|
My grandfathers both ended up in very safe war jobs. One of my grandfathers was a navy scientist who got drafted into the navy because when the army drafted navy scientists, they put them to work on army projects. He worked on sonar, and had some excellent stories, like the time he either caught a German spy or turned in a janitor with brilliant math skills, and the time there was a storm and his boss's car got crushed by a mini sub, resulting in the weirdest insurance report ever. My other grandfather was in the army, deployed to Normandy shortly after Paris got taken. A senior officer noticed he had been a golf course manager for his civilian job and promptly took him to be a caddy on the golf course just outside Paris. That's where he spent the rest of the war, advising generals and politicians on which club to use and picking up on cute French girls.
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2017 17:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:01 |
|
|
One of my grandads was a landing ship driver who was getting prepared for the invasion of the home islands. He never saw combat and to his dying day insisted the bomb had saved his life. Also hated the Japanese his entire life for the stories he'd heard about what they'd done to locals in the places he passed through. The other got declared 4f for reasons I don't remember and married my grandmother instead of going to fight. That's all the WWII history in my family.
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2017 17:22
|
|
|
Both mine were too old to fight. One worked in some capacity at a training base near SLO, the other got himself made a chief in the coast guard. There was some ruckus one night and he ended up shooting a German spy that turned out to be a stray dog. Thus goes the story of the great battle of Waukegan Bay. Uncle otoh, enlisted in the army and was plucked out of the ranks to go to engineering school at a civilian college. Before he could finish however, they needed bodies for d-day. He landed at Normandy in the days after the invasion and was with the engineers all the way into Germany. Ended up getting shot in an alley in a German town by a hitler youth. He lived but he lost an eye.
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2017 18:04
|
|
|
   The daily bombing runs here continue.   A run of the mill day.  It looks like an American sub patrol got lucky. The Duncan must have been damaged a while back and nearly made it home.
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
Grey Hunter posted:
The last time we saw the Duncan, it showed no signs of damage, and has already been assumed killed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2017 18:36
|
|
|
The one grandfather who fought in the war was happy to have been a sergeant at a supply depot in North Africa and Italy. Safe as long as all was going well but could have gotten hairy if things went south. My best friends grandfather though, he was one of Carlsons raiders and had played football at Notre Dame for Knut Rockny. He said he was 'just a mule' not a horseman. E: age of the internet and all so I figured that kind of history would be officially noted somewhere. He would have been 13 when Knute died. Eh. Murgos fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Apr 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 01:52
|
|
|
One grandpa took it easy in England as a supply sergeant in the USAAF, and the other was an Army infantryman who fought in Guadalcanal. He either went partially deaf during the battle or they found out he was partially deaf afterwards, and he spent the remainder of the war as a cook on various Pacific islands. My great uncle, however, was a tank commander on the Eastern front. We don't really know his story because he stayed in Germany and didn't keep in touch. Asking people about what it was like being a Nazi is kind of an awkward conversation anyway.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:12
|
|
|
My Filipino grandpa was like 15 and part of the resistance after the Japanese took his dad (Philippine Army). My American grandpa was going through college and ended up working on nuclear after the war. I am not sure a) if that's true or b) what he did exactly. I could be remembering entirely wrong since it's been years. ..I gotta ask my dad about this. Ron Jeremy posted:Hell Bryan Cranston won a silver star doing it That movie really was just a collection of future famous people 3 DONG HORSE fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Apr 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:14
|
|
|
Grandpa was an XO on a minesweeper in the pacific, and great uncle went down with the Bonefish in June of '45. Wife's grandpa was a Sherman tank commander in Normandy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:34
|
|
|
Dad's dad was a Sherman tank commander, but arrived too late to see combat. Mom's Dad was an MP. No terrible stories, but that's probably for the best.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:36
|
|
|
Ron Jeremy posted:Hell Bryan Cranston won a silver star doing it tbf his character is missing an arm, which implies he might have won the silver star for something other than mailing letters.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:36
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:Grandpa was an XO on a minesweeper in the pacific, and great uncle went down with the Bonefish in June of '45. Wife's grandpa was a Sherman tank commander in Normandy. I had another great uncle who died in a Sherman coming into Normandy. Tank sunk and everybody drowned 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:37
|
|
|
Grandpachat: one of mine didn't serve for some reason, drove trucks around NYC. The other was a paratrooper, never jumped into combat, got a purple heart during a glider landing, and was terrified of going on planes for the rest of his life.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:38
|
|
|
Grandpa chat: my dad told me my grandpa served as army infantry in the pacific as a sergeant with a Thompson, and never spoke about it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 02:50
|
|
|
My Grandpa was supposed to pilot an LST during the Invasion of Japan. Thank god for the bomb!
