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This might be the right thread and conversation for a question - my grandfather never talked much about his time in the war, but I know he was Army, stationed on a ship in the Pacific, and spent some time docked in Australia or New Zealand. Any very broad spectrum thoughts on what Army people stationed on maybe aircraft carriers were doing near Japan?
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Mar 21, 2023 05:38
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Maternal grandfather was born in '35 so too young to serve in WWII, paternal grandfather was in the army I believe though I can't recall at the moment which theatre he served in, my step-dad's father was also in the army and was in the Pacific I think(I do know he was stationed in Japan after the war ended, my step-dad still has hanging around a keepsake he brought home from there)
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Mar 21, 2023 06:36
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All my grandparents were pretty young during WW2, too young to do any fighting, but my maternal grandfather enlisted during the Malayan Emergency and was given a medal for taking down some communist insurgents, but he insists that all he did was fire in the air and scare them off rather than actually shoot anyone. My maternal grandmother was born in the jungles of Malaya due to my great-grandmother fleeing into them when the Japanese invaded and they were hunting down ethnic Chinese, so she grew up without an education. My paternal grandparents never really talked about their younger years when they were around, but I did learn that my paternal grandfather was a printer and knew how to handle Heidelberg printing machines for printing in multiple languages.
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Mar 21, 2023 06:55
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Do the kids on Tiktok talk about "when my parent was in the Iraq war / Afghanistan, they did X"? Is that the next generation of ww2 grandparent stories?
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Mar 21, 2023 07:15
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My maternal grandfather was a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe and served in the Mediterranean and North African theaters. Unlike every other German veteran (who were apparently all truck drivers, technicians or stretcher bearers and besides, they never liked Hitler anyway), he was an unrepentant Nazi for several decades after the war. He also had no problem talking about (most) of it. He also abused the poo poo out of my mother and her siblings, and from what I hear the generational trauma is currently doing a number on his great-grandchildren as well. It’s not much, but at least I get to blame Hitler for my mental health issues. 
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Mar 21, 2023 07:33
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Comrade Koba posted:My maternal grandfather was a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe and served in the Mediterranean and North African theaters. Sorry about the Nazi Grandpa* *didn't think I'd need this once twice in such a short amount of time
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Mar 21, 2023 07:52
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Red Bones posted:Do the kids on Tiktok talk about "when my parent was in the Iraq war / Afghanistan, they did X"? Is that the next generation of ww2 grandparent stories?
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Mar 21, 2023 07:53
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16 million Americans fought in WWII, and a lot of people at home were in factories making weapons and uniforms. 2.7 million Americans fought in Vietnam and 3 million fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, out of a larger population, so it's much less likely that someone has family stories from those wars. My grandpa joined the Navy underage, and when they learned his real age he was discharged and spent the rest of the war working in a shipyard. I think he felt ashamed of that, so he never talked about his time in WWII. My other grandpa was also too young to join the military during the war.
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Mar 21, 2023 08:01
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drrockso20 posted:Sorry about the Nazi Grandpa* How about a hat trick? Born in East Prussia, was forced to join the Hitler Youth*, joined the paratroopers in time to fight in Crete, fought on the eastern front, fought in France and got captured by the Americans, went to the US to work on a farm as a POW, after the war got a job driving Greyhound coaches, then moved to Wales and started farming, a family, and a fish and chip shop, before retiring in Dorset. *according to my parents, I don't think I believe this though
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Mar 21, 2023 08:26
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For reference, there were 133 million total Americans at the time.
