Dick Van Dyke and Mel Brooks, two of Hollywood’s last entertainers to have served in World War II, have both now turned 100, Van Dyke on December 13, 2025, and Brooks on June 28, 2026.
Van Dyke left Danville High School in Illinois in March 1944, during his senior year, to join the United States Army Air Forces, and never received his diploma at the time. He was repeatedly turned away for being underweight. A friend, Bob Hackman, drove him to the base in Rantoul three times before he finally made the cut, after, as Hackman recalled, they “filled him full of bananas and milkshakes, and Uncle Sam finally said yes.” Van Dyke never saw combat. Rather than train as a tail gunner, he auditioned for the base radio program and ended up in Special Services, later hosting a show called Flight Time.
Brooks, drafted at 17, was assigned to the 1104th Engineer Combat Battalion in Europe, where his work included detecting buried Teller mines by probing the ground with a bayonet. “You would have to probe the earth lightly with your bayonet, and if you heard, ‘Tink! Tink! Tink!’ you knew there was something dangerous underneath,” he explained. “You had to be careful.” His unit, attached to the Seventh Army, also built bridges, cleared roads and disabled booby traps in newly captured territory.
The two men’s paths later crossed through their mutual friend Carl Reiner, who also served in the Army Air Forces during the war, and through Norman Lear’s long-running monthly lunches. Ahead of Van Dyke’s 100th birthday in December 2025, Brooks said, “I love Dick Van Dyke because he was so good-natured, so sweet, original.”
