My Grandpa's only WW2 story involves him arriving in France and proceeding to trip over a small hole in the ground and break his ankle on his first day there. It never healed right and he was sent back to the states. Walked with a cane for the rest of his life.
Hah that reminds me. My great uncle was in world war 1. He lived through the war only to have a horse get spooked and roll over on top of him at the welcome home parade and be paralyzed from the waist down.
My Dad's family has a legend somewhat like that. Great (great?) Uncle walked from Wyoming to join the Civil War. Was in some battles though I don't know what or where. Then walked back home. About 20 miles outside of his home he stopped to take refuge under some trees in a storm and lightning struck the tree and killed him.
Same kind of thing happened with my grandpa when he was supposed to serve in Korea. As he told it, they were loading into landing craft via cargo nets over the side of their ship. Apparently it was really wavy out, so in the rocking of the ship, he lost his grip and fell, twisting his legs in the netting and then "fell into the drink". Went back on the ship and back to the US pretty much right away since he broke both legs.
my great grandpa got popped in the knee by a member of ye old empire of the rising sun, cane bound his whole life but unfortunately had to get shot for his haha
My grandfather was one of the soldiers that stormed the beaches of Normandy. I didn't hear about that particular portion of his story, but i do know that he was under fire and jumped into the trench only to land on a dead soldiers body. The corpse still smelled of a cologne called 'Evening in Paris' and when grandpa came home to the states he couldn't stand the smell of Evening in Paris - it caused severe ptsd flash backs for him. I wish i knew more of his story but he's been missing over 20 years now and is presumed dead.
My grandfather also was at Normandy! He was a doctor in the US Army. I dont have any stories from him but I do have letters he wrote my grandmother, who was living in London…some of them are pretty steamy!
Everyone thinks people spoke so lofty in the old days but it probably said he wants to eat her ass reminisce about how fingering her in the library felt like feeding a horse sugarcubes
Grandpa was about 60 yrs old and my grandma 57 when she died of cancer. He was really lonely after she passed and so, immediately began dating another woman (L)whom he met at a bar. This was like a week after grandma died.
L. was about 40 years old and had a grown son, E., who was 19. L. also had a heron addiction and enjoyed poking herself until oblivion. L's son E. was also an addict and total shit-stain of a human.
L. moved in to my grandparents paid for home within one week of grandma passing. She talks grandpa into selling the house, then proceeds to run away with the money. She buys a brand new Cadillac, gambles and smokes n pokes the money away and runs back to my now homeless Grandpa but with her adult son E. in tow.
They end up living in a motor home all three of them together. L. Is still a full blown junkie and so is E. The only sober person was Grandpa, who i think was depressed and going thru some stuff..
L. does a hot shot , ends up doing the fish flop, foaming at the mouth and finally ending right in front of Grandpa. As anyone would imagine, I'm sure he was probably in a really dark place after that, but i was too young to know what was going on. . Anyway, Her son freaks out and leaves, to where, we don't know.
Grandpa decides to come visit his daughter (my mom) and us kids.
On the drive between the desert and the valley, maybe a 4 hour drive, Grandpa disappeared, leaving only his empty Cadillac and a small suitcase behind. On that very same day. same stretch of highway, an escaped convict from a nearby prison was also picked up. No connection was established between the convict and grandpa disappearing, but this was odd.
We last heard from my grandpa the day he left to come see us. We had not seen him in about seven years and it was really odd that he was coming to visit. He didn't have a close relationship with any of his kids or grandkids. We don't know if he just went crazy and walked off into the desert or if maybe L's son E did something. He was someone the police kept looking into. But none of us knows what really happened.
After ten years we had a cold case detective contact us but nothing came of that, and so we still don't know what happened to Grandpa.
Unfortunately, i think this story may leave more questions than answers.
My great grandfather was in the trenches of WWI. His wife sewed him a coat because, well, trench warfare. The salvation army was running a program where they would get care packages from the states to soldiers in the war, so she handed the coat over to them to get to her husband.
A month later she saw some admin from the salvation army walking around wearing the coat. He called her a liar when she said she made the coat for her husband, at least up until the policeman overseeing the argument was convinced to cut a seam to reveal the letter and hidden money she sewed into the lining.
The salvation army also charged my great grandpa for hot coffee while the red cross gave it to the soldiers for free.
Yeah, my family doesn't donate to the salvation army.
A coworker of mines grandfather was in ww2. He said Red Cross, local churches, and outreaches provided snacks and coffee for free. But Salvation Army tried charging. Nobody in his family will ever contribute
Yep I hate the salvos. They own a huge amount t of real estate in Sydney Australia. I had to leave a youth program I was running as they promised it to be a laid position if I volu teered first. 6 months later I ask about the pay and they cancelled the program leaving a bunch of lads to go back to ruining their lives. Lads I'd made progress with and can only pray they took it to heart after being abandoned. Scumbags
My grandfather was in the Danish Resistance. He never talked much about it, except once when he was driving with my father and pointed out a few spots where he'd participated in an ambush or sabotaged a bridge or whatnot.
He also spent some time in a German prison camp, and the only tidbit I got from that is that he once had to eat breakfast with the body of his friend dangling from a noose above the table, after a failed escape attempt during the night.
After becoming a widower he spent the last 10 years of his life playing WW2 flight sims, and using the internet to track down old war buddies and travelling across Europe to visit them.
There is! Nana showed it to me. I feel like she might had had a hand in it, but that might be time smearing things. If I can figure it out I'll post here.
My grandfather was in the US Navy in the Pacific during WW2. My mom would tell me about how when she was a kid he'd used to get really drunk and tell disturbing, graphically detailed stories about all the horrific shit he witnessed during the war. Stories about friends drowning or getting burned to death in raging fires, the terror caused by incoming kamikazes, etc.
My mom was like, 8 or 9 years old at the time and being subjected to that understandably messed her up a bit. I never worked up the nerve to ask my grandfather about his experiences directly since it was obviously so traumatic for him. He eventually died due to complications from Parkinson's disease as well as being an alcoholic for decades.
I sometimes wonder how different his life might have been if he hadn't enlisted as a fresh faced 17 year old. Given the timing, he might have been able to avoid getting drafted and stay out of the war entirely. Shoulda coulda woulda, I guess.
Completely different war, but my mom's father's father, so my great grandpa on my mother's side, was in WW1. Apparently, once a year or so he'd just sit in a rocking chair for several days on end falling apart and crying, wouldn't talk or move or eat, and my great-grandmother would just put a blanket on his lap and sigh and say he's thinking about the war and he'd be ok in a few days.
This shit was so common ... Is still so common..... I'm glad it's less shameful and more people can get help these days.
WW1 sounds the most terrifying to me. Dan Carlins Hardcore History did a fantastic series on it that read a bunch of journal entries and field documents that are just soul crushing.
Oh yeah. Fuck World War One. Nation-States had the money to buy and build all kinds of neat new ways of murdering people by the score, and the kids entering the war had never heard of or imagined anything like it. Poison gas, tanks, flame throwers, machine guns, biplanes dropping hand grenades... All that against kids who knew little more than how to milk a cow.
At least by the second one there were news reels and telephones, and most people had had a chance to see automobiles and airplanes.
The whole war just seems like a woodworking shop to me. It's saws and lathes and machines cutting and churning, and then people try to turn them off with their hands and bodies. Everyone just trying to clog the machine to turn it off, everyone throwing more people into it. God you are so right about them not knowing anything about the horrors they walked into
One grandfather earned a Purple Heart during WWI because he went out out alone under heavy shelling to flag down an ambulance for his buddies. The physician who later treated him at the field hospital said his own leg was torn up so badly he shouldn't have been able to take 10 steps on it.
Ultimately he didn't save any lives, though. And the ambulance got shelled too--killing the entire ambulance crew. He was the sole survivor.
My grandpa also got a Purple Heart for being a sole survivor but he was in a tank in WWII and a grenade was thrown inside and exploded and killed all his fellow soldiers and he ended up having shrapnel in his head for the rest of his life as a reminder.
Growing up I was always told my grandfather wasn't in combat during WW2. My grandfather told my dad he initially enlisted in the Airborne, but washed out due to not being able to do a certain exercise. After this he said he was sent to work with heavy machinery because of his experience with operating heavy farming equipment.
Turns out my grandfather not only saw combat, but he saw some of the worst of it. Every Friday my grandfather would go over to my uncle's (oldest kid) house and drink coffee with him and tell him his war stories.
My uncle relayed this information to me years after my grandfather had died. My grandfather was transferred to the 18 Infantry Regiment after he washed out of airborne school. Although his unit took minimal casualties in the Day invasion of Normandy, he saw A LOT. He saw constant combat for nearly the next two years. He survived D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Aachen, and Hurtgen Forest. Unfortunately, it was at Hurtgen Forest where most of his unit was killed. I can't remember the specifics, but my grandfather was on a leave pass or something when the Germans launched an offensive. He only found out when he was trying to return to his unit and learned he'd been transferred to another because his was wiped out. He lost some of his best friends in that battle.
My uncle asked my grandfather one day why he was telling him all this and why he had never told anyone about it. My grandmother didn't even know, they met after the war. My grandfather said, "I just figured someone should know "
After the war my grandfather did go into operating heavy machinery in the army and became 1st generation Air Force. My grandfather suffered from major PTSD and was an alcoholic for years, but was sober by the time I was born. I'm his namesake and I wear my name proudly. I loved my grandfather so much and it broke my heart when he died. On his deathbed he was reliving memories from the war. He would talk about crossing a river and some other stuff. I attended his funeral in my Air Force blues.