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Mar 21, 2023 08:26
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My granddad always told the story of how he was supposed to be in the navy, pinching the nose of the sub when it dived so it could come back up again later. He turned 18 in 1940 and the Nazi invasion of Denmark kicked off before he got the chance to join the fleet. According to him, that is the exact reason why the Danish fleet was scuttled. No choice but to scuttle it without granddad holding the nose of the whole fleet and letting them play sub for a few days while sneaking off to England. Granddad's uncle was a baker's apprentice, but he ran into the incompatibilities of large amounts of flour and chronically bad lungs. So feeling like a complete washout in life he did what anyone else would do when they've run out of options. He went to the police academy. While he was there, the Nazi invasion happened and they rounded up all the Danish police & police cadets and sent them to a concentration camp to ensure they wouldn't form the core of an organized resistance. When the war ended, my granduncle was released and managed to work his way back home, carrying the twin gifts of alcoholism and tuberculosis. I have no idea how he managed to survive up until the 80's after that poo poo show of a health exposure. One of my granddad's cousins, from the branch that emigrated to America, joined the US marines, got sent to Okinawa, followed a lieutenant on a patrol along with 3 other guys and when the lieutenant opened an inconspicuous looking door, the mine went off and killed the whole group.
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Mar 21, 2023 08:34
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mrpwase posted:How about a hat trick? Sorry about the potentially a Nazi Grandpa
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Mar 21, 2023 09:35
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PYF Historical Fun Fact: nazi grandpa lamentation station
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Mar 21, 2023 09:48
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mrpwase posted:How about a hat trick? Hitler Youth membership became mandatory by law in 1936, and there was a strong social pressure against anyone not a member. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_youth#Membership
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Mar 21, 2023 10:02
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My Nonno was approached to be a spy in WW2! However, he refused because his Italian was so bad, he knew he'd be spotted a mile off as a non-native speaker. Also, it would have been just infiltrating Italian POWs so there wouldn't be much he could do with it.
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Mar 21, 2023 10:19
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My paternal grandfather fled the Franco regime in Spain and ended up in Norway, via travelling around the world twice working on ships of various kinds, where he met my grandmother. Her father, my great grandfather, had gone insane some years previously (I believe this happened shortly after the occupation ended) and built a bomb which he used to kill himself, his wife, and two of their four children
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Mar 21, 2023 10:41
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My paternal grandfather was born in 1926 in a sleepy little town in Brasil called Curitiba which today has 2 million inhabitants. The furthest back info I can find states that in 1950 the city had roughly 150k people, so in the 40’s it was downright pastoral. He was in medical school towards the end of the war and Brazil wasn’t heavily involved in WWII, but enlistment in the military is compulsory in Brazil, so he was in the army. They were stationed in a fort overlooking the city and would have cannon (yes actual cannons) and artillery practice firing over towards what is today part of downtown but back then was just empty fields. I found all of this out while we were strolling through one of the many shopping malls in the city in the late 90’s and he pointed out that the same mall used to be their fort. He pointed out of the windows towards the city to indicate the direction of the cannon fire. Surprisingly the German part of my family immigrated to Brasil way before WWII, unlike those other guys.
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Mar 21, 2023 11:57
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drrockso20 posted:Sorry about the potentially a Nazi Grandpa I know there was one nazi in my family. He was more or less shunned by the rest of the family until my maternal grandfather reached out to him decades after the war and forgave him.
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Mar 21, 2023 13:45
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fyi for ausgoons (and others) the Australian National Archives is digitizing and releasing ww2 service records, and iirc the ww1 ones are already done. If you can make out cursive you can learn a bit about your family's history. Afaik two of my grandparents were involved in the war effort (the others were busy in agriculture) and this was the first time I get to learn more about them that isn't filtered down via mum and dad who aren't exactly straight up about things. There's nothing odious in there but the details do indicate the roots of some family trauma, gramps was evacuated from an active combat zone, not from being wounded but after being seriously injured in an otherwise minor accident. I can only speculate but internalized shame is a hell of a burden. drrockso20 posted:Sorry about the potentially a Nazi Grandpa Brawnfire posted:
Less historically fun is the blatant racism in the rest of that short and the not so historical racism apologism I've seen while trying to track down what it was.
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Mar 21, 2023 14:43
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Bothe my grandfathers had exemptions during WW2 as they had civilian jobs that were needed, oil worker and blacksmith. When you aren’t making new equipment, blacksmiths are important. My maternal grandfather’s brother was a frogman and served in both WW1 and WW2 somehow, and was a true sailor: he brought back syphilis to his wife after a tour and she was blinded and rendered infertile.
