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I feel a bit of selfish, voyeuristic pity that all these vets that were in the thick of it didn't write their stories down.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:21
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Cyrano4747 posted:Not that I've ever seen any reference to. Doesn't mean it wasn't there, but I've never seen anyone talking about it. Was "Germany first" even public knowledge during the war? I mean, even before we get into the reality that in 1942-3 it wasn't really true.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:22
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JcDent posted:I feel a bit of selfish, voyeuristic pity that all these vets that were in the thick of it didn't write their stories down. My German great-uncle did not talk about his WW2 service, ever. According to my grandfather, he explained his service once to the family when he started dating my grandfather's sister - apparently he was a u-boat sailor - and then never spoke of it again.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:24
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Cyrano4747 posted:When we were clearing out his stuff we found a TON of pictures of him and that Japanese girl, including one right by his bed, and a bunch of their letters with dates going into the 60s. Aw, man...
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Dec 7, 2017 17:25
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Cythereal posted:My German great-uncle did not talk about his WW2 service, ever. According to my grandfather, he explained his service once to the family when he started dating my grandfather's sister - apparently he was a u-boat sailor - and then never spoke of it again. What was the German submariner casualty rate? Like 95%? It must have been nuts going from near impunity in the Atlantic to "uh oh the Allies figured out ASW" 
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Dec 7, 2017 17:27
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zoux posted:What was the German submariner casualty rate? Like 95%? It must have been nuts going from near impunity in the Atlantic to "uh oh the Allies figured out ASW" It was really, really high. I don't know if my great-uncle was a survivor from a sunk u-boat or if his u-boat was just captured intact, but the closest he ever came to telling the extended family about his military service is that he considered himself one of the lucky ones - he was captured in 1943 and spent the rest of the war growing vegetables in the Midwest.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:34
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My maternal grandfather was Nisei and served in the army (but never talked about it at all) while his family was interned by their own country. I can't say I'd have done the same. All he ever said about it is that he felt he had to prove he was American and loyal.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:55
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zoux posted:What was the German submariner casualty rate? Like 95%? It must have been nuts going from near impunity in the Atlantic to "uh oh the Allies figured out ASW" The numbers I've heard generally settle around 75% (about 30K out of 40K submariners served). And the nature of casualties for U-boats mean that is far more skewed towards KIA/MIA than injured or captured.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:56
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Had a great-uncle who joined the Army and then was booted out when they discovered he was underage, then joined the Navy. He ended up serving as a gunner on destroyers, and had two ships sunk under him by kamikazes. About all he ever said in regards to that was that the water in the Pacific was colder than he'd expected.
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Dec 7, 2017 17:58
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Had a great-uncle who joined the Army and then was booted out when they discovered he was underage, then joined the Navy. He ended up serving as a gunner on destroyers, and had two ships sunk under him by kamikazes. About all he ever said in regards to that was that the water in the Pacific was colder than he'd expected. 
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Dec 7, 2017 18:18
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HEY GUNS posted:My grandfather was also a gunner on a destroyer In the Italian Navy My paternal grandfather was also the gunner on a destroyer. Spent the whole war patrolling the coasts of Brazil and the Caribbean for u-boats. Never saw combat, spent the war getting drunk and laid at many different tropical ports. 
