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I thought that the respected forum members might enjoy this WWII story.
Before beginning a need to add a couple of caveat.
I’ve been told the story by the son (my cousin-in-law) of the protagonist, hence with time and the double passage some of the details might be different from reality, but I absolutely believe the core to be true (maybe the rest too).
Also, since it’s not my name or that of a public figure, I do not feel comfortable with posting it for reference. I hope you can live with that.
This relative of mine, who passed some years back, was an Italian Air Force General.
He started his career for “family” reasons. He was the eldest of a big family (I believe he had 6 younger brothers and sisters) and, having lost the father, the family was in some financial difficulties.
Due to the Italian commitment to the Spanish civil war the Italian Air Force opened (for the first time I was told) the position of pilot officer to those of common birth. The salary, for a big family with little money, was very interesting. He therefore decided to enroll and later on went to Spain, as lieutenant, to fight as a bomber pilot under German General Hugo Sperrle.
I remember being told that he was a dive bomber pilot. However Italians, as far as I know, did not have DB, hence it was either a German leased Ju-87 or the 3E Italian level bomber SIAE Marchetti SM79.
After the Spanish war he returned to Italy and WWII began.
Sometime before ’43 (he was imprisoned by the Germans in an Austrian prison after the armistice) he was promoted to Captain and posted to Berlin as liaison officer at the Italian embassy since he knew German (I have no idea why).
And here comes the interesting part.
For some reason he had to go to Berlin by car (those black cars with the little flags – Italian -on the front bumpers), curfew was tight and the closer he got to Berlin the more frequent the MP controls.
He was stopped over and over (on a trip lasting more than a day) by those military police guys with the “banana” shaped metal medallion hanging from the neck.
Every time he had to produce papers, credentials and answer questions.
Eventually he was in Berlin and once again he got stopped. After the usual checks a new guy arrives at the window and – again – he asks for the papers.
The new guy had a long black leather coat and metal trimmed glasses.
The Captain was really exhausted and, when asked for the millionth time for the papers, he produced them and added – in Italian – “and fuck off to you!”
Two days later there’s the gala dinner to introduce the new liaison officer to the German counterparts. During the dinner the Italian ambassador introduces the captain to General Himmler (yes, the nice guy we all heard about!) and Himmler says – in Italian – “we’ve already had the pleasure”.
He was the last guy to stop him two days before! [X(]
He said that his heart literally stopped and he thought he was already dead.
It turns out Himmler was in a particularly good mood and he made it.
He believed to be the one person to have survived WWII telling off Himmler in Germany [8D] and he was quite proud of the feat (i.e. having told off Himmler, albeit in Italian).

[:D] Great Story!

Less funny, but true:

My grandfather, whom I loved and respected dearly, was a medic in WWII where he spend most
of the war in Finland. I don´t know many details as he disliked this topic and probably had
memories buried deep inside he did not want to revive and did not expect others to understand.

One of the stories he liked to share was this though:

He was a bit behind the frontline in a small wooden patch, standing cover behind a tree because of heavy
shelling of Russian artillery. It was early spring, he said that the ground was covered with snow.

When he looked down he was surprised to see a flower with a vivid color sprouting from the otherwise
white ground (don´t remember the color), and he said he knelt down to pick it as the first
one he had seen after the long Winter, thinking about drying it and sending it to my grandmother.

A few shells hit close by and when he looked looked up again he saw that shrapnel nearly cut the tree
in half, at the height where his head had been only seconds before. He left the flower where grew.

He often said "A flower saved my life."

Without this flower its quite possible I wouldn´t exist.

Strange, when you think about it...

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

He often said "A flower saved my life."

Without this flower its quite possible I wouldn´t exist.

Strange, when you think about it...

Very romantic [:)]

.... butterfly effect [:D]

He was a romantic. My grandmother is the tough one, still healthy and alive at 90 years... [;)]

It's very difficult to get war stories out of grandparents.
My grandfather (now passed) fought in Northern Africa as an officer of "horse artillery" (AAA), but I never managed to get anything out of him.
The only thing I managed was that he really disliked Germans because of post armistice events, I believe.
I discovered that when I came home with a German girlfriend [:D]
Now I have a German wife [:D][:D]
But he got over it [:)]

One of my grandfathers told me that when he was fighting in North Africa he was part of a patrol in a town one night and when they came around the corner of a building they ran into a squad of Germans and both sides ran away with no one firing a shot.