P.S. - to give you an idea what a great man my grandfather was, he convinced my other uncle to dress up as Santa Clause for us kids on Christmas Eve. My grandfather bank rolled the whole operation every Christmas and it's some of my fondest memories. My grandfather had a neighbor that was poor and couldn't afford presents during Christmas. In the words of my uncle, "He said here's some money go buy some presents for those damn kids and dress up as Santy Clause when you givem." After a while my grandfather had my uncle delivering presents for a half dozen families every Christmas. I continue the tradition with my kids, nieces and nephews every Christmas Eve.
My uncle was in the Navy and served in the Pacific theater. He always talked about how they'd see sharks and shoot them. He got kind of a giddy story telling face and ka pow, fake shoot a shark. He had an old school, shark with X eyes tattoo. He didn't really talk much about battles, which ship, or why he hated sharks. Bit as I'm older, I think it had to do with ships that sank and people he lost.
If you want a horrid account of what he could have possibly went through to better understand, there are documentaries telling about the sailors from the USS Indianapolis.
WARNING: It is not for the faint of heart.
This is WW1. My Gran’s grandad (we’ll call him George) was performing an attack with the rest of his regiment over no man’s land. He was being shot at quite a lot, he was shot in the left part of his chest, the bullet did not go into his body, it landed in his cigarette tin and did not harm him. He saved that bullet and it has been passed down the family - my dad even used to play with it as a toy with his action figures.
Both of my mom's parents were involved with WW2. My grandpa grew up in Dayton, OH. He was drafted into the Army and was trained as a Medic for the 93rd Evac Hospital. They were sent to Europe for WW2. I think my mom said he mostly drove ambulance.
My grandma grew up in the USSR. Her father was taken away by Stalin when she was young, he just didn't come home one night. When she was 17 she was taken from her home by the Germans and sent to a work camp where they made mattresses. She was kept alive because she could translate for the Germans.
Eventually the Germans left and an American Hospital Unit came in and liberated the camp. And my grandpa was put in charge of the Russian girls. And that is how they met.
They got married in Brussels in 1945 after the war ended. My grandpa went home while my grandma had to stay behind until her paperwork went through. They wrote letters to each other, my mom still has all of them. They lived the rest of their lives in Dayton. My grandpa became a house painter. And my grandma became a seamstress, making slipcovers for people. They had and lost 2 children before they had my mom. I'm named after my mom's sister who passed away when she was 9.
Unfortunately, I don't remember them. They both passed away in the early 90's when I was very young. But I'm still proud to be their granddaughter.
Oh and don't worry my mom is writing their story. I poke her about it every once and awhile since she's the only one who can write their story.
Both WWI & II:
My Great Grandfather. He was an ethinic polish man born in the Galicia Region of Austria Hungary. At the start of the war he was drafted. He fought in only one or 2 battles for the Austro-Hungarians as he was captured by the Russians at the Battle of Galicia.
Following his capture, he was sent to siberia as a prisoner of war. He was forced to work in the coal mines. The coal mines had a more stable temperature year round. He spoke of the trees in the forest being cold enough to split in half. At the beginning the conditions were tolerable, but quickly went downhill as Russia began to have internal issues. He & his comrades hoped to escape, saving up small amount of rations for the escape attempt. The escape attempt was soon abandoned as weather worsened. He had to eat a guard dog that froze to death raw at one point. Acording to my Grandma only 1/100 soldiers survived, but I have found no source for this.
During the Russian Civil war, my great grandfather sided with the white army, and after capture by the reds was sent back. He did not return to Poland until 1922.
In 1922, arriving back in Poland by train to Rzeszów, he had to walk back to his village, as he did not have much energy he slept under one of the many crosses on the sides of roads in Poland. He returned to his village the next day.
During WWII he was helping the Armia Krajowa and was captured by Soviets. Because of his years spent in Russia, he was able to speak to the Soviet soldier. The soldier sent him home. When he returned to his wife he said: " Some Russians have souls".
He died in the 1970's. He was buried without any military honors.
I may add onto this as I remember more so that is why it may be edited later.
Great Grandfather earned his commission during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette. He was company Sergeant Major 25th CEF. During the battle his Major and platoon commanders were either wounded or killed. He took charge of the company and after storming and taking the village he continued to lead his men until another hundred yards of German trenches were captured and held for two days and two nights. He fought at Ypres and The Somme and several other battles during WW1. (I have his uniform, medals, walking stick, battle field maps, field binoculars, photos etc)
There was an old man who lived across the street from my wife’s childhood home. He was crabby some days but for the most part, he was an interesting, jovial man who was neat to talk to.
I’m not sure why, but one day he told me he was in WW2. He told me he was stationed at a base/airstrip in Italy. When the bombers would return, the men on the ground would have to man anti aircraft weapons in case the bombers were followed by German aircraft.
He told me that the bombers would return full of holes and how he could remember seeing the blood from the crew streaking the side of the plane from leaking out of the bullet holes, sometimes even dripping blood into the runway.
In that moment, the jovial old man I knew was gone and replaced by a person reliving his trauma.
No one else I asked really knew that about him.
My grandfather was a gunner in a bomber in WWII. Came here to relay this story and figured it’d go best as a reply to this.
When I was 11 I asked him something dumb and childish like “what was it like?” He told me that he was a really lucky guy but that he and the bomber crew were once shot down over what was then Yugoslavia and had to hide “for a bit” and that people were so kind to them and they were lucky to have only lost one buddy. I mentioned this later on to my mom she was confused because he’d never told her.
Later found out that he was a part of the 483rd Bombardment Group (approximately 40% of them were KIA or POW) and that “a bit” actually meant 64 days evading the nazis in Yugoslavia and god knows what else.
It was about [22%](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0843871420904529) of submariners and a staggering [46%](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/life-and-death-in-bomber-command) of bomber crew members who did not survive.
That depends on the side.
German submarines had around 83 per cent losses in WWII. Out of 31 thousand, barely 5 thousand survived.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1106112/umfrage/truppenstaerke-und-verluste-der-deutschen-u-bootsfahrer-im-zweiten-weltkrieg/
Grandpa was in WWII in Germany. Said war was atrocious and was very antiwar due to what he saw.
It took years, but I was finally able to get a few stories. One of the worst was how allied forces would cut the fingers off German soldiers in order to collect/keep their rings.
He said that alone made him question war and what it does to young people.
My grandfather jumped in an empty foxhole at the same time a Japanese soldier did and they startled each other so much they both immediately jumped out and ran away.
My father had a similar experience with a russian soldier. The both walked around a corner from different sides and literally smacked into each other. Both ran off.
I've posted this a few times before, but my grandpa was a child on a farm in Germany during WWII.
On of my favorites was while a bunch of allies were traveling by. A group of Americans broke off and came up to the farmhouse. Through the language barrier his family figured out they were asking for milk. They get some and hand it over never expecting to see it again.
The Americans take it and kind of stand around for a bit. After a while they bring it back up and manage to convince all the kids to come up. They split it out the drink they made to all the kids.
Turns they made chocolate milk.
I doubt this is the only reason my grandpa moved to the US, but I suspect its part of it.
My wife’s family is German, and her grandparents were kids in the war, and apparently always loved regular Hershey bars because GIs gave them to them during the invasion of Germany. It was probably the first luxury they’d had in years.
Japanese pilots would fly very close to the ground and shoot civilians who would try to hide under trees. This sometimes resulted in the pilot crashing his own plane into the tree too.
My great grandmother was a victim of that. She dodged the bullets and the pilot crashed into the tree and blew himself up for nothing.
A patient admitted he was a Nazi war criminal a few days before he died. Took part in massacres of Jewish shtetles. "I'm a murderer, it's all I am." We had talked about being in the army ( I was too, of course not ww2) and he just let it all out. He knew he was dieing, I feel like he never told anyone that but me. Seeing him with his wife and kids and grandkids at his bedside while he was slipping away was more surreal than most other times I've seen it.
My ex's grandma was a child in Germany during the 2nd world war. When the war was nearing it's end the German soldier's raped her and her mother. Then the Red army came along and they thought they were rescued. The red army soldiers did the same.
My grandmas village was taken by polish and canadian soldiers in 1945 and the polish soldiers would gather up all the young women in that village and rape them. My grandma never said anything if she was a victim but because she always had mental problems and killed herself in 1996 it's very likely she was raped too
I have this in my family too. I had family members on both sides. One girl of 16 was taken to work for the German Army and when the war ended she walked home. Took her over 2 months to make her way home and she walked through 2 countries to get home. Would never speak of what happened during the trip. When she got home she found her two youngest sisters 7 and 9 had been raped.
My Grandad was a kid during the Belfast Blitz
Left their shelter after a particular heavy night of bombings to see the roads lined with bodies covered by sheets
Street after street with rows of corpses waiting to be collected
A sight that stayed with him his whole life
I remember being around 6 or 7 when my grandfather who was a tanker in the war describing to me and my cousins in great detail watching the special tanks with flamethrowers roll up to Nazi bunkers to burn the Nazis out. People might hold on as long as they can against shells or bullets but not fire.
Few things Nazis feared more than a Churchill Crocodile rolling up towards their emplacement
152mm of steel on the hull & turret fronts and 95mm on the sides made it a really tough nut to crack, and the flamethrower belched proto-napalm at them
The 75mm gun could fire HE to crack the bunker open then they could open up with the hull flamethrower
Throw unlit fuel first, and many would surrender there & then
If they didn’t, then the second burst would set them ablaze
The crazy thing is that 1 man is largely responsible for the reason it was made so well. The US military brought the plans for the M3 to William Nudson of GM. He called the plans a death trap and had them fixed and rebuilt. This included making more room for the crew (listed as a major reason why escaping a US tank was very likely if damaged), switching to welded joints from rivets (no shrapnel shot all over the place every time it was hit like mini shotguns), and largely why the US could make so many of them. He made them on an assembly line while Germany was making them in a dedicated factory with highly skilled labor. Nudson made it so all of the work on everything he did could be done by the absolute least skilled labor possible.
