Actors Who Had A Lot To Say About Their Time In Wars

It wasn't until the 20th century that the world became acquainted with, for better and for worse, respectively, the idea of people becoming extremely famous for their ability to pretend to be other people, and intercontinental global conflict. Two of the biggest technological developments of the 1900s, cinema and then television, coincided with the age of two monumentally brutal, globe-spanning wars, along with some other major international conflicts. Few spots on the planet, and few of the people who lived on it, weren't in some way touched by popular culture or at least one war fought over ideas that would change the course of humanity.

All kinds of people in the U.S. and Western Europe in particular fought in the war, even artists, actors, and performers. Whether it was because they were drafted into service or they enlisted in the cause, some of Hollywood's biggest and brightest stars contributed to various American military actions. Warfare on such a high level can deeply affect or change a person, and those actors certainly experienced that effect. A lot of messed-up things happened in World War II, many messed-up things happened in the Vietnam War, and they were around to see it. Here are some well-known actors who fought in wars, and what they had to say about their time on the battlefield.

Less than a decade before he'd star on the comic western "Maverick," James Garner was conscripted into military service. "I was the first Oklahoman drafted for the Korean War," the actor wrote in "The Garner Files." "I figured that if they needed me, they were in trouble: I'd already been in the National Guard. I tore up my knee during maneuvers, and they gave me a medical discharge." 

Doctors cleared Garner for service, and he deployed with the 5th Regimental Combat Team of the 24th Division, first stationed in Hawaii before being sent to combat operations in Korea. "They needed fodder to stuff up the gap, and we were the first replacements," he wrote. On only his second day in the war, while serving as a rifleman, Garner was at the back end of his patrol group when he felt a sudden impact. "I was hit with mortar shrapnel. Most of it glanced off my helmet, but a few fragments caught me in the hand and face and one cut my watchband," Garner said of the injury. 

Back in action within two weeks, the actor's unit was targeted by Chinese forces in the First Spring Offensive in April 1951. "We were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming fire as wave after wave of infantry slammed our position," Garner recalled. "Without thinking, I shouldered my rifle and started ripping away. I'm pretty sure I hit one of them because I saw the head snap and the helmet fly off."

Rob Riggle spent a year at "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-2000s, a stint that prepared him for a string of memorable supporting roles in some of the biggest comedies of this era. He recurred as Gil Thorpe on "Modern Family" and played humorously antagonistic figures in "Step Brothers," "The Hangover," "21 Jump Street," and "The Other Guys." Before all that, though, Riggle began a period of 23 years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps, which took him to conflicts in Liberia, Kosovo, Albania, and Afghanistan.

In 2001, Riggle was present for what would become the U.S. War in Afghanistan. Riggle had just ended his active duty days and joined a Marine reservist group in New York City. When terrorist-directed planes struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Riggle was called into active duty within minutes of the attacks. "I got a call from my commanding officer who said, 'Hey, listen, our unit has been activated,'" Riggle told the American Veterans Center. "It made sense because we were the only reserve unit in Manhattan." The next morning, he arrived at Ground Zero to help move away debris by hand. "At the time it was search and rescue, 'cause we still thought there could be hundreds, maybe thousands of people trapped in this rubble. There was six stories of rubble."

Among the most acclaimed television drama actors of all time, Dennis Franz is best known for his work on two Emmy-winning crime dramas, "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue." Drafted in 1968 upon his graduation from college, Franz ended up in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. "A very traumatic, life-changing experience" is how Franz described his Army days to Military.com. "I'm not as frivolous as I once was. I experienced death over there, and losing friends. I got as close to being shot as I care to. I could feel and hear bullets whizzing over my head, and that shakes you up quite a bit."

The situation grew so horrifying and dire that Franz briefly considered desertion. "I don't think it was a serious thought in my head. I don't think I would have been able to live with myself had I done something like that," he told "The Late Late Show With Tom Snyder" (via DOD News). "You just want to be out of the situation. And, involuntarily, your body just starts doing things that you don't have control over, just out of fear and nerves and, you know, you just wish you could be any other place in the world except where you are at that moment. And the only way to get out of it is to shoot back and make somebody stop and let me get out of it."