My wifes grandma, who is 81 has no funny stories. She was a teenager during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. She told me of some people being caught with ammuniton and as punishment they were buried alive after seeing their infants thrown in the air and caught on bayonets. I'll never forget her crying as she told me that story. And I'll never forget the smile on her face when she talked about the Americans coming back and giving her dad medical supplies and asking her if she was ok.

ORIGINAL: mc3744
It's very difficult to get war stories out of grandparents.
My grandfather (now passed) fought in Northern Africa as an officer of "horse artillery" (AAA), but I never managed to get anything out of him.
The only thing I managed was that he really disliked Germans because of post armistice events, I believe.
I discovered that when I came home with a German girlfriend [:D]
Now I have a German wife [:D][:D]
But he got over it [:)]

My dad fought in Vietnam. He had a fit when I married an Asian. My mom too! Now my mom loves her more than me! Dad is still pissed though. Never did get over it.

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy

My dad fought in Vietnam. He had a fit when I married an Asian.

I bet he did! [:D]

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy

One of my grandfathers told me that when he was fighting in North Africa he was part of a patrol in a town one night and when they came around the corner of a building they ran into a squad of Germans and both sides ran away with no one firing a shot.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was always like that? [:(]

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy
My dad fought in Vietnam. He had a fit when I married an Asian. My mom too! Now my mom loves her more than me! Dad is still pissed though. Never did get over it.

My Dad got caught up in the first (pre-war) draft in 1940. He got out of the Army on December 1st, 1941, used his accumulated pay to buy a new Chevy and a ring for the girl he left behind, and drove home to St. Louis. By January he was back in the Army, having lost money selling the car and being told by the girl there was no way she was going to wait for him again. In his mind, to the end of his days, Pearl Harbor was a Japanese plot to ruin his life. When I bought a Mazda in the 80's, he refused to even ride in it...

In 1945, my father was with the OSS, stationed at a chalet in the French Alps where the Germans, under Kesselring, were in secret negotiations with the Allies to surrender the German Army in Italy.  Under very "hush, hush" secrecy, the Germans were brought to the chalet for the negotiation sessions.  American GIs gave up their dog tags and parts of their uniforms so that the German officers could appear in disguise.  My father contributed his dog tags. 
 
At some point (the details are fuzzy now), my father ended up in a tunic with his sergeant's stripes, but he had lieutenant's bars on his collar.  He was in a bathroom using a urinal when an American general came in to use the urinal beside his.  After an uncomfortable pause, the general looked at my father and blurted:  "Just what in the hell are you?"

Not such an exiting story, but nevertheless;

-My grandfather (age 15 in 1940) was arrested when the Germans invaded Norway for throwing rocks at German trucks. He was shipped off to the prison camp at Grini (just north of Oslo) and helped expand the airport at Fornebu. After an attempt to escape in -45 he was scheduled to be shipped off to a KZ camp in Germany and arrived at the docks in Oslo May 8th 1945. And was then released as the war was over. Quite a close call.

-In my family we have a large clock hanging on the wall with some ornaments on the bottom of it, but when you look at it, it is clear that it should have ornaments on the top as well. Turns out that ornament was hit by shrapnel by the German bombing of Kristiansand April 9th 1940, and hence was one of the first German bombs dropped on Norway.


Terje

Wow, some very interesting stories from this forum!
We should put a book together [:)]

Two of my uncles enlisted the day war was declared in 1939.

Ken joined the Black Watch, our local infantry regiment, and David was assigned to the Scots Dragoon Guards. They had various secondments, but had not seen each other since the day they left home.

Cairo late 1945, awaiting demob, and there is a football match being played between the Army and RAF, there was a pipe band to entertain the crowd of soldiers before the game in which Ken was a piper, and just before half time, David scored for the Army. That was the first of ken spotting David, and it wasnt until after the game that David saw Ken. That was the first of the two brothers knowing for sure that they had both made it through the war.

I have told this one before but here we go again.