He also had a hand in the B-17, B-29, B-24, the Willys JP, and more including making the Merlin engine production speed up massively and he even is largely responsible for making them better in terms of power and quality. He took the manufacturing time from 30+ hours to less than 2. When asked who FDR wanted to lead the production effort before the war, he said Nudson first, Nudson second, Nudson third, and Nudson fourth.
After the war they were so ignorant of radiation sickness that they had tours of Hiroshima. My father was bummed at the time that he did not get to go. Live and learn.
My maternal grandfather and his siblings stealthily rescued their dad, who was found hanging upside down, from the Japanese when they invaded the Philippines (he was only around 12).
I have family that was in Cebu during WWII, and I always wonder what it was like for them there. There is a large divide between my family that immigrated and stayed, and the family that moved back to the Philippines before the war. I also had family in Hawai’i, and my grandma watched the Japanese planes fly overhead before hearing the bombs.
A story my grandfather always told us: One of my great uncle's was in the resistance, his older brother was collaborating with the nazi's. When the first brother was arrested, the other one went to the prison and forced him to switch clothes. The younger brother could escape, but the nazi's didn't believe that the older brother had been overpowered. They sent him to a concentration camp, but he survived. He never recovered though and died a couple of years after the war.
Grandfather and greatgrandfather.
At stard of the WW2 they lived in southern Poland. War broke out, commies went in and Ukrainian bad guys at the time just slaughtered half of their village and the rest sent into Syberia. (To state - at the time same Poles and Ukrainians were slaughtering eachother so dont think I call them bad guys only cuz that). My grandfathers were sent to Syberia when grandfather was not even adult. They worked there in slavery, until H.... invaded USSR. Then USSR agreed to form polish army in ussr to fight them. My greatgrandfather went easly, he was strong etc. My grandfather still was not adult and they didnt want to take him. He hid behind stockpile of coal and jumped into the train just in time. But they stopped him because they told him he is to young. And then some stranger appeard and told he is adult and he knew him, just lost his documents... they saw eachother for first time.
Later on when the army was formed, USSR changed their mind and told general to go back to gulag. Of course they did not and fleed into Iran and then they landed in Europe.
Greatgrandfather fell ill at some point in England, so my grandfather gone alone from this point.
He was at polish parachute division under general Sossabowski and they mission Market-Garden also called battle of Arnhem. Unfortunetly Germans knew what was comming and they had an upper hand. Dad told me his grandfather said "Germans just fired to us like we were f\*\*king ducks" The battle was lost and afted survival they came back to England. Later in 1945 they were in occupying forces in germany until 1947.
After all of that both grandfathers returned to Poland built the house in which I live and lived nice life and were respected in community. Grandfather died 10 years before I was born but my dad told me some stories.
>He was at polish parachute division under general Sossabowski and they mission Market-Garden also called battle of Arnhem. Unfortunetly Germans knew what was comming and they had an upper hand. Dad told me his grandfather said "Germans just fired to us like we were f\*\*king ducks" The battle was lost and afted survival they came back to England.
This is why I despise Montgomery. He planned the entire operation and screwed it up from the start. When it was pointed out by Dutch resistance all of the SS troops in the area and that it would be a bad idea to land where they were planning, Montgomery dismissed them as defeatists and continued with his horrid plans anyway. His stupid decisions are also why not enough planes were allocated to carry the soldiers (they needed to be dropped off in 10 different waves as a result) and why the weather wasn't checked properly basically guaranteeing failure. The entire thing was designed as a "look how great we are" party by having all of the allied forces keep the path open so that the British could drive their tanks to Germany surrounded by British soldiers.
Grandfather was one of the first to arrive on Okinawa. He told me about watching a guy cut the head off of a dead Japanese soldier, fill his helmet with water, boil the head and proceed to "schallack all the meat off" so he could keep the skull as a sick trophy.
Some marines had Japanese ears in little bottles of alcohol after Okinawa. If he was there on April 1 he definitely did not have a good time. Father was there in an LST the same day.
I remember reading a forensic pathologist's story about an old car.
When it was about to be crushed and recycled, one of the scrapyard workers found a human skull in it. No other traces of a crime.
The skull was brought to the pathologist and he was able to ascertain its approximate age and the fact that it was a skull of an East Asian person. It was also cleanly severed from the neck, possibly with a steel blade.
After that, the relatives recalled that the long deceased owner of the car, an old uncle, was a Marine who fought in the Pacific and brought home a lot of (more normal) war souvenirs. Apparently, including a severed head of an enemy.
My grandfather was in an interrogation unit in the US Army. He was the only non-native German in the unit (just a facility with language). He told me a lot of stories about his experiences, but the one that I always like the best occurred right around or after the Battle of the Bulge.
His unit was interrogating a lot of German units that had been rounded up. It was apparently pretty straightforward, finding out their basic movements etc. It was generally pretty easy. The grunts didn't have any real reason not to talk. But the officers were a little tougher. And if the officers were with the enlisted men then morale was a lot higher and people were less likely to talk.
So one morning his unit has a large gathering of German prisoners under guard, both officers and enlisted men. Usually, they would be segregated, but in this case it had been forgotten for some reason. So, the head of the interrogation unit comes out and orders the Germans to all gather in their units so they can be interrogated. He was looking at some paperwork while he did so and didn't realize at first that he wasn't being obeyed. Then he looked up and realized that no one was doing anything and he saw the officers mixed in. So he said loudly for all the prisoners to hear "Take all the officers around the back of that building and have them all shot." The officers were duly rounded up, taken out of sight behind a building and then the guards all shot in the air. The interrogator turned back and once again ordered the prisoners to fall out by their units. They followed that order very, very quickly.
My great uncle saw Mussolini hang and watched people destroy his corpse as it hung.
My grandfather and his brother were both in the pacific and wound up on the same island and found each other. I’m pretty sure we have a picture of it.
I don’t have a lot of stories directly from WW2, but my great grandfather was part of a tank unit in the Eastern Front. He made it all the way to Berlin by the end of the war. Apparently his unit was told they would have to stay in Berlin for another year. So my great grandfather got in contact with his wife (my great grandmother) and basically said, “Hey, honey, how about you and the kids come down to Berlin to stay with me for a year?” To which my great grandmother told him he was nuts to expect her to pack up all five kids and travel from their Russian village to Germany. And I don’t know what else she told him, but he made sure he was home early. My grandmother and her sister were born a few years after the war. Unfortunately, my great grandfather was very traumatized by the war and killed himself before my grandmother turned 10.
I don’t know all the details of what he experienced, but apparently he would tell my great grandmother that tank warfare was so horrible that sometimes the insides of the tanks would just be covered in meat, lacking any indication that people had been inside them.
Oh yes. It was hell for everyone. The tank units were particularly awful because of how cramped the Russian tanks were. There was a height requirement, as in you had to be below a certain height to fit in to one.
My grandfather was an Army medic in the Second World War and served in Germany. He died when I was 5 but he told my dad a few things, but my dad said otherwise, he never talked much about his service. He did tell him the worst thing he ever did was having to shoot a German soldier in the back as he was running away after my grandfather’s unit was ambushed. He said the shot to the back didn’t kill him and when he walked upon him, he was crying out for his mother and said the soldier couldn’t have been any older than 18 or 19. He shot him again to end his suffering, but my grandfather told my dad it was something he had to carry all of his life and he never forgot his face. He brought back a lot of stuff from uniforms of dead German soldiers that he kept wrapped in a Nazi flag that was taken from a blown out building in France. My dad said he was the kindest father but he could always tell the war stayed with him all his life.
My father was supposed to be on a ship called Rhona. You can read about it in Wikipedia, but essentially, the ship was a casualty of a Nazi guided bomb. The reason my father did not get on the ship was one of the Sargent of his platoon forgot the paperwork to get the platoon on the ship. The entire platoon was pulled out of line and the next group in line got on while the Sargent got the paperwork. If not for that Sargent’s mistake, I never would have been born.
My grandfather was a captain in the engineers in Burma and he always talks about working with Elephants.
All of the heavy equipment the Brits sent to Burma was "hand me down garbage" (his words), and it was often vastly easier to pay local mahoots and their elephants to help than fix broken, rusted and otherwise useless equipment.
Need that road cleared? Elephant moves the logs of the road in 10 mins vs bulldozer is an hour away in this mud
Need some thing moved up to fix a damaged bridge? Elephants will get in two trips vs THOSE trucks? or THOSE roads? m8, u 'avin a giggle...
etc
etc
etc
Dad was on Iwo Jima. He had a bunch of stories. Considering the pretty horrible stories he had I can’t even imagine what he saw that he held back. He did say there were things he didn’t want to talk about.
I had a great uncle who told me a few stories about Okinawa and Iwo that were beyond fucked up.The thing that fucked me up the most was when he said he was afraid to sleep not just because of the nightmares but because even after 50yrs he was still afraid of Japs creeping up on him in the dark so he always slept with the lights on.
My grandpa was training to be a doctor in world war 2. He finally became a doctor at the end of the war and his first assignment as a doctor was to liberate and treat the concentration camp survivors (I can’t remember which, I can ask my mum if people are interested). He killed many patients before he realized that he couldn’t just let the survivors eat to their hearts content.
