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My dad was in India when when WWII started and was shipped back to the UK. He married my mum in 1960 and the following year he was posted to Cyprus and they went on the same ship he'd been sent home from India in.
"Grown ups are what's left when skool is finished."
"History started badly and hav been geting steadily worse."
- Nigel Molesworth.
My Grandfather was posted in Alaska at some point during the WW2 era, but apparently did not fight in the Aleutians. Never got too much out of him before it was too late to ask.
One of my uncles was a B-24 pilot in the ETO, Italian front. I don't know what position he flew, but I do know that his plane was shot down over Italy. He managed to bail out, and landed safely. Then perhaps due to some kind Italians, he was able to avoid capture and made it back to friendly lines.
I was once told by a friend that his grandfather flew P-47's in the Italian theater, and I wonder now if my uncle and his grandfather ever encountered one another...
I have a few stories as well. My grandfather was an infantryman in the Italian Army in WWI on the Austro-Hungarian front. He was wounded in the head and had a metal plate put in. Somehow, he survived and moved to the US during WWI. I was fortunate to grow up with him in but he died when I was 4. I never learned any details obviously.
My Dad and two uncles (Dad's brother and brother-in-law) were in WWII. My Dad went to the ETO and my uncles went to the PTO.
My Dad didn't talk much about his experience. Just a couple of funny stories is all. He landed on Utah beach in early July, 1944. The Germans were still shelling the beach. I have a couple of pictures he took from an LST moving to shore showing explosions from the shelling. I never realized they shelled the beach that long. After the war ended, his squad was sent to garrison a small town. They were not given any coordinates, just the name. They found the town in eastern Germany, along the Polish border. (They obviously didn't know about Germany being divided among the 4 Allied countries.) They got there at dusk and were pretty nervous because of all the Soviet soldiers. When they arrived, there was a Soviet mortar unit garrisoning the town. He recalled that the unit was ~50% female. A Soviet officer spoke English and they talked with him and the Soviet commander for awhile. They didn't think my Dad's squad was in the right place (and neither did my Dad's squad). [:D] The Soviets suggested they spend the night and figure it all out in the morning. It was dark and they feared the US soldiers may get shot because of their funny uniforms. My Dad's squad stayed. He mentioned an all night party and lots of vodka. (It's interesting, but I never saw my father drink.) Anyway, they found another town in western Germany by the same name on the map (in the American sector). They left the next morning and drove across Germany to that town, which turned out to be the correct one.
My two uncles were in the PTO. Uncle Rudy (my Dad's brother) joined the Coast Guard in 1941 figuring he'd be safe from being drafted. He didn't know about the Coast Guard being absorbed into the navy in wartime. Oops. [:D] Uncle Chuck (brother-in-law) ended up in the navy. Not sure if he enlisted or was drafted. Uncle Rudy ended up on LST-66 and Uncle Chuck ended up driving landing craft from a APA (don't know the name unfortunately). They were always on the lookout for each other but were in different Amphibious Corps so figured it would never happen. It turned out that their ships were tied up next to each other after the Luzon invasion. Small world. They went their separate ways then. I don't know any more about Uncle Chuck but Uncle Rudy's story gets more interesting.
Uncle Rudy was on LST-66 the entire war and spent a good amount of time in the Solomons. In 1945, she participated in the invasion of Okinawa. Uncle Rudy was a gunner on the bow 40mm quad mount. Gun crews (and most other crews) were usually organized by nationality. So, the bow mount was all Italians and the stern 40mm quad mount happened to be Irish. For some reason I never found out, someone on the stern mount was injured or got sick and Uncle Rudy was sent to help man the stern mount. He was really upset because he had to leave all of his friends and work with the Irish. Not 5 minutes later, a kamikaze hit LST-66, right on the bow mount. All of his friends were killed. He saw it happen but fortunately was uninjured. LST-66 survived and so did Uncle Rudy.
They all survived the war but are all gone now. My Dad and Uncle Chuck died a day apart and were buried on the same day next to each other in the cemetery. Being a pall bearer twice in one day was pretty rough. Uncle Rudy lasted several years more and gave me some of my most cherished possessions, including his awards and his dixie cup from the war.