My next door neighbor for two decades, Germain, was from Kiev. He was a member of the young communits and along with hundreds of other teenage volunteers was marched off to the front lines to dig trenches. However, by they time they got to the front the Russian army had retreated and they were snatched up and marched off to labor camps by the Nazis. He spent the next four years working in the camps and to his dying day was a rabid anti-communist. He passed away about two years ago. After the war he moved to Paris where he married the most beautiful woman (Finnish) that I have ever seen and then ended up in the US as a Russian language broadcaster for Voice of America. (How many of you are old enough to remember Voice of America? [;)])

My grandfather was a soldier at war for a little less then 5 days. He was a 20 year old draftee in the dutch army in 1940 stationed at the port of Den Helder (fort Kijkduin). There were only two things he told me about the war:

The first was a story about a mate of his being shot in the arse by a strafing luftwaffe fighter.. he laughed about that one as it was a "happy" ending and they both got through it..

The second thing was "not all germans are bad" which was a good thing to learn (sounds stupid I know) growing up in the 80s and 90s where the germans were still very much disliked..

My grandmother told me a few more things after he died in 99. Apparantly he threw his weapon in the water after the surrender and managed to evade captivity until he got called up for "arbeiteinsatz".. working in the german war industry. He befriended the family he was quartered with and they remained friends after the war (probably where the "second thing" came from).. At some point my grandfather was allowed to go home to visit his parents who were married for 25 years. He went into hiding and spend the remainder of the war "somewhere".. Reminds me, I have to ask my mother where that was.

Grandma also told me my grandfather was very lucky. His unit was about to be send to the "afsluitdijk" to reinforce troops defending against 1st cavalry division.. The surrender might have saved his life.

Attached you find a picture of a guy in a 1940s dutch uniform, in the background you see the headstones of some of the fallen of that short, 5 day, defense by the dutch army..

My Grandfather had alot of WW2 adventures at sea in three theatres. One of his encounters with imminent peril occurred when he was the skipper of a ship interdicting German weather stations in Greenland. His boat got locked in sea ice for over a month. One day a Blohm un Voss trimotor flying boat came by and began strafing the ship (which had one main deck gun and several .50cal for armament). So he walked onto the bridge and began shooting at it with a .30-06 cal Springfield 1901. In the event, the a.c. was hit well enough to set one of its engines to smoking, and it flew away. His ship was not damaged, and no one was injured.

Much later, in 1945, when he was skipper of a different (much larger) ship, his crew took a Kamikaze under fire near Karema Retto and struck it. The pilot apparently diverted from his ship and struck the USS Terror.

He was in Life Magazine once. Skipper of a patrol boat turned over to Iceland under Lend Lease. One of his many adventures on Greenland Patrol.

My great grandfather was in the German army in the early 30s.  When his enlistment was up he came to America.  Times were hard in the 30s as we all know.  He enlisted in the American army to support his family.  Ended up going to ETO.  In Pattons army and actually fought againist his old unit.  Not much more is known about what he did or saw, he didn't talk much about it to my family.  Not many of my relatives talk about there experences in the military besides the good times.  And a bunch of us served its sad.
 
doc   

ORIGINAL: crsutton

I have told this one before but here we go again.

My next door neighbor for two decades, Germain, was from Kiev. He was a member of the young communits and along with hundreds of other teenage volunteers was marched off to the front lines to dig trenches. However, by they time they got to the front the Russian army had retreated and they were snatched up and marched off to labor camps by the Nazis. He spent the next four years working in the camps and to his dying day was a rabid anti-communist. He passed away about two years ago. After the war he moved to Paris where he married the most beautiful woman (Finnish) that I have ever seen and then ended up in the US as a Russian language broadcaster for Voice of America. (How many of you are old enough to remember Voice of America? [;)])

Remember it? It's still out there! It even has a web site.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/

My Great Uncle was in the Territorial Army (Volunteer part time reserve) pre-war in Sunderland. it was a AT regt. They were shipped to India then Singapore in late 1941, however their AT guns were lost when the ship carrying them was lost. They landed in Singapore, were used very briefly as infantry, then were caught in the surrender. He was a prisoner in Burma for 4 years. His health never recovered and he died young, in the 70's. My Great Aunt had to wait the entire war, and literally did not recognise him on his return. She still has very mixed feelings about the Japanese, along with many of her generation locally. There were very mixed feelings when Nissan opened a car plant near Sunderland.

My Dad was 7 when the war started, was in India. He returned to UK early 1942, in convoy with HMS Warspite. Saw her practice MA firing on the horizon.