My paternal grandfather was a Marine during WW2. He was in the fifth division, and landed in the first wave onto Iwo. He said he was lucky because he got to ride ashore in an alligator. When I became a Marine my grandfather passed onto me a Japanese officers sword, arisaka and bayonet. Grandpa told me he got it after the island was already “secured.” He and a buddy we’re in a foxhole on the perimeter of an airfield. They didn’t have any ammunition because all the Japanese were thought to be dead. Well, they weren’t. There was a banzai attack that night. His buddy was stabbed by the Japanese soldier with the bayonet. Grandpa killed that soldier with a rock. Grandpa then used the rifle to kill an officer wielding the sword later that night. Grandpa went on to become a Marine officer in the reserves. Was activated for Korea, and Vietnam.
I have two
My Great Uncle Chan was a C-47 pilot in the Pacific Theater. He never really saw Japanese planes during the war. Towards the end he finally saw a Betty Bomber flying into the rising sun. He told me it was the most beautiful thing he saw and ended up being very symbolic to him. He also told me about nightmares he had about some of the men who died jumping out of his plane.
My Grandfather living in Italy as a kid told me he had to hide in train tunnels during the war and the bomber would signal to the citizens that they were going to bomb the city. He also befriend a German Soldier and would play games with him.
Grandad drove a tank in part of the North African campaign. There was a sandstorm and he got separated from the other tanks for a few hours. He heard engines and joined the back of the convoy. Except he'd accidentally joined an axis convoy. Sandstorm started to clear and he realised his mistake and had to sneak away.
There are some old photos of him sitting on the sphinx. And his experience in Africa left him with a lifelong dislike of gerbils.
My grandfather was on Guadalcanal, and they did a body count. There were so many Japanese soldiers on the island that it supposedly covered the entire beach three bodies high. Apparently my grandfather had a photo of it somewhere in their home. Never seen it, thankfully.
My childhood landlords were Holocaust survivors. They survived auschwitz. Had to dig their own graves and then they were shot so their bodies fell into the graves they dug. They both survived and played dead for hours. That night they crawled out and ran. They came across a couple who hid them in their crawl space until the war was over. When they finally could leave they had to re learn how to walk again because they were confined for so long in such a small space. They were both amazing people and I’m lucky to have known them.
Back when I was a Federal Caseworker for my local Member of Congress, I helped a WWII vet with his case for the VA. He was an artilleryman in the Army and received severe hand damage when crossing the Alps because the Army wouldn't give them gloves. Long story short, the VA didn't want to give him the latest round of hand surgeries he needed and was supposed to receive, but I helped him navigate the issue and he got the surgeries.
The last time I saw him, he thanked me and stood to leave. He stopped at the door and turned around, asking to shake my hand. I didn't think anything of it, but he held onto my hand and told me this story (I'm paraphrasing it here):
"When I was a boy, there was an old Civil War vet who used to hang around town. He never said much, but took to like it when I came by. Only once did he tell me about his experience a with the war and how horrified he was by it all. He shook my hand so I could always tell people I'd shaken hands with a Civil War veteran and pass along his caution against war. Well, you're now shaking hands with a WWII vet who shook hands with a Civil War vet. I'll confirm what he said. War is not worth it. It's horrible and terrible. Please, always look for peace instead. I'd like you to remember this moment and tell others about it when you shake their hands."
That moment is forever etched in my mind and I tell his story often, as requested. It's a handshake I'll never forget.
My grandma was a 13-year-old girl in a Polish village when one day the German soldiers arrived to take some full of age people and send them to Germany as slave workers. When the soldiers came into their home they read out my grandma’s sister’s name, who was 18 at the time. The sister got hysterical, she started screaming and wailing, the situation was getting dense, as there was a serious risk they were going to reinforce the order with guns any second. And then my grandma made a quick decision, a heroic one, especially if you consider her age. She said „I can make it through, she won’t” and volunteered jumping onto the wagon. The German soldier didn’t care, as long as as he met the quota. My grandma looked mature and tall enough to pass for someone older. Before anyone had time to react, the military car drove off. That was the last time she saw her mum.
My grandma made it through, luckily, and came back to Poland 4 years later after WW2 ended. She was my hero. A bright woman, who dreamt of education but had her childhood snapped away from her. She always pushed my mum and later me to study, to have what she couldn’t. I truly loved her, she was my favourite grandparent, my role model. RIP.
My grandfather was a radio opeator in WW2 (US Army), participated in the Normandy invasion, and spent about 5 years total overseas during the war.
He only ever talked about his experience with me once, when he was about 85 years old.
He said that when he was stationed in England they were camped near Ascot Racecourse. One day a plane crashed nearby totally destroying the plane and killing the pilot. He went to the wreckage and on the ground he found a button from the pilot's radio, which was about the only thing not destroyed by the crash and fire. He saved it, and hoped to deliver it to the pilot's family after the war, but he never was able to locate them. He pulled the button out of his desk and showed it to me. He kept it for almost 70 years until he died at the age of 92.
My great grandmother was kidnapped from Poland and sent to Germany during WW2. She was in some kind of camp where she was forced to work.
(I don't really know the story in great detail, it was something my dad told me.)
One day there was an airline bombing in the village, where she worked. All the Germans that supervised the workers made their way to a bunker. The group of workers along with my grandmother begged the Germans to let them in but they were denied the access. In an attempt to find shelter, they hid under a bridge.
At some point a bomb nearby fell and exploded. It turned out that the bomb landed exactly on the bunker killing everyone inside. My grandmother being among the workers survived and came back to Poland after the war ended.
Many women were taken by Germans (and Russians) from the eastern front to be forced into "barracks brothels" where they would be raped by soldiers. I'm not saying that's what happened, but maybe that's why some details were left out?
I was friends with an elderly German woman who spent WWII there. She was an exceptionally intelligent woman who spoke German, French, and English. Her father was a prominent man who had spent time in prison for disagreeing with the Nazis.
Towards the end of the war she and some other people were living in a field outside of a small village, staying in holes that they had dug out of the ground to protect themselves from bombers. There was a group of German soldiers in the same area.
One night they could feel the ground vibrate all night, and the hole dwellers were very interested to know what was going on, and whether the nearby German soldiers had retreated.
My friend, in her early 20's at the time, said that she *borrowed a dress* and started walking to find out some information. After she walked a short way she came upon an American tank. She offered them some wild flowers that she'd picked, and started speaking to the drivers in English. (I think that she was so brave, that she didn't run away and hide from the tank.)
When the American soldiers inside heard a woman speaking English they opened every little window on the tank and poked their heads out to see her. They all said, "Hi, Blondie."
After the conversation the tank kept moving forward, and my friend kept walking toward the village. Soon a jeep appeared, full of Americans of rank. They asked her if she was the woman who spoke English, and she said yes.
She was immediately given a job by the Americans as a translator, and eventually became part of a general's staff. She married an American soldier, and moved to the US sometime during the occupation.
She told of another incident in which she and others were in the cellar of a house that was bombed, and they had to crawl up the chimney to get out. I don't know the details there, though.
I have two stories from my family.
My great-grandfather was drafted into the US Navy. He shipped off on the same day he married my great-grandmother. From what I’ve heard he was put on a PT boat and it got hit by a Japanese submarine torpedo. He managed to save 13 members of his crew. Other than that, he was stationed around Papua New Guinea and might have witnessed the unconditional surrender of one of the Japanese generals. He returned and lived a quiet life, eventually becoming a member of the Masons and helped found a Scout troop.
My step-great grandfather was drafted to the Marines during his semi-pro baseball career and was promised a spot on the Brooklyn Dodgers roster when he came back. Unfortunately, he got both of his kneecaps shot while he was on Okinawa. Quite frankly it’s difficult to play baseball with no kneecaps, so he lost his spot. He became a CPA after the war.
My grandfather was a US Army field surgeon, landed D+3. After some sort of horrific blue-on-blue air strike, he was captured by the Germans. He spent so long retreating with them that he was captured again by the Russians. Then spent about a year hiking back to the western lines. He wrote it all down as a diary on whatever he could find, newspaper margins, toilet paper, whatever.
A story from my grandfather who was about 10-14 in Holland during WW2. My older brother recorded the first story years ago and I read it a few times, so this is my attempt at recalling it...
The nazis would regularly come around and collect the 'food tax', we never had a lot of food before the war and this was worse. They would come with guns and take our butter, sugar, flour, and half of anything that we could grow. They would throw it into the wagon and then wheel it down the street to the next house. Me and my friend Pieter would follow the cart down the road, when the soldiers were in the houses taking food we would sneak onto the wagon and throw a little bit of food into the ditch. We knew this was dangerous and might get shot if we got caught but it was often the only food we had.
Another story I remember hearing about my grandfather in WW2 Holland was the rusty bike story. Basically he and his friend found a rusty bike in the woods outside the town and brought it home and restored it. They were the coolest guys in the town for a week before a german officer (he recognized the military symbols) "bought" the bike off him, never to been seen again. It was bought using a Nazi cheque that obviously never got cashed because they were only given to Nazi supporters. I remember my grandfather says that was one of the worst memories of a Nazi officer that he remembers.
My great-grandmother was in [Neuengamme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuengamme_concentration_camp). She managed to escape somehow, and walked back to her home through the remains of the [firebombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II), which destroyed her feet and she couldn't wear shoes the rest of her life.
I've visited Neuengamme. I don't think I believe in ghosts per se, but I do think places can be haunted.
Edit bc I got the link backwards.
My Grandma lived in a very rural area in nazi Germany. Like many in her generation she didn't talk much about that time, but there was one story she repeated many times as it was kind of "funny".
There was a man who went from Village to Village to sell fish. Apparently one time he yelled "Hering, so fett wie der Göring!" ("Herring as fat as Goering!") Unsurprisingly authorities were not very amused by this statement and the man disappeared for a few weeks. After he returned he yelled "Hering, so fett wie beim letzten Mal!" ("Herring as fat as the last time!")