Here's my twopennyworth... My father's older brothers were both pilots in the RAF - the younger one missed the war, completing his training in Canada in '45, although he made a career out of the RAF and ended up commanding a squadron of shackletons (10,000 rivets flying in close formation) and then as a military attache in Iran and Oz... Buy my dad's older brother flew on operations in the Med with 14 Squadron - also maritime patrol. They got B-26s in late '42, hand-me-downs from the USAAF squadrons that arrived with TORCH and used them on anti shipping missions from from Algeria and Tunisia. During April '43, his plane set out on on a lone anti-shipping patrol and never returned.. He was co-pilot, the pilot was an Aussie if I remember correctly. But damn, what happened to that B-26 and its crew?
I was in Malta a couple of months ago and took a look at the war memorial where he is remembered - still MIA. We have a few operational losses in AE, but do we ever get birds disappear without a trace?
Mike, I'm with you. My dad and his older brother Jack died this year, a few months apart. That's partially why I took a look my Uncle Pete's memorial in Valetta. He was 21 when he went missing - wow, I was a snotty clueless undergrad at that age. They were a special generation.
I'm a Gen X'er so my Dad's story is from the Korean War. This falls under the heading of comic relief.
He went over as a Captain in an armored unit. He was an upstanding young gentleman so the CO made him the regimental VD Officer, a post I didn't know existed but which was apparently focused on keeping the GIs out of, err, trouble. Problem was, Dad was raised in the Bible Belt (South Carolina) and really had little idea what VD was or how one might contract it. He was thus a terrible VD officer and his unit had a lot of, shall we say... Ops losses.
The CO decided to transfer Dad to the USO since he was a good ball player. Dad spent the rest of the war touring with them and playing shortstop. He batted nearly .400, won the Pacific Championship, and eventually got drafted by the Boston Red Sox as a result (he never played because he blew out his arm in Spring Training).
One night in Seoul the North Koreans sent infiltrators into the city to cause mayhem. All US personnel, even shortstops, were put on alert and patrolled the streets. My Dad reported for duty with the only weapon still in his possession... a Louisville Slugger! [:D]
My grandfather (my mother's father) was a soldier in Austro-Hungarian empire in WWI. He was captured by Russians in 1915 on Eastern front. He was wounded in arm (bullet passed through just above his right hand wrist) and he got another bullet in his groin - luckily for him, instead of carrying his dog-tag around neck he had it in his pocket (in his pants) and bullet stopped when it hit it (I still have his dog tags!)...
He was transferred very deep into Russia and come home in 1921/1922 (with WWI and after Russian civil war he was unable to travel).
Luckily for him he was forest engineer and he almost immediately found himself appointed as a foreman on one big estate there (all Russian men, of course, were fighting in war and thus there was no one to take care of huge estate).
In the meantime my grandmother never lost faith that he would return (she waited as his fiancée for 8 years) and they got married in 1923.
Strangely enough when he and my grandmother got children (4 in all) he insisted that their first daughter would called Olga and second one Myra (my mother was their third daughter and my uncle their only son)... God knows why... [;)]
BTW, I still remember sitting in his lap as a child (he died in 1977 as almost 100 years old) listening to him talking about his military and post WWI adventures!
P.S.
I will never forget what he said: "Communism is nice thing in theory but in practice it would require people to be angles - which they are not and thus this whole thing is one grand illusion and utopia!" [8D]
When he returned the only big thing he carried with him (apart from clothes on his back) was aluminum pot he used to cook all his meals - I still have that pot at home! [:D]
P.P.S.
My other grandfather (my father's father) was in Vienna studying medicine during WWI so he was hot involved.
I have a crazy, true world war 2 story, quite different from the ones posted thus far. [:)]
Now, I am Canadian, but have lived several years in Japan. My first experience living in Japan was as a high school exchange student, living with a Japanese host family.
This host family's grandfather, whom I met four or five times when he was already at the ripe old age of 93 and 94 (he has since unfortunately passed away) had served as a military doctor in China, in which unit I cannot remember. But I saw black and white pictures of him serving around nanchang, posing with his battalion for a picture under the rising sun flag.
Of his military service I know little, as he would not talk about it much. However, I know that he had an interest in China since before the war, and had specifically requested a posting there when he was drafted from his civilian practice. He spoke Chinese quite well, and often served as his unit's unofficial interpreter.
When Japan lost the war, he became (for reasons unknown to me) separated from his unit and unable to get a ship to take him back to his country. This was, to put it mildly, extremely inconvenient for him, as his young wife, whom he had married only a few years earlier, was still in Saitama, north of Tokyo. The Chinese Civil War was ongoing, however, the Japanese administration in Shanghai and Beijing was in the process of collapsing, and the entire country was apparently in a state of chaos. So, this military Japanese doctor asked some Chinese acquaintances he had to hide him, knowing full well that he was in grave danger for his life should he ever be discovered by someone who had a particular grudge against Japanese soldiers.