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Mar 21, 2023 14:47
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My grandfather was drafted along with five of his six brothers in 1944. He did two weeks of boot camp in New Jersey and then landed at Utah Beach in Normandy. My grandmother left high school after her sophomore year to work in a Levi's factory in the Secret City as cover for the Manhattan Project.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:20
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My great grandfather signed up to serve the mother country and represent Australia during ww1, landed in Gallipoli and was wounded. Recovered just in time to participate in Lone Pine and was shot through both legs during the battle. Army medics wouldn't allow him to return to the infantry so after recovering he joined the army airforce in Europe and crashed 7 times, multiple of which were while attempting to fly under bridges or do aerial manoeuvres outside of combat situations. He somehow walked away from this without serious injury, returned to Australia and had 11 children. Living to the ripe old age of 95. My grandfather served in Vietnam, he was an engineer and helped deploy an infamous 11km minefield that was promptly used as a massive explosives depot by the Vietcong. He then spent the rest of the tour dismantling it.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:26
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My grandfather joined the US Merchant Marine for WWII and spent the whole war in the Pacific (fortunately for his descendants, because the odds were not good for surviving in the Atlantic). He was in the engine room so his hearing was terrible. He never talked about it; we supposed (with no evidence) that he did it for the higher pay, but we'll never know the real reason. All we really knew was that he was happy to be counted as a "Real Veteran" - that happened some time in the 80s if I recall right.
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Mar 21, 2023 17:58
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Bread Enthusiast posted:My grandfather joined the US Merchant Marine for WWII and spent the whole war in the Pacific (fortunately for his descendants, because the odds were not good for surviving in the Atlantic). I had a grand uncle who died before I was born, He was a "war sailor" which meant that he sailed on merchant ships in the Atlantic. He survived but was deeply traumatized the rest of his life. Another one of my grand uncles was a teacher during the occupation and was sent to a prison camp because he refused to teach the nazi ideology in school. Alhazred has a new favorite as of 18:26 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2023 18:22
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Bread Enthusiast posted:My grandfather joined the US Merchant Marine for WWII and spent the whole war in the Pacific (fortunately for his descendants, because the odds were not good for surviving in the Atlantic). Merchant marine had a higher fatality rate than most of the regular services anyway
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Mar 21, 2023 20:10
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A German friend of mine from the southeast of the country told me that her grandparents had a French POW working on their very rural German farm during WWII, and he had a pleasant enough time that he showed up again to visit them, a decade later, having tracked down the farm based entirely on his visual memory of it. I also had a great uncle who drove an ammunition truck, and narrowly avoided dying when the truck was shelled because he'd driven past another guy from his hometown and gotten out for a smoke break with him. War is a horrible mix of the depressing and the mundane.
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Mar 21, 2023 23:53
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My grandfather was in the Canadian army in WWI. His opinion of Belgium was that the Germans could have it on the condition that they had to live there.
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Mar 22, 2023 00:03
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My nazi grandpa left an incredible amount of memoirs. Drafted out of Alsace after the nazi occupation to the southeastern front in 1942, got hit, then did some time in Italy 1943-1944, then went back east and got driven from Prussia to surrendering to brits in Hamburg. Some fun facts: Everything better than a bolt-action rifle was a tommy gun and why do they have so many? Why do they have tanks over every bush but ours are always broken or stuck?? I thought we had the best gear? Why do our uniforms stink? He became buds with a US soldier the germans had captured in Italy. He decided he wanted to live in the USA. Ended the war fleeing through East Prussia and eventually surrendered to brits in Hamburg. Got sent to a prison camp in the US midwest, stayed there, got married, succeeded I guess He complains about how poo poo german stuff is compared to the allies a lot, so lol wehraboos Edgar Allen Ho has a new favorite as of 00:18 on Mar 22, 2023 |
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Mar 22, 2023 00:13
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My mother's dad was a military engineer in the red army during ww2. My family found one of his medal reports sometime this century. There was an artillery emplacement of some kind that broke down, he repaired it while under fire and helped drive the nazis back. He was also part of the invasion of Finland at the start of the war. After the war, he got a piece of land in the territory the USSR managed to take from the Finns where he built my family's summer house, which is owned by my uncle now. His parents were deemed enemies of the people because my great grandfather owned a factory. They died in Siberia. His sister survived the siege of Leningrad.