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Dec 7, 2017 18:22
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HEY GUNS posted:My grandfather was also a gunner on a destroyer In the Italian Navy 
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Dec 7, 2017 18:23
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o7
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Dec 7, 2017 18:27
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My great grandfather was an anti aircraft gunner until they kicked him out of the army because they realized he couldn't see ten feet in front of him. He then went on to become a gravedigger.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:27
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My paternal grandfather joined the coast guard, patrolled some dams,then was assigned to crew an lst for the invasion of Japan. I owe my existence to the atomic bomb.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:36
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My grandfather stormed Berlin in 1945, but I don't really know any details. I've seen one picture of him during his military service, taken right after he was conscripted in 1944, in a winter uniform. He looked like some weird crossover between a North Pole elf and low-ranking KKK member. Then he fought against the UPA and he always hated both Ukrainians and Russians. Then he went home and routinely stole steel from trains that stopped on a sidetrack near our house.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:38
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JcDent posted:So recon company has a wider role and is lead by lower level people while force recon has more narrow role, but is lead by more experienced leaders, everything else being the same (the document says that Recon and Force Recon platoons are basically identical)? I got out about twenty years ago, and I wasn't in recon, but my impression was that the main difference was really that Force was attached to a large unit like a MAGTF whereas Battalion recon was attached down at that level. The capabilities of the two units were pretty much the same, although in the case of Battalion recon it was very possible to have a grunt who had recently joined who was in Recon Bn but had not yet been to the Basic Reconnaissance Course. He would be sent eventually, but I think everyone at Force would have done that, scuba school, jump school etc. Bear in mind this is my recollection and is purely anecdotal. When the USMC finally decided they wanted a piece of the specops pie and created MARSOC, there was some talk that Force would be disbanded and all their personnel would be MARSOC going forward. I don't know whatever became of all that.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:41
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MrMojok posted:The capabilities of the two units were pretty much the same, although in the case of Battalion recon it was very possible to have a grunt who had recently joined who was in Recon Bn but had not yet been to the Basic Reconnaissance Course. He would be sent eventually, but I think everyone at Force would have done that, scuba school, jump school etc. If my time on Camp Schwab was any indicator, Force was recognizable by the fact that they really, really liked to wear those ridiculously short khaki shorts.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:46
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My maternal grandfather was deemed 4F when he was drafted and my paternal grandfather wasn't drafted until the very end, assigned to drive invasion boats for the Home Islands invasion that never happened so he never saw any combat (much to his relief). To his dying day he insisted the bombs dropping on Japan saved his life because he was absolutely terrified of the invasion.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:59
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Tevery Best posted:My grandfather stormed Berlin in 1945, but I don't really know any details. I've seen one picture of him during his military service, taken right after he was conscripted in 1944, in a winter uniform. He looked like some weird crossover between a North Pole elf and low-ranking KKK member. That's some quality poleposting  My paternal grandfather left my dad the day he was born to go to sea, but my step grandfather went to the eastern front with the 5th Wiking SS to fight Russians in the so-called Schalburg corps. They got thrashed horribly and he was apparently shelled by the Russians while riding a motorcycle or something. Tias fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Dec 7, 2017 19:04
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My great grandad was in the Merchant Navy and was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Tobruk fell apparently. Spent the rest of the war in an Italian POW camp.
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Dec 7, 2017 19:04
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Tias posted:That's some quality poleposting 
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Dec 7, 2017 19:49
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My maternal grandfather was a chief petty officer of a royal navy destroyer in the channel right at the end of the war. I never really heard much more than that.
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Dec 7, 2017 19:50
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SeanBeansShako posted:My great grandad was in the Merchant Navy and was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Tobruk fell apparently. Spent the rest of the war in an Italian POW camp.
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Dec 7, 2017 19:50
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HEY GUNS posted:whereas THAT is Peak Dane It's very Danish. And very Copenhagen, unfortunately. I can't help but wonder how my dad would have turned out if he wasn't abused from day one by a drunken PTSD-addled nazi shithead 
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Dec 7, 2017 20:13
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Wife's grandfather was a RAF Hurricane ace, with 18 air kills in the Battle of Britain. Ended up training a bunch of other pilots and then getting shipped off to Ceylon to run a squadron. Great uncle was shot down on a strafing mission in his P-40 over Italy, and didn't survive. This old Italian couple found his body and his rosary and buried him in their garden.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:13
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My shooty great-aunt's first husband was a political commissar. He ditched her after the war because a peasant girl from a not-very-party-connected family wasn't the kind of wife a promising member of the party needed to further his career. Good riddance, her second husband was a cool dude.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:25
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my dad posted:My shooty great-aunt's first husband was a political commissar. He ditched her after the war because a peasant girl wasn't the kind of wife a promising member of the party needed to further his career.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:26
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Cessna posted:This is also completely anecdotal. I’m curious about that too yeah. I’m still working through the coldest winter, and it casually touches on Japanese-American relations after the war, and the relationship between Japanese and occupying Americans on the home island seemed oddly cordial, given how brutal the war was. And how it ended. Only one source, and it’s not even principally about the occupation so I don’t want to pretend I learned too much but it’s a curiosity-sparker
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Dec 7, 2017 20:45
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HEY GUNS posted:your great aunt owned though Can we hear more about the shooty aunt? 
