had gotten loose from its owner’s coop. “When I was a kid, I used to take long walks in the woods while other boys were playing baseball or football. “There’s nothing that gives a more inferior feeling than digging a hole in the ground. “There’s nobody who had less regard for himself than I did in my youth,” Bronson said. 3, 1921, into a family of dirt-poor coal miners. The late international screen icon Charles Bronson once said, “I might never have found the outside world if I hadn’t been drafted into the Army.”Ĭharles Dennis Bunchinsky was born in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, on Nov.
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