IN MAY 1968, 75-YEAR-OLD BRUCE C. HOPPER LOOKED BACK ON HIS LIFE WITH SATISFACTION… AND A MEASURE OF DISBELIEF. “MY POWER TO SURVIVE CONTINUES TO ASTONISH ME,” HE REMARKED.
Hopper told a gathering of fellow Harvard University alumni that his “long record” of close calls had begun in World War I when, in his mid-20s, he served as a bomber pilot with the U.S. Army Air Service (USAS) in northeastern France. He said that in May 1918, for instance, he had somehow managed to survive the crash of his Sopwith Camel and was plucked from the wreckage by a doctor armed with a pair of pliers. He was briefly hospitalized but refused to be sent home and instead returned to the battlefield—“not from an eagerness for air combat but from a natural desire to stick with the gang.”
Over the next several months, Hopper flew 29 bombing missions as a flight leader of the Army’s 96th Aero Squadron “Red Devils” and was later awarded a Pershing Citation and a Croix de Guerre for his service.
Born on August 24, 1892, in Litchfield, Ill., Hopper spent his childhood in Billings, Mont., where his father was a rancher. In 1913 he enrolled at the University of Montana. But after two years, he and his friend and fellow sophomore Verne Robinson were bitten by a combination of “wanderlust and worthy purpose,” according to an article in the Great Falls Tribune. Soon the pair was making arrangements to join the American Red Cross in war-torn Europe.
Hopper put his plans on hold, however, when he was offered a scholarship to attend Harvard University. After less than two years at Harvard—with the United States having entered World War I in support