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 03:25
|
|
|
My grandpa wanted to go ashore at Normandy but he was a radar operator on an important radar ship so they said no.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 03:26
|
|
|
Great-grandpachat: According to family legend, he saw the Enola Gay shortly before August 6, as they were beginning preparations for Downfall. Never got to meet him, though. Don't know much about the Japanese side of the family, aside from my grandmother living in the mountains during the war.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 03:28
|
|
|
Soup du Jour posted:Great-grandpachat: According to family legend, he saw the Enola Gay shortly before August 6, as they were beginning preparations for Downfall. Never got to meet him, though. That's interesting. I know a Greek family whose parents lived in the mountains during the war. The dad was born up there in hiding. It didn't occur to me that that sort of thing happened in modern times until I heard it from them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 03:34
|
|
|
Bozart posted:Grandpachat: one of mine didn't serve for some reason, drove trucks around NYC. The other was a paratrooper, never jumped into combat, got a purple heart during a glider landing, and was terrified of going on planes for the rest of his life. Neither of mine served. One was a conscientious objector (Mennonite, did forestry work stateside instead), the other was interned (Nisei, didn't volunteer, wasn't drafted until like August '45 and so was never inducted).
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:21
|
|
|
My grandpa was at various times a B-17 and -24 pilot over Germany, and was back stateside being trained for the B-29 at Almagordo when the war ended. He swears he (and the rest of the base) got woken up by the Trinity test, and rushed out of the barracks only to be herded back in by MP's saying "you didn't see anything, you didn't hear anything, go back to sleep, reveille is at 0630."
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:23
|
|
|
Oh found out the ship my grandfather served on the USS Montauk while not sunk by Kamikaze's it was attacked by them off Okinawa, so it seems he made poo poo up around a grain of truth. So I guess ill take the USS Montauk as a lucky ship if it isn't sunk yet.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:28
|
|
|
At least two of my great-grandfathers served in the war, but one passed away before I was born and the other never wanted to talk about it (though I was too young back then anyway.) All I know was that the one that refused to talk about it was an aircraft controller, which doesn't sound that bad, except, well, he refused to talk about it, so... there must have been some poo poo. One day I'll have to do the research to see where and when they served.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:32
|
|
|
Grandpachat: my paternal grandfather missed his boat to the European theater, where his unit ended up participating in the Battle of the Bulge. Not many made it home. He, on the other hand, was sent to India instead. He was fresh off a farm, and helped other fresh off the farm boys learn how to march by telling them to put a rock in their pocket and always start out on the leg with the rock. Spent his whole war in India doing that. My maternal grandfather was two days after his 13th birthday when Pearl Harbor was attacked. HIS father was a physician and spent the war at an army hospital in Augusta, GA. Mostly giving penicillin injections to guys who caught the clap. Nth Doctor fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Apr 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:34
|
|
|
One grandfather for me spent the war mostly flying PBY U-boat patrols along the coast, and eventually married my grandmother who was actually on Oahu on December 7. Bomb actually landed in a yard down the street from her house, though it ended up being a dud. My other grandfather just barely missed the war and ended up serving as an MP in Berlin after the war. He was still in during Korea, wherein he developed a lifelong dislike for the Marines, as he was part of one of the Army units that also got trapped at Chosin Reservoir, only to watch the Marines basically claim all the credit and publicity for the result afterwards.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:38
|
|
|
My grandma grew up in Saarland, close to France. She told me when Patton's army was coming though the Wehrmacht, before withdrawing, left panzerschrecks on people's doorsteps in the night with instructions on how to use them when the Americans drove by. She said her dad and all the other men in town had a meeting the next morning and decided to bury them and wipe their hands of the whole ordeal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:43
|
|
|
So the grandpa who was an aircraft mechanic I mentioned was with the RCAF 404 Squadron who used beaufighters with rockets to completely gently caress up Nazi shipping from Norway. He is righr now consulting with Canada's national aviation musuem on their beaufighter restoration. My other Grandfather was with the Canadian army signals corps. He and his squad was laying a telegraph line between airbase during the battle of Britain when they got staffed by rhe Germans. Half the squad died and he was disabled from shrapnel from their truck exploding. He was returned to Canada. We think. He never spoke of his war experiences except one time when he got drunk (sadly not a rare thing) and broke down and told my uncle everything. So...yeah....