Paul Newman, years out from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "The Hustler," and "Cool Hand Luke," is among the handful of famous people who served during World War II. He wanted to be a U.S. Navy pilot and in 1943, he signed up for V-12 pilot training but was deemed ineligible after he was diagnosed with color blindness. Instead, Newman toiled elsewhere, working as a radio operator and a rear gunner on torpedo bomber ships. "I thought it would be a big adventure. I was really dumb," Newman told a press junket interviewer in 1998. "I never considered that it might be dangerous."

The most vicious violence that Newman saw came at his own hand in self-defense, after an antisemitic slur was hurled in the direction of the half-Jewish actor and collegiate wrestler. "A big brawl ensued," he wrote in "The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man" (via Newsweek). "I landed on his guy, he had his arm under his hip and tore everything out of his elbow. When he got off the floor he could only move one hand. No one ever bothered me again."

Basil Rathbone is most closely associated with the role of Sherlock Holmes, portraying the great detective in adaptations of both the best and worst Holmes stories. In the 1910s, he interrupted a career as a rising star of the Shakespearean stage in his native England to join his country's efforts in World War I, a decision he made under great duress. "I felt physically sick to my stomach, as I saw or heard or read of the avalanche of brave young men rushing to join," Rathbone wrote in "In and Out of Character" (via BasilRathbone.net). "Was I 'pigeon-livered' that I felt no such call to duty, that I was pondering how long I could delay joining up? The very idea of soldiering appalled me."

After finally following a brother into service in March 1916, Rathbone applied to be an officer, keeping him in training and off of the frontlines for months. A severe case of the measles and recuperation time further delayed his arrival in the trenches of France until May 1917. One notable incident amidst what Rathbone described as tedium and drudgery: When he and an American sergeant snuck behind enemy lines dressed as trees. "With branches sticking out of our heads and arms and things," Rathbone later told reporter Edward R. Murrow. "We used to go up, lay up in no man's land," and then move their way into the camp unseen. "We brought back an awful lot of information, and a few prisoners, too."

Before he used his blend of slapstick and satire to mock villainy in "Blazing Saddles," "The Producers," and "History of the World: Part 1," writer, director, and actor Mel Brooks took on Hitler and his Nazis in World War II. Drafted in 1944, Brooks was still in high school (and still named Melvin Kaminsky) when he passed a test to gain entry in the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program. 

After training, Brooks was sent to fight in France and Belgium in early 1945, working behind enemy lines as an artillery observer in an infantry division before being told to mark the terrain for Nazi explosives. "They gave me a bayonet and some string and they said 'throw for mines.' I said, 'Oh, you don't really want me to do that, do you. I'm liable to get blown up,'" Brooks recalled to "TV Time Machine." The future comedian was actually clearing a path for Allied troops participating in the very first actions in what would become the pivotal Battle of the Bulge.

Brooks faced potentially deadly moments no less than five times in what would be less than a year of combat. "They always say war is hell. War isn't hell. War is loud. Much too noisy. All those shells and bombs going off all around you. Never mind death, a man could lose his hearing," Brooks later said, according to James Robert Parish's "It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks."

Just after graduating from high school in Georgia in 2002, J.R. Martinez enlisted in the U.S. Army and he was sent with the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division to the Middle East in early 2003, just as the second Iraq War was getting underway. In April 2003, the 19-year-old endured a harrowing episode. "I was driving a Humvee through a city called Karbala when my front left tire went over a landmine. The other three guys were thrown out of the vehicle, walked away with different injuries, but I was actually trapped inside the truck. And from the actual explosion, it detonated everything we had inside the truck," he explained on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." "I was pinned inside the vehicle and I was completely conscious throughout the whole time." 

Martinez suffered from smoke inhalation and extremely serious burns over more than a third of his body that required 33 surgeries. "The first time I seen my face it was pretty hard. The doctors didn't want to let me do it yet, but I said I gotta get strong and I gotta learn how to deal with it," Martinez told "The CBS Evening News."