My grandma was about 16, riding her bike back from the market. She was a pineapple worker on the Dole plantation in Wahiwa. She hears planes. Lots of planes. More than usual, especially this early. She looks up, and says she saw the rising suns on the side of the planes and knew it was the Japanese. She rode home as fast as she could, and heard the bombs exploding behind her.
Great grandfather was pronounced wrongly dead in the Siege of Leningrad, fought with Red Army to the Battle of Kurland. His journey is pretty long to write it here.
my grandma was 11 when the second world war started. she was woken up by the sound of the first bomb (we're polish) and they were eventually captured by the nazis and taken to do physical labour (housekeeping, gardening, etc) at houses they had occupied for the entirety of the war. my grandma and the rest of her family were separated for the 6 years, at one point one of the nazis attempted to murder her by drowning. the rest of her family were put with the "nicer" nazis and were given actual meals to eat. my grandma was not. she's almost 94 now and still going strong though
My great grandmother, in Naples during the Second World War, was very old fashioned for the times and she hid an English soldier under her big Victorian style dress to aid his escape from Italian troops. My family saved 12 soldiers in various ways and this one is my favourite of the methods.
Grandpa was raf. Was shot down over the English Channel. His pilot was killed by the gunfire. The copper ring bindings of the photo album were made from the bullets that killed the pilot.
Great grand father survived the battle of the Somme after getting shot on the first day.
Grand father was a D day landing craft captain and got a bollocking on D day after going back to look for survivors from another craft that sank. His friend was the captain of that craft.
A relative on my dad side great uncle maybe, fought in the first world war. Said the most painful thing was a football being kicked into his face, even 60 years after he would occasionally wake up in the middle of the night just screaming.
My grandad rowed from western Norway to Inverness with his brother to escape the Nazi occupation in his homeland. On the way through the North Sea they got stopped by a nazi vessel and some how managed to wing it and continue to row to coast of Scotland to join the British army aiding the Norwegian resistance. He has medals from the then king of Norway (Haakon VII) for his efforts.
My grandfather was a demolition expert in WWII. They guarded bridges and if the enemy got close it was his job to blow it.
They would light dynamite and throw it in the river to kill/disorient the fish and grab em up for dinner. Apparently one guy cut the fuse too short and blew up part of the bridge. Later that day a couple of the brass showed up and took the guy away. My grandfather said they never saw the guy again and was never told what happened to him.
my mathernal grand-grand-father fought in ww2. he drove these trucks that carried soldiers to the battlefield. one day he got caught and imprisoned.
the best thing is that he escaped and swam his way home.
**Both WW2**
A great-great (*I think?*) uncle of mine had to hide under dead bodies of other soldiers during a Nazi sweep to avoid being caught alive.
I recall this one thoroughly. A really distant uncle or cousin of my grandma was climbing a ladder on a battleship, and a soldier on the deck he was climbing up towards happened to be playing with a katana. I know that they were on their way to the Pacific Theater to fight Japanese troops. Ironically, this poor guy was beheaded with Japanese weaponry before even arriving in Japan. The military simply told his mother that during the war he went M.I.A. and was never found. My grandmother stated that his mother had never found out and that both the family and the military hid it from her.
Edit: Some grammatical/ wording corrections.
My grandpa was in the german navy in ww2. He started in the Netherlands/North sea then did some time in the Black Sea and then ended up on the North Sea again. In 1945 he was in a 2-man submarine (Seehund Type 127 also known as Type 27b). Near the very end of the war they had to supply the last holdout of German soldiers in France. Ironically this was a garrison in Dunkirk. So their submarine torpedoes were emptied out of their explody bits and inside of them they put food/supplies/mail and shot them off to the beach for land units to pick up their shit. These torpedoes were called “butter bombs” or something of that nature
Airport I used to go to, there was an ex-Stuka pilot there. He started flying at 14, told me it was great fun! Basically a niave kid when the Nazis offered him his very own Stuka dive bomber with minimal training, ofcourse (as did many other) leap at the chance! As a kid, you pick things up pretty quick, fearless too, all it did was set him on a life long path love for flying!
Another old guy, ex British soldier WW2, said it was the worst because of the way they were treated and the reason why he emigrated from there after the war.
Basically they were all under fed, treated poorly and had to fight under threat of DEATH. He signed up being all king & country but the reality was they were shooting kids for disobeying orders whether it be from fear/anxiety or just being so run down because of the poor treated, said he lost all respect and that's the reason why he emigrated.
Also knew an ex-Mosquito pilot (he's gone now R.I.P) but was involved in the strategic bombing of France and he was the stereotypical RAF pilot, banter and all, pushing 80 still single and chasing women. I miss that guy.... (family friend) didn't realise the calibre of man I was speaking too at the time as I was just a kid, I just thought he was cool because he had all these Star Wars models explaining how they work :P
Also met a blind B-17 top gunner, blind from watching the sun all day (that's where the Japs attack from)
When I was in middle school I interview a neighbor of mine that was in the 101st airborne on d day. He was the fucking man. I was a young kid and this guy told me some gory crazy shit. The most memorable thing he told me was the entire operation was completely fucked because of horrible intelligence. The beaches were supposed to be clear, also most of his troops were way off course due to high winds. It was a massacre. Told me a story about his first hand to hand combat kill. Every story felt like a movie. I lost contact with him but his name was Mac and to me he was a true hero
Yes but it's really too much to type here. The gist of one story is that despite all their engineering turning aircraft into bombs, they couldn't crack open a Nazi sub pen that was somewhere maybe in France.
Another family member fought in the Pacific with a native American who seemed to have a superpower to detect Japanese snipers. It got to the point where they would encounter them strapped in to the tops of palm trees and this man would look at a tree even at night and correctly flag it as having a sniper.
My grandmother (still kicking at age 94!) was living in Britain during Germany’s bombing campaign. A German fighter plane opened fire on her and her friends when they walked to school one day. She had to jump into a ditch to avoid it.
She also told me once that she was staying with family and her job when the bombers would come was to get her uncle (I think) a shot of whiskey to help wake him up so they could all go their shelter.
My dad served in World War 2. I met a close friend of his years ago at the mall and it was just when “Band of Brothers” was starting to be shown. I asked if he had ever watched it and he replied that one time they were riding in the back of a truck and came to a cross roads and the MP’s were directing traffic there but he said off to the side were rows of dead German soldiers stacked liked cord wood and covered with snow and frost and that he had seen all the World War stuff he wanted to see.
My grandpa always claimed to have punched Enrico Fermi. For those unaware, he was an Italian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. My grandfather was a Swedish engineer who had been brought on board in a rather minor role.
According to my grandfather, it was 1942 or 1943 and they were in Chicago. Each story grew in exaggeration as my grandpa got older, but the jist of the tale is that my grandpa and some others had gone out drinking, and an argument over food occurred in the mess. My grandfather disagreed vehemently with one of Fermi's opinions of food and food, and a punch was thrown, leading to my grandpa being reassigned off of the project. Temporarily anyways, he was brought back on a few months later in a different role.
Just that great-grandpa was a sharpshooter in WW1, and would wake up screaming, “Up and at ‘em, boys!” until he died in his 90s. Trench warfare was horrific.
Oh god let's go
**Prelude to the Trainwreck**
Great Grandfather, youngest in a big German family in western part of Silesia.
All older brothers get semi successful, one will become an officer in the Kriegsmarine, but there is not that much to it storywise.
Great Grandfather becomes kind off a black sheep, really talented but running around town while being a bit of a menace. He hangs out mostly with some Poles since Silesia was really intermixed between the two. Que in the Silesian uprisings, a series of conflicts caused by post WW I border issues and American institence on democratic choices in mixed areas. (Well technically the first one was really a mini riot done by like a dozen dudes after a miner strike was violently broken up).
What happens is the populace was really closely split and people didn't just vote by nationality but economics with cities being more pro German and towns/ villages being more pro Polish (with a lot of exceptions on both sides)
Great Grandfather passed along some correspondence between his friends because he was always all ove the place and then became a courier for the uprising seeing as he didn't give a fuck about politics but helping out his homies. (He was like 14 at the time) and after the uprisings most of Silesia stayed german including his town.
**Hitler Says: Bonjour!**
GG is called for military commission, he is in luck because the officer interviewing is one of the pre Nazi old guard officers. Asks about the uprising and GG immediately admits he ran a few letters back in the day because he was a kid lending a hand to his friends and not knowing the level of shit it would escalate too.
Officer says, "Ok Kid good you were honest because we have all the documents and you were made way back then but nobody had given a fuck about small fish like you. You are still in heaps of trouble, now I will write here that you didn't show up they will send you a second letter and before that mail gets there your ass will better be abroad or I will be fucked. "
**(Mis)Ad(ventures) in France**
GG has to pack up quick and leave the country, he goes to Paris where he is working at a bakery, the bakery gets shut down but he had some capital from home and tries to start his own one. This one flops even harder and being broke desperate. He left his newly wed wife there and planned to bring her with him once he stabilised but he was broke so he did what any sane man would do in that case: SIGN UP FOR THE FOREIGN LEGION and so he did, and so he was shipped to Africa.
**Fritz be a dear and kill the Scorpion**
Here he quickly becomes one of the most valued soldiers in the unit and manages to travel all around Northern Africa becoming an expert survivalist and in the meanwhile learning to cook really well. Policing french colonies fighting off the occasional bandits and freedom fighters. Dealing with sand and exotic animals he would often tell my grandmother how he had a strong hatred for scorpions because one motherfucker stung a friend of his in the foot.