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Dec 7, 2017 20:55
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To continue with the echo chamber, my great uncle Waldo was a Marine officer in the pacific who fought in the Marshall Islands and Saipan. And after the war he wanted nothing to do with anything Japanese. He was also famous in the family for never talking about his war experience. As the story goes, Old Wald came home from the war, buried his pistol in the woods, then spent the rest of his life teaching agriculture and complaining about how the Red Sox were never going to win anything (he died in 2003). My maternal grandfather, on the other hand, served in Japan as part of the occupation and was a big fan of Japanese cars at least.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:13
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Ainsley McTree posted:This leads me to wonder; did very many infantry of the musket/early rifle era wear helmets? And if not, why? The point of firearms was that they were the only thing apart from the longbow able to penetrate metal armor. Below a certain range, any decent firearm would penetrate portable armor. Besides, a helmet covers a relatively small part of the body. Medicine wasn't so good nor widespread back then, so if you got hit basically anywhere else you were screwed anyway. Adding all that, you get that giving a metal helmet to every infantryman was not cost effective at all.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:14
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My maternal grandfather served on a minesweeper in the RNZN in the Pacific. I don't know any details of what he did except it apparently left him with a lot of spare time, which he filled in doing embroidery. My paternal grandfather was a science teacher in England and was thus gainfully employed teaching servicemen how to use this amazing new radar contraption.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:30
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Cessna posted:This is also completely anecdotal. This is a lovely story, but I would be inclined to push back on your conclusion. Racial attitudes toward Japanese on the West Coast were well set long before Pearl Harbor, or even Mukden. Earl Warren is chiefly remembered today as the author of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and architect of judicial desegregation, but in 1941 as California's attorney-general and a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West he said, "The only reason that there has been no sabotage or espionage on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are waiting for the right moment to strike." Racism may not be the only driver of differential opinions toward Germans and Japanese but it cannot be ignored as the primary one. Jamwad Hilder posted:My maternal grandfather was Nisei and served in the army (but never talked about it at all) while his family was interned by their own country. I can't say I'd have done the same. All he ever said about it is that he felt he had to prove he was American and loyal. My paternal grandparents were Nisei and were interned in Minidoka along with my then-infant father. My grandfather was drafted but the war ended before he could be inducted. According to family legend, he had to pose as Chinese to find work once they were released. I'm guessing that your mother married across racial lines, just like my dad and his sister did. Incidentally, my mother's family is German and their experience is an instructive contrast: They still spoke German at home (my grandfather didn't learn English until he started public school, whereas my Japanese family declined to teach the children Japanese). They refused to participate in the war (Mennonite conscientious objectors). And yet, the worst thing to happen to them was Eisenhower snubbing them on a visit to Kansas during his presidency.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:40
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HEY GUNS posted:If you have any of his writings, I would be quite interested in a PM from you--looking for my relatives' war experiences Sadly whatever he had from that time or his service would be in the hands of my grandfathers sisters.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:42
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I've posted about him once or twice before, but my maternal grandfather was on a destroyer escort, the USS Ira Jeffery. He spent the first part of the war escorting the Atlantic convoys, before the ship was converted into a transport for UDT teams and sent to the Pacific for the invasion. Unfortunately he died when I was three, but I did hear one story from my grandmother when I was growing up-Allegedly, she was looking at photographs of the Japanese after the surrender, and commented "They look so humble." To which he replied, "Don't believe it, Dot, we passed by an island where they cut everyone's heads off." 