After his discharge, Martinez became a motivational speaker and an actor, portraying Brot Monroe on the daytime soap "All My Children" for three years and Alfonso Rivera on "AF3" for a season.

Upon admission to drama school in 1939, Israel Demsky legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas in order to shield himself in part from the rampant antisemitism he'd endured as a Jewish American. In 1941, aware of the anti-Jewish Nazi Germany ideology and inspired by his anger at the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Douglas joined the U.S. Navy. "I felt a wave of patriotism and a wave of Jewishness about what was happening in Europe. So I joined the navy," he told Playbill (via AP/Navy Times).

In 1943, as Douglas described in his autobiography "The Ragman's Son" (via Express), the future "Spartacus" star was serving as a communications officer on Patrol Craft 1139. "Using sonar, we would search for Japanese submarines. All day long on the bridge, you'd hear the echoing of the underwater sound waves: 'ping ping ping.' One day, the steady 'ping, ping, ping' changed to 'ping-ping, ping-ping.'" Douglas and his crew had found a sub and prepared for confrontation. A commander killed the engine and ordered the release of a depth charge marker. However, a sailor released artillery by accident. "Suddenly, there was a huge explosion. People went flying everywhere. There was confusion but it didn't take us long to realise that we hadn't been struck by an enemy ­torpedo – we had blown up our own ship."

After reaching safety in Mexico and on a 24-hour rest, Douglas grew extremely ill. After a transfer to the San Diego Naval Hospital, he was diagnosed with amoebic dysentery, and his fighting days were over.

The legendary, innovative, and perpetually dour silent film comedian Buster Keaton starred in his first short, "The Butcher Boy," in 1917. A year later, and having made a dozen silent shorts with Fatty Arbuckle (who was later implicated in the tragic death of Virginia Rappe), Keaton got his army draft notice. After training in California and New York, Keaton's division was shipped off to England and then to the trenches of France.

Corporal Keaton was stationed around France in November and December of 1918, where he faced bitterly cold temperatures, particularly at night. "During my seven months as a soldier in France, I slept every night but one on the ground or on the floor of mills, barns, and stables," he said, according to The Doughboy Center. "There is always a draft close to the floor of such farm buildings, and I soon developed a cold which imperiled my hearing. Before I was overseas a month, my superiors had to shout orders at me. I had become almost stone deaf due to my being exposed to floor drafts each night." 

While re-entering camp one evening, he was nearly shot by an armed guard because he kept approaching, having not heard the warnings given. "After bawling me out, the sentry listened to my explanation and got me past a second guard. From that day on, the fear of losing my hearing drove me half crazy permanently," Keaton recalled. He suffered permanent full loss of hearing in one ear.

Wes Studi played so many Native American characters in multiple revisionist westerns of the 1990s, including "Dances With Wolves," "The Last of the Mohicans," and "Geronimo: An American Legend," that he was awarded an honorary Academy Award. At age 17, Studi joined the Oklahoma National Guard. Three years later, he was called up to active service in the Army and trained at Fort Benning in Georgia. With only a year left on his six-year commitment and intrigued and excited by the tales of combat heard from veterans, Studi asked to be sent to fight in the Vietnam War.

Assigned to the 9th Division Alpha Company 3/39th Infantry, Studi was a rifleman. Within a few weeks of his arrival, the Viet Cong and its forces violently overtook Chinatown, a pivotal part of Saigon occupied by Chinese nationals. "Our company was there, we were the brunt of it," Studi told the Oklahoma Oral History Research Project. "The 9th Division's companies were the brunt of their assault on Chinatown." As fighting intensified, the Viet Cong used the Chinese residents as human shields. "I think the VC got in there and that's where they were shooting from. I mean that's why those were the areas that they were using the Chinese population as kind of a barrier," Studi recalled. "Unfortunately, the 9th Division's response was to destroy that part of town. I'm not totally sure, but I think the 9th Division was censured for that part of the war."