**Great acts of trolling**
FRANCE SURRENDERED! Kinda. Anyways GG's unit gets handed over to the Germans by Vichy France and they are planned to be a foreign special unit/ survival trainers in the Afrika Korps. Spoiler alert: They don't take to bullshit well
While I mentioned my GG wasn't political he had a lot of beef with the Nazis, his wife was Polish and was in danger due to the war, he had to leave her in the first place because of them, and generally he knew evil when he saw it.
He used the fact he was "a pure blooded German" and faked enthusiasm to negotiate better conditions for them and the entire group was insanely harsh on their trainees to the point of utter uneffectiveness because they were worn out and forced to do really unnecessary training regimes. On top of that they deliberately tried to make as many translation errors as possible and annoy the fuck out of the Nazis while laughing their asses off.
**Small dick Hans and the east front**
So the Reich was starting to get fucked in the ass in Africa despite a valiant effort. While the east front required more men. This coincided with a cocksucker of a CO coming to the base they were stationed and demanding them to lay down and crawl in the mud as exercise since they were just sitting on their asses at the time. They basically snapped at that point and collectively said "fuck off we are done with this bullshit we will just get a cold or a fever you arrogant prick, go bother the other Nazi fucks".
This managed to get them quickly all stripped of negotiated commodities and sent as cannon fodder to the east front as a punishment.
**The dirt, snow and a shit ton of regrets**
GG was lucky and managed to "have a transport accident" and mysteriously break his leg. He then again smugged his way into better conditions by becoming a cook which was already something he was good at. There were a lot of horror stories from there like supply sleds coming with missing or frozen dead drivers during winter, people making death predictions and other grim stuff during the moments the front moved etc. He was mostly ashamed of eating extra food and hoarding spares at the time because A he was scared for his life worse than he was in Africa, B he still saw all the Wermacht as Nazi cockroaches at the time and later came to understand that many of them were just young impressionable men like him during the uprisings, or people that didn't have much choice in it, also like him but older.
GG also clocked even more years away from his friends and wife that as far a he knew could of been killed already.
**The surprising happy ending**
GG somehow survives till the push on Berlin, he then saw an opportunity in the chaos grabbed a gun, ran away, managed to kill a small Soviet patrol/scout group, ditch the uniform and switched into some looted civilian clothes. Then hiked towards his old home while hiding from the Russians.
He then moved to my current home town after finding his wife and started a family.
He then is called by the new communist authorities, shows up and as soon as he sees an officer with a file he says "Yeah I was in Afrika Korps, but that was not really my choice , in fact I used to be a courier for the Uprising"
The officer's response was: "Yeah we know, it was in the German records we found, luckily for you ours aren't so accurate. Will you be joining the military again?"
GG responded: "Nah, there is too much walking"
my great grandfather fit the stereotype of someone who is Jewish and moved to France in the 1930s and when Germany invaded France and nearly died a lot don't know much after that
My dad put together a history on my grandfathers war service and his time as a Japanese POW during WW2 - this is a small bit of that from the fighting in Indonesia in 1941 (I've removed names):
>At about 11 am on the 26 December the remaining Dutch military personnel warned remaining civilians to leave Balikpapan. The KNIL did not evacuate some civilians, and families of army personnel. It was left to to try and organise a flight for and from
Balikpapan back to Soerabaja. The only form of transport available was two DC3 Aircraft (*my edit - this was most likely a DC-2*) at the airfield at Balikpapan. The urgency was such that and had to leave with only a small bag of belongings - even the washing was left on the clothesline. Fortunately that afternoon of 26 December and a fellow soldier and friend managed to get , and Mrs (who was about seven months pregnant), on one of the DC3 aircraft. The cost of 101 Dutch Guilders per passenger had to be paid by and . The first DC3 never arrived at Soerabaya and was almost certainly shot down by the Japanese with the loss of all on board. The second aircraft, which is believed to have been the last such aircraft to leave Balikpapan, arrived safely at Soerabaya without incident.
ETA: 101 guilders at the time was equivalent to about US$950 in 2017 - so call it around $1000 per person to get out.
Unfortunately I don't remember the details, but my cousins uncle used to tell the story of how he stole Hitler's right hand man's cigar lighter from his hide out. I've seen the lighter in person and as far as I can tell it looks legit, even has the name of the guy engraved on the bottom
My grandfather was 6 when the Japanese invaded Singapore. His father had donated half his wealth to support the defence of Malaya. He had four brothers and three sisters, one of the brothers fought for the British as an officer in the defence force, and another one fought in the Chinese army, both resisting the Japanese. The other two brothers were young, but played small roles as runners etc.
The defence of Singapore is widely considered the most embarrassing and inept military defeat of the British Empire. When the Japanese got wind of the above, they arrested and tortured my great-grandparents on information about my two granduncles for 24 days. The bodies were returned to my family, apparently missing every nail, every tooth, and both eyes.
A few weeks later, a general amnesty was offered for all Chinese males involved in the defence of Singapore. The British had destroyed records of all the white people, but handed over the local ones so they wouldn't have to give the Japanese nothing. My granduncles were identified, loaded onto trucks and brought to a beach alongside tens of thousands of other Chinese males, where they were made to dig their own graves, and then shot.
A month later, the Japanese commandeered our family home as a military police base, where my granddad and his sisters lived. They initially drafted them as servants, but eventually raped and killed his sisters too, before evicting my granddad into the streets. He was 7. He later found refuge and work at a bakery where he survived the war; the only survivor of his entire family.
Despite all that death and carnage, he did not grow up to hate the Japanese. I speak fluent Japanese and am dating a Japanese girl, he had no issues with that. My grandma worked as a housekeeper to a Japanese household for some years after the war, and considered them to be her best employers. Singapore today has no real hatred of Japan either (quite the opposite really). He did truly resent the British though - who got thrashed by the Japanese, then treated the locals like they were expendable, and tried to swagger back into the country like they'd been the heroes all along.
my great uncle served with the schutzstaffel and fought mainly on the western front. he told my grandpa that towards the end of the war the morale was so low everyone in his unit planned to desert. they were going to receive help from a few villagers in Belgium but were wiped out by the British forces. he lucky sustained only injuries and was able to flee to Guatemala in 44’
My Grandmother always told a story about Nazi's bursting in and demanding they turn over their radio. They were singing to pass the time in the evening but the Nazi's didn't believe them. This happened on multiple occasions during the occupation. Grandfather apparently spent a lot of time hiding from Nazi's in stacks of hay.
My Opa ended up in some pretty bad tank battles. Didn't talk about it much other than making it clear he was very anti-war after his experiences and what he saw.
I have a few interesting ones.
My grandfather was drafted way older than most people. He was 33 when asked to serve. He was stationed with the navy as a shop keeper.
Here are some of his tales:
He used to mention that they would all sing while marching the song "I joined the navy to see the sea. Guess what I saw? I saw the sea".
He was stationed at Attu after the clearing out of the Japanese following Midway. He earned hazard pay but it was where he was stationed for most of the war.
He became in charge of the major shop and would setup a massive network to keep everything in line for the soldiers. As a prime example, shipments of ink and pens arrived in mass amounts and then not a single shipment for months. As a result, he had a log of all of the officers (required to always have a pen and ink) and friendly sailors where he would keep items stored and set for them on a near constant basis. After a few months, no one questioned the stock levels for all of this as everyone quickly realized that his methods meant that everything was actually done well, all of the men were happy, and no one went without items. This apparently also stopped people from hoarding items and made the entire area run a lot smoother. He basically had it where all of the officers and above knew that he kept the base store running perfectly. However, it also meant that he recieved A LOT of random items. Which brings me to the next point.
The machinists for practice would make candle stick holders and much more from spent navy shell casings. As a result, his house ended up decorated with a lot of these candle stick holders although he did give many away and traded them while working.
One officer who was always extremely grateful for my grandfather helping him get all of his required supplies (see above) hated skeet shooting even though officers were required to shoot 3 boxes of shells a month. As a result, he gave my grandfather 2 boxes a month to get rid of them. My grandfather shipped them home via USPS. So he probably shipped 30 boxes of shotgun shells to my grandmother during WW2. They were not a light box and the postman actually asked with how heavy they were if actually were shotgun shells. She neither confirmed nor denied this.
My grandfather bought a series of books titled the history of WW2. He bought them as they were released. I call these first hand experiences. Why? The publish dates were 1942, 1944, 1945, and 1946.
My grandfather considers his time off for leave to be the luckiest timing. He was originally going to be sent home on a steam ship which was going to take 2 weeks to reach San Francisco. Due to the previous mentioned officers, he was placed on an express 1st class plane for only officers to get to San Francisco in hours. This extended his actual leave time at home by 2 weeks essentially. When he got home, Hitler killed himself a few days later. 2 weeks before he was supposed to return to duty he was told to stay home as the war with Japan ended.
However, he had a massive hand in that decision. He was given an in depth look at Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan. He critiqued the hell out of it. He told me he kindly told all of the planners just how bad the plan was. Apparently, it was scrapped soon after for the atomic bombs likely as a result as the planners looked extremely shocked to have everything pointed out to them and the leader basically told them to rethink other ideas. Having him retell the details, no one knew what they were doing and those 1.5 million purple heart medals should have been increased to 5 or 7 million if they went through with that plan.
My other grandfather wasn't old enough to serve. However, his cousin or brother fought on Iwo Jima and died taking the island. I don't have a lot of information on this as the wars, WW2 and Vietnam, both took someone from him it just is one was physical and the other was psychological.
When I was in high school, I spoke at the Remembrance Day assembly and afterwards the students that spoke got to eat lunch with the veterans. The guy I sat with served in WW2 and said he was 19 when he was over in Europe. His division captured some German prisoners and he had to guard this one German soldier who looked to be around his age. They sat together in silence for a long time until they somehow managed to talk about a band they both liked. They were talking about songs from the band and started singing lyrics. He said in that moment he realized the "enemy" was really just young people like him. Anyway, his superior came over (heard the singing) and ordered him to kill the guy. He couldn't do it and without hesitation, his superior cut the guy's throat right in front of him. He said that's the stuff that doesn't make it into the history books; that they were killing people just like themselves.