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:51
|
|
|
Jack2142 posted:Oh found out the ship my grandfather served on the USS Montauk while not sunk by Kamikaze's it was attacked by them off Okinawa, so it seems he made poo poo up around a grain of truth. It is important to note, amidst all the grandpa/family chat, that war, among many other things, can be traumatic experiences that affect people in ways that are sometimes unseen or unknown. With the passage of time, recollections can become jumbled together, or have elements of other stories, sometimes from other people, mixed together. What I'm saying is that, its entirely possible he remembers that happening, just not necessarily that that is what did happen.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 04:56
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:It is important to note, amidst all the grandpa/family chat, that war, among many other things, can be traumatic experiences that affect people in ways that are sometimes unseen or unknown. With the passage of time, recollections can become jumbled together, or have elements of other stories, sometimes from other people, mixed together. Amen to this. War stories aren't like fish stories, sometimes people make things up as a coping mechanism for what is a tremendously difficult experience.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 05:37
|
|
|
^^^ "Make things up" implies to me a level of deliberation or intentionality that I don't think is necessary. People form erroneous memories all the time (see eyewitness testimony, for example), motivation or no. Agree there's nothing to feel shame over, though.Jack2142 posted:Oh found out the ship my grandfather served on the USS Montauk while not sunk by Kamikaze's it was attacked by them off Okinawa, so it seems he made poo poo up around a grain of truth. It was a dead raccoon the whole time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 06:44
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:It is important to note, amidst all the grandpa/family chat, that war, among many other things, can be traumatic experiences that affect people in ways that are sometimes unseen or unknown. With the passage of time, recollections can become jumbled together, or have elements of other stories, sometimes from other people, mixed together. Thats fair, I might have come across as a little unnecessarily harsh, but it is still a little disappointing to find that out about my grandfather who I greatly respected. Not to say he is a bad person and I agree with your sentiment. I still respect him and the sum of his life was more than the few years of military service in the pacific, just its a little I guess disheartening to find out years after he passed away.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 06:48
|
|
|
Grandpa chat: I think one was a medic attached to an artillery unit or something. He died a couple years before I was born, so I never got to learn much about him or what he did during the war. The other was a radio operator on a B-24 over Italy. Thankfully, he finished his training less than a year before the war's conclusion, so Germany's air defense capability was far from its peak. The most intense story that he shared was a time where they had to make an emergency landing at an airbase close enough to the front that they exited the plane with pistols drawn. He was able to go on one of those honor flights about a year before he died, and my parents ended up digging up a lot of his service records, scrapbooks, mission logs, etc. as part of that. When we were looking over the mission logs, one reminded him of another story. Apparently their navigator really liked to drink. During a transatlantic flight while rebasing (possibly a homebound flight post-war), this guy basically passed out on the plane over the middle of the ocean, so it fell to grandpa to figure out where they were before they ran out of fuel. The reminder was a log with a lot of requests to verify their location. I think he eventually found one of those navigational radio beams. He watched me play some WitP one time and commented that whoever tapped out the morse code sound effect in the game is a lot faster than he was 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 06:48
|
|
|
Grandfather did ASW in the Atlantic in WW2 on one of our shittastic Flower-class corvettes. Great-grandfather spent two years fighting in the trenches (1917 and 1918) in France. He was at essentially every major engagement fought by Canada after Vimy Ridge, which he just barely missed. Grandpa never talked about the war or anything that happened in it. Great-grandpa died before I was born but apparently suffered from absolutely brutal PTSD for the rest of his life - like to the extent that his rural townsmen thought that he had literally been cursed by a wizard or some poo poo like that and arranged for some sort of exorcism or ritual involving a horse (yeah IDK either). Recently found out I have a German side of the family. Three great-uncles and my great-great grandfather (who, at the time, was quite old - he also fought in WWI, apparently as some sort of trainer) all died in WWII. One great uncle died of disease, one in battle in Russia, one at an airbase in Germany (probably the victim of an air raid - though I guess he could have been a pilot; my records aren't that good). Not sure what happened to the great-great grandfather, other than that he died. It's pretty dark, since