Veterans. The treasure of our time.

[Randy]

I saw a neat piece on ABC News tonight. A group of vets (average age is 74) has purchased an ex-Navy WWII LST from the Greek Navy headed for the scrap yard!! They are in the process of making it sea worthy, sail it to Alabama and make it a WWII Memorial. They themselves are going to sail it! With guts like that, no wonder they made it through the Depression, and WWII! Truly the Greatest
Generation. We owe them so much we'll never know.
Semper Fi
Randy

[AmmoSgt]

this thread begs for this story.. i was stationed in germany several times, my first tour was with the 59th Bde SASCOM in support of the German 3rd Corp. i guess it was about 1973 when i along with the other Officers and NCO's were invited to a party aparently a tradition in the Bundeswher to celibrate a soldiers 30th aniversery of service (hint you do the math, at the time i was clueless). The Guest of Honor was our Support Battalions SGM a very dour gray unasuming man that I didn't think of as anything too special since I had had to "Help" him qualify with the M-16 just a couple of weeks before by occasionaly using the range buttons to drop the targets for him to score ( at my CO's suggestion). We were advised to secure rides as there would be some drinking involved , since the custom was to toast each award or medal a soldier had recieved in service with a beer . Knowing that the Bundeswher didn't give out medals i should have taken the hint,,, but i was young and nieve. I spoke enough german by then to get the gist of what was going on and the General reading of the General Proclimation of 30 years loyal and good service to His country was pretty much what i expected all very Bundswher and offical.....
Then the Beersteins came out ......
OK i will do the math for ya 30 years in 1973 Bundswher started in 1950 thats only 23 years
1939 Poland 2 medals 2 prost X's
1941 Russia more medals more beer
1942 Russia still more medals more beer
1943 Italy more medals more beer
1944 2 Iron crosses ( aparently ya got an Iron Cross for taking out 4 tanks sorta like an Ace ) France
1945 i was told the next day I had 18 beers when i passed out.
I was right the Bundswher doesn't give out medals

I have met many WW2 vets in my day even served with a few in the late 60's early 70's Sometimes ya had to look hard at the fruitsalad to see an odd unusual ribbon on their class A's or maybe be sharp enough to spot the odd unit or squadron patch on a tattered baseball cap the service stripes on the sleave God Bless Them All

[Greg McCarty]

Originally posted by JNL:
I had a landlord back in the early '80s. He was a little strange but the rent was cheap and if I had a problem with the house he would pop right over and fix it. Whenever he came over to work on something - he always would sit himself down at our piano and play (badly) and sing (worse). He came over one Saturday to work on the plumbing and I had all my Squad Leader boards out on the dining room table playing one of the Market Garden scenarios. Bob looks down and the boards and says "Hey - that looks a little like Nijmegen." So I look and him and ask "You know a little about WWII?". He looks me right in the eyes and says "Nah - don't like reading about that stuff. Besides I jumped there." My jaw dropped. Turned out he was with the 101st. Jumped at Normandy and Operation Market Garden. Wounded in Holland and spent the rest of the war in a hospital. He had some great stories. We ended up moving out about a year later - he passed on around 1993 or so. He never did learn to play the piano very well. I do miss his singing though.

This is a great thread - who else has stumbled on a vet?

Me. I've rarely told this story, because few outside this forum seem that interested. I grew up in the 1950s. Back then, veterans were all over the place; my mom dated people (she was devorced by then)
many of whom were vets. Like the guy, (Healy) who had a vivid scar on his left hand. I was eight then, and was reading books on WWII as fast as I could get my hands on them. "whats that scar from?"
I asked. A Japanese soldier had charged him
with a fixed bayonet somewhere in the Pacific. So he grabbed the bayonet with one hand in an effort to divert the blade. Evidently the Japanese soldier had not survived the encounter. But the real story was the family that lived above us in a duplex between 1956 and 1959. There were two boys,
just a bit older than I who lived there, and with whom I played constantly during that period. One day I noticed a picture on the mantle of their dad. Nothing unusual; but he was wearing an officers uniform and standing next to what was obviously an ME 109 --complete with swastika on the tail. Next to the photo on the mantle was a cerimonial dagger; here again, with swastika. Now... these folks were Hungarian! Spoke that language in the house all the time. I asked the boys about all this. Here's how it went: Their father Charles, had been a pilot in the Hungarian Air Force, and had spent most of the war on the Russion front, presumably shooting at Yaks. Sometime around 1944/45 when things stated looking a bit grim for Hungary and Rumania, Charlie was fighting on the ground. The Hungarian Air Force by that time probably decimated. The details get fuzzy at this point, but Charlie sees the handwriting on the wall and makes arrangements for his wife and one son to get out of Europe down through Greece. Don't ask me how. He was one lucky son of a gun. During this process Charlie was still behind, fighting off Russians while the rest of the family spent some time in Austria. It was here the second son, Attila was born. At some point Charlie was reunited with them and they got out though Greece to America. I have read stories about the U.S. government being involved in this kind of emigration in the aftermath of the war. But I can only guess at what went on. The last time I saw any of them was in 1961, when I ran into Attila who told me they had bought a little house in another part of town. The two boys were well educated, and Charlie saw to it that they were sent to Catholic Military High school.
(St Thomas) in our town. I can only imagine what a wealth of information that man was, but I was only eight. It took me years of
thought and maturity to realize what their
situation represented.




------------------

Greg.

37 mill AA...
can suddenly ruin your day.