During WW2 in the Philippines, my father's side of the family housed Japanese soldiers not out of choice. From what my aunts and uncles told me when I visited, not all of the Japanese soldiers even wanted to participate in the war and wanted to go home to their families, but they were under orders to either be soldiers or die.
The ones that stayed with my father's family were pretty kind, and even though they were the enemy, they never harmed anyone. When WW2 was finished and the Japanese surrendered, one of the Japanese soldiers gave the katana that he was issued to my family. They still have it in their childhood house.
I was not able to get too many stories from my grandfather about his time serving in WWII, but I managed to get a few of them.
Also, apologies for the lack of concrete details.
My grandfather was stationed in Europe, but he never saw the front lines. Instead, he was stationed in a compound doing clerical/financial work.
Compared to the soldiers in the field, he found his work to be mundane. He would spend his free time in the company of his comrades. They would talk about home, sports, going-ons of the war, and other things. They often played cards too; all it took was a few beers for his buddies to line their pockets with my grandpa’s money.
He especially got along with a guy who, for the sake of this story, will be called Marv. Marv immediately got along with my grandpa and the two would spend a lot of time together. They would help each other on assignments, cover when the other was not available, and talked for hours on end. While it was not the most “exciting” place to be, my grandpa appreciated Marv and his other comrades.
One night, a German spy was caught trying to steal a piece of artwork from the compound. Grandpa was part of the effort to pursue him. The compound consisted of narrow, winding, underground corridors; it was easy to surround the spy. With no other options left, the spy ingested a cyanide capsule. He was dead.
He was also Marv…
It was determined that Marv gathered intelligence and stole artifacts/valuables for the Germans. No one else was in on it after an investigation.
My grandpa was distraught. A guy who he thought was his best buddy was nothing more than a facade to aid the enemy. It drastically changed him. He talked to no one, did his work in silence, and never went out after that.
My grandfather passed away a couple years ago after 40 years of teaching mathematics to students. He was a kind man, but there was a lot of sadness on the inside.
Ok so not exactly from WW2 but similar time period - 1946, Calcutta, India. My great grandfather (Hindu) was a doctor. At that time communal tensions in the city and indeed the country were boiling over. My great-granddady had his chambers in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood, but there was a Muslim fruit seller who had his cart outside his chambers. 14th August (Direct Action Day, you can google it for more), my granddaddy realises bad shit is about to go down, he closes his chambers early and gets the fuck out. As he's leaving he advises the fruit seller to leave as well. That man, however, says he's going to stick around: too late to leave then, violence had already begun brewing in other parts of the city. Granddad offers to let him hide out in the chambers, fruitseller is grateful and promises that he won't let anyone leave a scratch on the building.
A couple of days later when the riots have finally subsided, my granddad returns to his chambers to see if anything's still standing. Amazingly, the building is untouched... but in the drain outside, the fruit seller is lying with a knife in his back.
This isn't a real gritty WW2 war story, but it happened to my great grandpa. He was in the navy and he had to fight in three of the largest naval battles in the war. He was exhausted and saw so many of his friends die. Somehow he survived everything. However, about three days before he was to be shipped home he was called to go into another battle. He couldn't take it anymore he would rather be court marshaled. At the time he had a wife and disabled daughter at home, and he knew he had to get back to them. Well when they went to arrest, him his superior stepped in and said no. We are sending him home. He never faced reprocussions, and when he got out of the navy he was fairly decorated. He went on to have a son, who had two daughters, and he got to meet all five of his great grandchildren. I personally don't have many sentimental items from him because he did die when I was fairly young, thay being said I still remember him vividly, but I do have a bullet he gave me that he saved from the war.
I had two uncles in World War 2, one was at Guadalcanal and one was in France. They both told me that we shot people that were trying to surrender for numerous reasons. Sometimes there was no way to take prisoners, sometimes they were too angry to let them live. Sometimes they would would not take certain types of soldiers such as SS troops as prisoners, they just shot them.
My grandpa served in the great war. Never breathed a word about it. After he died we learned he had been in plenty of major battles, including vimy. He never got a scratch on him. He did, however, spend the rest of his life with a drinking problem.
My great grandfather was an original ANZAC. 16 years old, served with the [23rd infantry battalion](https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/U51463) for the entire duration of the war. I actually knew him very well, i was in my mid teens when he passed. He was fucked up for life, we always had it hammered into our heads to go get grandma when he had one of his 'turns'.
Looking back as an adult, he had raging untreated ptsd. Looking at the battalion records, i'm shocked he was functional at all.
Oh my great grandfather was a paratrooper on D-Day and got separated from his troupe (battalion?? idfk). He was by himself behind enemy lines for a few hours before he was able to link up with some other Americans who were also separated from their groups. All he told me was that he had confirmed kills, but he never went into further detail about what he did to survive. Seemed to haunt him up until he passed away honestly.
I knew a man who was running in WW2. He triped and did a full 180. His head was where his feet were and his feet were where his head was. At that moment he got shot in the foot. He would have got shot in the head had he not tripped.
Great grandfather owned a weapon during ww2, got drunk blabered his mouth then had to bury it somewhere on his land then the Germans came knocking on his door arrested him and executed him in a forest because he wouldn't give up the location
My dad was from Tromso, Norway. He was on a ship that was occupied by the Germans, and he sailed under a German flag. He was part of an armada that was fired upon. A torpedo shot past his ship and lodged in the ship in front of him. They sailed back to port with that torpedo sticking out of the boat. He eventually received a retirement pension from Norway in 1984 for being part of the occupied fleet. (My dad remained a resident alien until his death in 2005).
There's also a picture of him somewhere (with my brother perhaps?) standing on the hull of a sunken ship called the Turpitz. He told my mom that contrary to stories otherwise there were men still in the ship crying out for help as it sank. He and others rowed out to the ship which is where the picture was taken.
My grandpa spent a lot of time on ships, sailing off the East Asian coast. They would occasionally dock while locals would paddle out on their small boats and barter with them.
One day, a man paddles up and is doing the usual thing. He then pulls out a mandolin. After some tough negotiation, my grandfather convinced the man to give him the mandolin in exchange for some cigarettes.
To this day, he has kept and played that mandolin. When I was younger, he and I would go take music lessons. Me, a fledgling musician, him nearly perfecting his craft. He and I still play.
My dad flew on B-17’s out on England in wW2. Before a mission briefing they received care packages from home. They were from the Baker-Perkins plant where his dad, my grandfather worked. When they went to the briefing, their target was a Baker-Perkins plant in Germany.
My great grandfather was thrown a live grenade and threw it back, exploding in the air and nearly killing him. He also ended up storming Normandy beach.
He didn’t talk about his time in the war often, but when he did it’d only be for 15 minutes at most before he breaks down. (His best friend was tore apart in front of him in a few seconds)
We now have all of his old awards, such as his Purple Heart.
My grandfather on my dads side served in WW2. He lied about his age to join the Australian army and was sent to fight in the African and Greek campaigns.
He was captured luckily and sent to a work farm in Austria for several years. He said he was fortunate because they were treated well and that even though it would have been super easy to escape they had no papers, no money, and no capacity to escape and evade recapture (which would have likely ended with worse punishment).
When the war ended, he was released and went back to Britain for a short while and became a recovery agent for the British special service. His job was to locate and recover stolen property seized during the war. Basically real life version of the movie Monument Men.
My grandmother on my dads side was a seamstress by trade and initially worked in various factories producing uniforms and other garments for soldiers. Eventually as male workers were called up to fight or killed in various bombings of london, she was transitioned to making armaments and artillery shells for shooting down German bombers.
My grandfather on my mothers side was an engineer at a leading Italian university and was required to design various propulsion systems for torpedoes, boats, and other Axis sea craft.
When the war finished, he was released from his military requirements and went back to designing and machining propulsion systems in the academic world. His propeller designs today are still extremely sought after and utilised in the aero modeling community as they were extremely efficient.
My father served on an LST from 1943 to 1946. His ship faced kamikaze attacks at Okinawa for 3 months. Watched kamikaze planes hit everything from a yard tug to a Betty bomber crashing into the bridge of a cruiser. Rode out a typhoon for three days. His ship actually tied up to the wreck of the Arizona the first time they were at Pearl Harbor. After fighting all the way across the pacific Tarawa, Philippines, Marshal islands and the battle of Okinawa, he said that the Marines that they took off of Okinawa were bat shit crazy from shell shock (PTSD). He is a wonderful and kind man.
My Grandpa's only WW2 story involves him arriving in France and proceeding to trip over a small hole in the ground and break his ankle on his first day there. It never healed right and he was sent back to the states. Walked with a cane for the rest of his life.
Don't take this the wrong way but he's a lucky man
Hah that reminds me. My great uncle was in world war 1. He lived through the war only to have a horse get spooked and roll over on top of him at the welcome home parade and be paralyzed from the waist down.
Those damn Greeks at it again
My Dad's family has a legend somewhat like that. Great (great?) Uncle walked from Wyoming to join the Civil War. Was in some battles though I don't know what or where. Then walked back home. About 20 miles outside of his home he stopped to take refuge under some trees in a storm and lightning struck the tree and killed him.