His Chinese friends did in fact, harbour him, and during the summer of 1946 he came out of hiding and went to Shanghai to open up a doctor's practice, all the while pretending to be Chinese. In a country like China, his strange accent was easy to explain as he simply pretended he was from a random village in some other part of the country where everybody spoke like he did. [:D]
Now, he worked in Shanghai for a few years, becoming a respected doctor, until the outbreak of the Korean war. The Chinese authorities, desperately needing trained military doctors for the "People's Volunteers", and having heard that he had served in the military during the war, requested his services. He, not wanting them to start looking further into his rather shaky background, was not in a position to refuse. In the early months of 1951 this man thus once again found himself fighting in a war, though this time on the side of the Communist Chinese!!! [X(] When I asked him how North Korea was, he simply replied "It was cold. It was really damn cold."
This man, somewhat miraculously, survived the Korean war as well, and went back to Shanghai, when he continued looking for a way to get back to Japan, while always remaining careful not to divulge his true identity, given the extent of anti-Japanese sentiment running through China at that time. His chance finally came in 1954, with the first agreement for the official repatriation of Japanese Soldiers to Japan between the PRC and the Japanese government. Lack of official recognition of the PRC by the Japanese had, among other things, made the agreement take this long.
This story also has a happy ending. Once this doctor went back to Saitama, he found his wife, with whom he had had absolutely no contact for over 10 years, still faithfully waiting for him to come home; his death had never been confirmed, and she had never lost hope.
I met both of them several times in 2005-2006. The doctor has since passed away, but his wife is still alive and healthy at a robust 92. The doctor, by the time I met him, was already in poor health, and possibly going a little senile. He often intercut Japanese with Chinese in his speech (no one else in his family spoke Chinese, so it was difficult for everybody to understand), and he had difficulty remembering my name. Well, that last part may just have been old age[:D]. Nonetheless, the man's room was an impressive sight. It contained, not only Chrysanthemum military medals of the IJA which he recieved for his service in China, but also Hammer-and-Sickle medals from the PLA, which he gained fighting in Korea. Interspersed were black and white pictures of him with his IJA regiment, and a very striking portrait of him in a Mao suit.
This man was one of my main inspirations to begin studying Chinese, and Sino-Japanese relations.
"Hard pressed on my right; my left is in retreat. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking."
-Gen. Joffre, before the battle of the Marne
My other grandfather had body pick up detail on all of those island hopping campaigns. My grandmother told me that his mind was never the same when he got back.
After 16 years, Civ II still has me in it's clutches LOL!!!
Now CIV IV has me in it's evil clutches!
I have to say that I'm really enjoying this thread. Really very, very interesting.
I guess I'll contribute with another one.
As I posted initially my grandfather was not a big fan of Germans.
In '43 he was in Italy commanding a fort’s garrison (as far as I understood anywhere between 50 to 150 people).
At the time he must have been a major as he was a retired Lt. Col. when I was born.
Since his unit was horse drawn AA Artillery he used to go around on a horse!
One day during an Allied bombing a bomb exploded very close to him and the horse got crazy.
He fell off the horse but the foot got stuck in the stirrup and he was throuwn around by the animal gone crazy with the explosions.
Needless to say he was not in good conditions and the leg was shattered in several points (he limped his whole life after that), he was therefore taken to a nearby civil hospital.
A couple of days later the armistice between Italy and the Allies took place and - as we often do - we switched side! [;)]
At that point there were basically three kinds of Italians: a) those who still believed fascisms -> Repubblica di Salò, b) the monarchic ones (my grandfather), happy to switch to the Allied side and c) those who just wanted it over with or couldn’t afford to choose.
As it happens the entire garrison (and wartime friends) of my grandfather was made up of monarchists. Unfortunately they were in Lazio, above the Gothic line, in Axis territory.
The Germans came and asked for their surrender. They refused and they all died! [:(]
My grandfather was spared by a bomb and a horse, just two days before! But he lost all his comrades.
He was subsequently hidden by the locals and managed to stay hidden till the American liberation. He finished the war as an interpreter for the American forces in Rome.
After that he never managed to really like the Germans - despite my beautiful wife! [8D] [:)]– but he was civil enough. [:)]
A bit more on our family story. This thread got a family debate going! My 84 years old ma corrected me - it was 9th May '43 - presumed shot down my granny was told.
