Claude Bruce was born in 1908 into a large family in Elmo, Kansas. His father William was a mail carrier and his mother Cora E. was a telephone operator (1930 census.) 

Bruce grew up in Kansas and in 1930 was employed as a telephone operator. Sometime around 1938 his younger sister Marie moved to California and married Royal Friedly of Torrance. Claude Bruce also moved to Southern California and Torrance around this time and worked at Columbia Steel as verified by his World War II draft registration card. He enlisted in the Army on January 2, 1942 and became a Staff Sergeant in glider operations.

On January 25, 1943, while on a routine training flight from the Army Air Forces Advanced Glider School three miles south of Dalhart, Texas, Staff Sgt. Bruce was one of five men who were killed, with two others seriously injured, when their glider in attempting to land struck a windmill and abandoned cement house.

According to press reports at the time, this accident was “one of the first major casualties since the Army launched its stepped-up gilder training program.”

Claude Bruce was buried in Elmo, Kansas.