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Dec 7, 2017 21:48
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Tias posted:Can we hear more about the shooty aunt? That particular great aunt is from the branch of my family that used to live in Lika. She was pregnant when the war started, gave birth to a daughter (I never learned the girl's name), and they both got infected with typhoid due to the ongoing typhoid epidemic that got jumpstarted by the Nazi invasion. She made it through alive, her daughter didn't. As soon as she was capable of doing so, she joined one of the Lika Partizan brigades as a medic (of the frontline, shooty sort). The brigade in question eventually became a part of the 6th Division, but she got reassigned elsewhere before that. I don't know much about the specifics of what she did during the war after that point (other than her being at the front all the drat time, and being somewhat notorious for foul language directed at the enemy when angry), but she eventually got shot and wounded while taking part in the Yugoslav Army advance on Trieste near the end of the war. Her husband divorced her 2 years later, and she moved in with the rest of the family in Vojvodina (they were among the so called "colonists" - people from mountainous areas who were sent to Vojvodina and given homes there since it was the breadbasket of Yugoslavia and was heavily depopulated during the war, partially because of what the Nazis and Ustaše did, partially due to the post-war reprisals against the local Germans). She met her second husband, another Serb from Lika who moved to Serbia, in Belgrade and they had an ok marriage and a daughter. Decades later, they moved back to Croatia, which is where the Yugoslav war eventually caught them. Their house got torched in 1995 by one of the fascist militias there (I think it was Hrvatska Nacionalna Garda, but I'm not 100% sure) while one of the men who did it gloated about how "Our beautiful (homeland) waited 50 years for this day" and they ended up being taken to a camp near Split, where her captors were highly amused by her cussing. She and her husband were eventually "deported" to Serbia, dad had to drive to the border to pick them up. She died shortly afterwards. The end.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:51
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Night10194 posted:My maternal grandfather was deemed 4F when he was drafted and my paternal grandfather wasn't drafted until the very end, assigned to drive invasion boats for the Home Islands invasion that never happened so he never saw any combat (much to his relief). To his dying day he insisted the bombs dropping on Japan saved his life because he was absolutely terrified of the invasion. How does it feel to know you're probably alive thanks to the nuclear attacks on Japan? Ever thought of it this way?
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Dec 7, 2017 21:59
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:This is a lovely story, but I would be inclined to push back on your conclusion. Racial attitudes toward Japanese on the West Coast were well set long before Pearl Harbor, or even Mukden. Earl Warren is chiefly remembered today as the author of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and architect of judicial desegregation, but in 1941 as California's attorney-general and a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West he said, "The only reason that there has been no sabotage or espionage on the part of Japanese-Americans is that they are waiting for the right moment to strike." Racism may not be the only driver of differential opinions toward Germans and Japanese but it cannot be ignored as the primary one. Oh, absolutely. There's no doubt that anti-Japanese racism was prevalent well before the war, and that many never put aside those attitudes. I'm only pointing out that for my grandfather his time spent over there after the war ended helped change his outlook. For contrast, my wife's father grew up a very young child in China during the Japanese occupation. He has NEVER gotten over this, and holds hard feelings towards the Japanese to this day.
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Dec 7, 2017 22:04
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Super86 posted:The point of firearms was that they were the only thing apart from the longbow able to penetrate metal armor. Below a certain range, any decent firearm would penetrate portable armor. quote:Besides, a helmet covers a relatively small part of the body. Medicine wasn't so good nor widespread back then, so if you got hit basically anywhere else you were screwed anyway.
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Dec 7, 2017 22:10
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