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Mar 22, 2023 00:48
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I think the "Tommy gun" is like how US GIs would declare every artillery piece that was even vaguely perceptible as being an 88.
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Mar 22, 2023 00:58
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Most of them weren't even named tommy
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Mar 22, 2023 01:14
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Nessus posted:I think the "Tommy gun" is like how US GIs would declare every artillery piece that was even vaguely perceptible as being an 88. Far as I can tell, pepescha and tommy gun are extremely interchangeable. And both more desirable than any German kit. In Italy he also notes “british tommy” off dead people. I assume that would be the sten gun.
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Mar 22, 2023 02:04
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My grandparents spent their youths in a concentration camp. Not the ones for Jewish people in Europe, the ones for Japanese-americans here in the states.
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Mar 22, 2023 03:25
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Amongst all this talk about military relatives, and all the death and destruction they had seen. Here's my tale of a cool relative that was never in the armed forces, let alone a war. My mum's uncle played the saxophone on this famous TV theme tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNRkwNC9Ms4 He also was a part of Cliff Richard's touring backing band for a time. And he tells the story of one time in a pissy hotel somewhere in the midlands where due to a mix up, (Cliff Richard isn't his real name, and the hotel knew Cliff Richard was staying there, but didn't know which room), one of the opther band members got sent a bunch of free booze/food/etc. meant for the star. So the band had a grand old time partying it up, whilst Cliff himself spent the night alone in his room reading the bible.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:01
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I know my materal grandad had an Army physical, but never was called up. He was in his 20s in WWII, unmarried, a farmer and certainly fit to serve. I'm guessing the Army didn't draft him on the grounds that he was the sole source of income for his parents. Paternal grandpa served in a MASH unit. He didn't talk about his service, but I've got a unit history that was given out at one of their reunions. Grandpa wasn't with the group that liberated Dachau, but apparently was there very soon after. This grandpa's oldest sibling served in WWI and was in Siberia with the AEF. I haven't been able to track down anything beyond that.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:45
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My paternal Grandpa was a little too young for WW II. He enlisted underage, but still missed the war and ended up serving in the occupation. He didn't talk about it much, maybe because he didn't think there was much for him to talk about? If I remember right, he was a radio operator for the air force. Miss you, grandpa.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:46
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My grandpa landed at Normandy. Not sure when or where exactly. He never talked about it until a couple of his sons came home from Vietnam. They went somewhere alone, had some drinks, and talked about it.
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Mar 22, 2023 06:05
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Animal-Mother posted:My grandpa landed at Normandy. Not sure when or where exactly. He never talked about it until a couple of his sons came home from Vietnam. They went somewhere alone, had some drinks, and talked about it. I remember the one time my dad suddenly opened up about Vietnam was in a very small, crowded bar after a couple pints. I wished we were alone for that... Lots of those "wtf are they talking about over there?" kind of glances.
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Mar 22, 2023 14:04
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My grandfather was a mechanical engineering student who dropped out to be a paratrooper in Korea and came back a barely functional alcoholic. Fun times. My maternal great grandfather did some domestic spying for the american govt during wwi and wwii. He was a German speaking preacher and I guess the govt wanted to make sure the 20 German farm families he ministered to weren't going to rise up and take bumfuck nowhere North Dakota for Hitler
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Mar 22, 2023 16:11
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Same, to young grandparents for WW2, although theyre from a neutral country anyway. But paternal grandfather old enough to serve in the less savoury Portuguese colonial war, as a surgeon and my maternal grandmothers husband was a infantry conscript in Angola. Carnation revolution couldnt have come soon enough
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Mar 22, 2023 16:47
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