This is the official RAAF record of the loss of FK155...
"Marauder FK 155 of 14 Sqn RAF, British North African Forces, took off from Bone at
0510 hours on 9 May 1943, to carry out a shipping reconnaissance. Repeated requests for
weather reports were not answered by FK 155, and the aircraft did not return to base after
the mission.
Crew:
RAAF 400940 Flt Sgt Russell, T G Captain (Pilot)
RAF Flt Sgt Fennell, P (2nd Pilot)
RAAF 401007 WO Dyson, F V (Navigator)
RAAF 401529 Flt Sgt Nicholas, W G (Wireless Operator Air Gunner)
RAF Sgt Armstrong, J W (Wireless Operator Air Gunner)
RAF Sgt Ayton, W H (Wireless Operator Air Gunner)
Following post war enquiries and investigations, it as recorded in 1948 that the missing
crew had lost their lives at sea."
I tried to find pic of 155 on the 14 Sqn website with no luck - nice pic of FK 144 though and one of a torp all loaded up... I always liked those B-26A's AE - and this is why...
That is one of the most crazily and brilliantly messed up stories I've ever heard. Amazing!
I think the Mongols who were kidnapped by the Russians to fight the Germans who captured them and stuck them in an Ostfront battalion which got captured in Normandy in June 1944 might have him beaten for length of travel but for TIME I think he must have most people beaten. Do you have any pictures of the medals/room? I'd be really interested to see that.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
This is a great thread. Lots of stories worth telling.
My family is from Switzerland so my grandfathers were both mobilized and spent the war sitting along the frontier looking at the Germans on the other side (they were both non-comms in the cavalry).
However, on my mother's side, my grandfather and the family lived in a farm about 500 yards from the Swiss-French border. Once in a while, either a Frenchman or Allied pilot/airman and sometimes Jewish refugees would get across and give themselves up to the Swiss border agents to be 'interned' for the military/resistance (which actually meant either a nice camp or doing voluntary work) or put up in civilian housing for the refugees. My grandfather's older sister was the canteen head at one of these internment camps, where there was a smattering of Poles, French, and Czechs (she actually had already done this in WWI).
One story I heard from them and a few from their generation was that the Allies would call up shortly before the passage over Switzerland of Allied bombers to indicate the altitude they would fly at. The Swiss AA would then fire so the shells would not go further than 3-5000 feet below the bombers.
My wife is French and Belgian so she has family with very different experiences. Her maternal grandfather was a chemical engineer and a manager at the Belgian chemical firm Solvay. He was also part of the Belgian resistance, regularly sabotaging production of the chemical plant he worked at with his fellow resistance employees. Well, someone, most likely an employee, denounced his activities sometime in 1942 and he was picked up a first time by the police. For lack of evidence he was let go, and promptly went back to sabotaging production. He was denounced again in late 42 or early 43. This time the Gestapo picked him up. He was sent to a concentration camp with 50 other Belgian resistance people (yes, resistance people were regularly treated to the concentration camps). Either the second or third camp he ended up in was Dora. Dora, which was mainly underground, was the production facility for the V-2 rocket (thus he was sent there because of his chemical engineering background though he didn't do that there). He found himself there with French, Dutch, Belgian, Polish etc. prisoners under concentration camp/slave labor conditions. He told my wife and others in the family that those that died the quickest under these conditions were either under 30 or over 40 (too young psychologically or too old physically). He was 30-something at the time. He also said the worst of the prisoners in terms of relations with other prisoners were the Poles.
Of the 50 that were sent with him to the camps, only he and two others made it home in 1945. He left weighing about 80kg (176 lbs). He returned weighing 35kg (77lbs). He did live until the late 90's but the only child born to him and his wife after the war (their fourth; the three others were born before he was picked up by the Gestapo) was deeply autistic, so you wonder if there wasn't some ongoing effect from his passage in the camps.
My wife's father, his parents and his siblings, though French were living in Brussels at the outbreak of the war. Sometime during the period 1940 to the invasion of the USSR by Germany, he and his siblings (all children at the time) got into the grounds of the Soviet embassy in Brussels and stole the big Soviet flag. Their mother used it to make clothes for the brood of children for the duration of the occupation. For those who know European comics, they lived in the same building as the creator of the Tintin series, Hergé. He would regularly show his latest pages to them to see their reaction.
a lot of guys still go missing over the English channel, especially during the Rugby season - though they usually turn up worse for wear the following Monday morning..