apparently they had some sort of major military tradition going back at least to when another ancestor was some sort of minor war hero in the Franco-Prussian war. Said tradition was ended abruptly along with the entire male line in WWII. gently caress you, Hitler. E: The ones that didn't fight had interesting stories too. One of them was an innkeeper's daughter, married my trench warrior great-grandfather and moved back to rural Canada before having something like 15 kids. Their family apparently got to live in a house that was appropriated from a German. One of said kids, my grandmother, married ASW granddad after meeting him on leave and promptly took off across the country. On the other side of the family, grandpa was only a boy as he watched his hometown of Rotterdam get obliterated by Nazi aerial bombardment and somehow spent the rest of the war as a ward of some sort of Nazis in Austria for some weird reason or another. He claims to have been a staunch anti-Nazi even then and to have acted out at parades and the like; I'm skeptical. His father apparently shielded Jews during the war and eventually ended up adopting a couple. Grandma lived in the south of the Netherlands and spent four years under Nazi occupation, apparently sneaking out under barbed wire to steal potatoes and turnips out of fields so she wouldn't starve. Strangely, this early life experience did not lead to any degree of sympathy for refugees moving to Canada. David Corbett fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Apr 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 07:10
|
|
|
My grandfather (on my mother's side) manned an anti-aircraft gun somewhere in the South Pacific. Not sure he ever actually fired it or saw combat or air raids, or even exactly where he was deployed. My grandfather (on my father's side) was part of a Sherman crew in France. Apparently one time a tree fell on him and broke his leg and they had to use the tank to tow the tree off of him. That's the story I remember hearing as a kid from him. The most stories I have are about one of my great uncles, who was an immigrant from Russia in the early 1900's and was drafted or volunteered to get citizenship (I don't remember which), (in the US Army) in 1917 or 1918. He had no real want to go back and fight for the Tsar. Fortunately he was never deployed overseas at any point. A family story is he spent big chunks of his training guarding a tree for several days straight but that just might have been a family story.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 08:34
|
|
|
Paternal Grandfather was a coal miner, no war for him, just a fairly lovely death by horrible coal dust in his early sixties. Maternal Grandfather was a member of the Danish Resistance, lost more than a few friends to the Gestapo, stored weapons in his house, taught weapon use, went on starvation diet so others could eat better and was apparently pretty heroic. My mother's turned over a fair amount of paperwork about his time in the Resistance, he rarely spoke of it himself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 09:24
|
|
|
My grandfather on my dad's side was in the Royal Canadian Navy for the Normandy landings, but he never spoke about it to the family. My dad was one of the first baby boomers, born August 1942.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 09:29
|
|
|
My grandpappy's uncle was a secretary for Sun-Yat Sen. Mad respect for him. Still fighting his cause with yellow umbrellas here in Hong Kong, gonna evacuate to :taiwan: in some years though. loving Beijing government, just make sure you kill the ChiComs too, Grey!
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 09:57
|
|
|
My dad's granddad was a marine and got blown up on the 2nd day of Saipan. Literally, that's what they say happened; he was in an ammo dump or something when it went up. Probably one of the better ways to die, I suppose.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 10:03
|
|
|
My father was 10 years old in occupied Holland and despite all the hardships it was a pretty exciting time for a kid. He would go with his brothers to Flak sites and try to find shell casings and sticks of cordite to set on fire. The main danger were V1 launches where they would hear the pulsejet sound and sometimes the engine would fail, the silence ending in a big explosion somewhere in the area.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 10:25
|
|
|
Granddad was just a kid during the war, but his village was occupied by four different armies during the war. He had five brothers and two sisters, only him and two of his brothers survived. Grandmother, on the other hand, fought in Yugoslav resistance, with the partisans. When I was a kid, I had no idea that frail old lady that baked amazing strudel and never held a job in her life actually fought in a war. Her mother, my grand-grandmother, had a farm in Kordun and was forced to house italian soldiers. At one time, several soldiers refused to leave and wanted to stay and help on the farm, and she hid them from partisans and other italian troops. I remember how she always talked about those italian boys that never wanted to fight anyone and only wanted to work on the farm because it reminded them of home.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 10:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:01 |
|
|
One grandpa was in the RAF, the other was in the IRA
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2017 11:55
|
|