My Grandfather joined the 1st Cavalry Division in May of 1941, which at the time was a horse cavalry outfit. He was in division artillery and later in the year when the 153 FA Battalion was stood up he was transferred out of the division to this Army level assets. The reason he was transferred was because he was one of the few guys in the outfit that knew how to drive.
Since he did know how to drive he became part of the team to evaluate the brand new scout vehicle that had come in for evaluation. This vehicle was called.. wait for it… the Jeep. He was involved in test of three varieties, the four wheel drive, the four wheel steering (yes, four wheel steering) and an amphibious model. He related that the four wheel drive was outstanding; the four wheel steering was a disaster as every bump in the road caused the steering wheel to jerk, and the amphibious…. They got this great idea that an amphibious vehicle should have the same performance as a stone skipping across water if you got it going fast enough. So, they found a stretch of road that went down hill an on to the water where they were testing the vehicle. Well, they get in the jeep and build up a right good head of steam and are travelling like 40 MPH when they hit the water. It didn’t skip like a stone, the belly stove in and it sunk like a stone. They immediately reported the vehicle as defective in emergency maneuvers! He was always amazed they had bought off that it had failed a legitimate test when they were just goofing off with it. But, then again, maybe his horse cavalry superiors didn’t want the “mechanical horse” to be successful?
After this bit of excitement, his unit got down to business. They left Fort Bliss for Fort Sill and became one of the school battalions at the artillery school teaching soldiers to fire the 105 mm howitzer. In 1944 they were alerted and deployed to Europe in May ’44, just before deployment they were hastily equipped with the brand new M-1 8 inch gun pulled by a high speed tractor. They went into combat in July ’44 as a theater level asset in First Army. The primary means of communication between FO’s and the FDC was wire. My grandfather was in and then finally head of the 153rd’s HQ’s wire section and was stringing wire all over France, Belgium and Germany. Stringing wire between forward observers (FO) and the fire direction control center (FDC) is conducive to being in very fluid places on the battlefield, and simple wrong turns can get you on the wrong side of the line, and it did.
There are more amazing tales than can be related here. One of the more interesting items of memorabilia I have is a picture of him where he had been blown off a pole by a German artillery round and his hands are pure white as had been wearing gloves and the concussion had knocked all the blood out of them. In the picture it looks like he is wearing white gloves until you look close and realize the bare skin on his hands is snow white and he has a deep beet red face from the concussion. Then again, in this picture he’s standing there smiling in a pose while artillery is dropping in the neighborhood, there is a bit of the wild and crazy guy aspect in the picture to begin with. The Germans are dropping artillery, one lands close enough to blow you 15 feet to the ground from a wire pole and so what would you do? Pose for a picture of course!
Why am I sharing my opinion? Because I am such a special snowflake that others need my knowledge. What…there are like a billion snowflakes? Oh, well isn't that special.
One of my colleagues here is the grandson of General Fu Zuoyi (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Zuoyi) of the Nationalist Chinese Army. My colleague himself was one of the demonstrators at Tien An Men (we still joke with him that we believe he's Tank Man, the guy with the groceries standing in front of the Chinese tank).
I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the room the last time I was there, which was already almost two years ago now. I would like to take some pictures, unfortunately, their house was only about 100 km away from Fukushima and well, you know what happened at Fukushima...[:(]
Of course, when the earthquake happened phoned over there to ask if everybody was ok, and nobody seemed to be hurt (the fear of radiation, particularly for the 16 year old grandson, is another matter). However, a wall of their house had apparently collapsed due to the earthquake. I would believe they saved the framed medals and pictures, but I dont know where they are at the moment. I will try to ask if I can take a picture of them the next time I meet the family.
"Hard pressed on my right; my left is in retreat. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking."
-Gen. Joffre, before the battle of the Marne
My grandfather only told me one story before he died in the 80's - he was a Marine in Guadalcanal during the fighting there & his squad was sleeping one night in a supposedly secure area & he gets up at night to go relieve himself & then comes back later & goes back to sleep. When he awoke in the morning he found the rest of his squad dead w/ slit throats.
Growing up I used to live next door to a gentleman to was attached to Patton's 3rd Army HQ as a reporter & he used to tell some of the real stuff not in the movie & he also had some kind of day to day op report book for 3rd Army as well signed by Patton. I assume it's still in his family but I'd really like to look at that again.
I used to work w/ another man who was a B-24 pilot shot down on a Ploesti mission & spent the rest of the war as a POW. He died several years ago during heart surgery but he was an inspiration for me to get my pilots license.