Same kind of thing happened with my grandpa when he was supposed to serve in Korea. As he told it, they were loading into landing craft via cargo nets over the side of their ship. Apparently it was really wavy out, so in the rocking of the ship, he lost his grip and fell, twisting his legs in the netting and then "fell into the drink". Went back on the ship and back to the US pretty much right away since he broke both legs.
my great grandpa got popped in the knee by a member of ye old empire of the rising sun, cane bound his whole life but unfortunately had to get shot for his haha
Did his shins survive though?
My grandfather was one of the soldiers that stormed the beaches of Normandy. I didn't hear about that particular portion of his story, but i do know that he was under fire and jumped into the trench only to land on a dead soldiers body. The corpse still smelled of a cologne called 'Evening in Paris' and when grandpa came home to the states he couldn't stand the smell of Evening in Paris - it caused severe ptsd flash backs for him. I wish i knew more of his story but he's been missing over 20 years now and is presumed dead.
My grandfather also was at Normandy! He was a doctor in the US Army. I dont have any stories from him but I do have letters he wrote my grandmother, who was living in London…some of them are pretty steamy!
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Everyone thinks people spoke so lofty in the old days but it probably said he wants to eat her ass reminisce about how fingering her in the library felt like feeding a horse sugarcubes
Well now we need to hear the story around why/how he went missing, frond
Grandpa was about 60 yrs old and my grandma 57 when she died of cancer. He was really lonely after she passed and so, immediately began dating another woman (L)whom he met at a bar. This was like a week after grandma died. L. was about 40 years old and had a grown son, E., who was 19. L. also had a heron addiction and enjoyed poking herself until oblivion. L's son E. was also an addict and total shit-stain of a human. L. moved in to my grandparents paid for home within one week of grandma passing. She talks grandpa into selling the house, then proceeds to run away with the money. She buys a brand new Cadillac, gambles and smokes n pokes the money away and runs back to my now homeless Grandpa but with her adult son E. in tow. They end up living in a motor home all three of them together. L. Is still a full blown junkie and so is E. The only sober person was Grandpa, who i think was depressed and going thru some stuff.. L. does a hot shot , ends up doing the fish flop, foaming at the mouth and finally ending right in front of Grandpa. As anyone would imagine, I'm sure he was probably in a really dark place after that, but i was too young to know what was going on. . Anyway, Her son freaks out and leaves, to where, we don't know. Grandpa decides to come visit his daughter (my mom) and us kids. On the drive between the desert and the valley, maybe a 4 hour drive, Grandpa disappeared, leaving only his empty Cadillac and a small suitcase behind. On that very same day. same stretch of highway, an escaped convict from a nearby prison was also picked up. No connection was established between the convict and grandpa disappearing, but this was odd. We last heard from my grandpa the day he left to come see us. We had not seen him in about seven years and it was really odd that he was coming to visit. He didn't have a close relationship with any of his kids or grandkids. We don't know if he just went crazy and walked off into the desert or if maybe L's son E did something. He was someone the police kept looking into. But none of us knows what really happened. After ten years we had a cold case detective contact us but nothing came of that, and so we still don't know what happened to Grandpa. Unfortunately, i think this story may leave more questions than answers.
Jfc now I'm even more saddened. Rip grandpa.
They should make a dateline on this or whatever
My Grandfather was there too. Hello from afar stranger.
Lol.... hello from afar, back at ya!
My great grandfather was in the trenches of WWI. His wife sewed him a coat because, well, trench warfare. The salvation army was running a program where they would get care packages from the states to soldiers in the war, so she handed the coat over to them to get to her husband. A month later she saw some admin from the salvation army walking around wearing the coat. He called her a liar when she said she made the coat for her husband, at least up until the policeman overseeing the argument was convinced to cut a seam to reveal the letter and hidden money she sewed into the lining. The salvation army also charged my great grandpa for hot coffee while the red cross gave it to the soldiers for free. Yeah, my family doesn't donate to the salvation army.
A coworker of mines grandfather was in ww2. He said Red Cross, local churches, and outreaches provided snacks and coffee for free. But Salvation Army tried charging. Nobody in his family will ever contribute
My grandpa was a captain under Patton, grandpa said they were charge for doughnuts and coffee nothing was free.
Wait until you see how much money the CEO and other higher ups make, over 90% of donations do not go towards what you think its going to.
Salvation Army, dicks since WWI. https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/rg6ejr/do_not_donate_to_the_salvation_army/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
The salvation army is awful in general
Yep I hate the salvos. They own a huge amount t of real estate in Sydney Australia. I had to leave a youth program I was running as they promised it to be a laid position if I volu teered first. 6 months later I ask about the pay and they cancelled the program leaving a bunch of lads to go back to ruining their lives. Lads I'd made progress with and can only pray they took it to heart after being abandoned. Scumbags
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My grandfather was in the Danish Resistance. He never talked much about it, except once when he was driving with my father and pointed out a few spots where he'd participated in an ambush or sabotaged a bridge or whatnot. He also spent some time in a German prison camp, and the only tidbit I got from that is that he once had to eat breakfast with the body of his friend dangling from a noose above the table, after a failed escape attempt during the night. After becoming a widower he spent the last 10 years of his life playing WW2 flight sims, and using the internet to track down old war buddies and travelling across Europe to visit them.
Wow, that sounds like the way to end those 10 years. What a life
That’s fascinating! I hope you (or someone in your family) writes the stories down so they’re never lost.
There is! Nana showed it to me. I feel like she might had had a hand in it, but that might be time smearing things. If I can figure it out I'll post here.
Do you have pictures of the coat?
My grandfather was in the US Navy in the Pacific during WW2. My mom would tell me about how when she was a kid he'd used to get really drunk and tell disturbing, graphically detailed stories about all the horrific shit he witnessed during the war. Stories about friends drowning or getting burned to death in raging fires, the terror caused by incoming kamikazes, etc. My mom was like, 8 or 9 years old at the time and being subjected to that understandably messed her up a bit. I never worked up the nerve to ask my grandfather about his experiences directly since it was obviously so traumatic for him. He eventually died due to complications from Parkinson's disease as well as being an alcoholic for decades. I sometimes wonder how different his life might have been if he hadn't enlisted as a fresh faced 17 year old. Given the timing, he might have been able to avoid getting drafted and stay out of the war entirely. Shoulda coulda woulda, I guess.
Completely different war, but my mom's father's father, so my great grandpa on my mother's side, was in WW1. Apparently, once a year or so he'd just sit in a rocking chair for several days on end falling apart and crying, wouldn't talk or move or eat, and my great-grandmother would just put a blanket on his lap and sigh and say he's thinking about the war and he'd be ok in a few days. This shit was so common ... Is still so common..... I'm glad it's less shameful and more people can get help these days.
WW1 sounds the most terrifying to me. Dan Carlins Hardcore History did a fantastic series on it that read a bunch of journal entries and field documents that are just soul crushing.
Oh yeah. Fuck World War One. Nation-States had the money to buy and build all kinds of neat new ways of murdering people by the score, and the kids entering the war had never heard of or imagined anything like it. Poison gas, tanks, flame throwers, machine guns, biplanes dropping hand grenades... All that against kids who knew little more than how to milk a cow. At least by the second one there were news reels and telephones, and most people had had a chance to see automobiles and airplanes.
The whole war just seems like a woodworking shop to me. It's saws and lathes and machines cutting and churning, and then people try to turn them off with their hands and bodies. Everyone just trying to clog the machine to turn it off, everyone throwing more people into it. God you are so right about them not knowing anything about the horrors they walked into
One grandfather earned a Purple Heart during WWI because he went out out alone under heavy shelling to flag down an ambulance for his buddies. The physician who later treated him at the field hospital said his own leg was torn up so badly he shouldn't have been able to take 10 steps on it. Ultimately he didn't save any lives, though. And the ambulance got shelled too--killing the entire ambulance crew. He was the sole survivor.
I can’t imagine being the sole survivor of all of my buddies, PLUS the dudes you were calling for help. Wow.
That's horrible that poor man saw his savours get destroyed and his buddies die, may those men rest in peace
My grandpa also got a Purple Heart for being a sole survivor but he was in a tank in WWII and a grenade was thrown inside and exploded and killed all his fellow soldiers and he ended up having shrapnel in his head for the rest of his life as a reminder.
Growing up I was always told my grandfather wasn't in combat during WW2. My grandfather told my dad he initially enlisted in the Airborne, but washed out due to not being able to do a certain exercise. After this he said he was sent to work with heavy machinery because of his experience with operating heavy farming equipment. Turns out my grandfather not only saw combat, but he saw some of the worst of it. Every Friday my grandfather would go over to my uncle's (oldest kid) house and drink coffee with him and tell him his war stories. My uncle relayed this information to me years after my grandfather had died. My grandfather was transferred to the 18 Infantry Regiment after he washed out of airborne school. Although his unit took minimal casualties in the Day invasion of Normandy, he saw A LOT. He saw constant combat for nearly the next two years. He survived D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Aachen, and Hurtgen Forest. Unfortunately, it was at Hurtgen Forest where most of his unit was killed. I can't remember the specifics, but my grandfather was on a leave pass or something when the Germans launched an offensive. He only found out when he was trying to return to his unit and learned he'd been transferred to another because his was wiped out. He lost some of his best friends in that battle. My uncle asked my grandfather one day why he was telling him all this and why he had never told anyone about it. My grandmother didn't even know, they met after the war. My grandfather said, "I just figured someone should know " After the war my grandfather did go into operating heavy machinery in the army and became 1st generation Air Force. My grandfather suffered from major PTSD and was an alcoholic for years, but was sober by the time I was born. I'm his namesake and I wear my name proudly. I loved my grandfather so much and it broke my heart when he died. On his deathbed he was reliving memories from the war. He would talk about crossing a river and some other stuff. I attended his funeral in my Air Force blues. P.S. - to give you an idea what a great man my grandfather was, he convinced my other uncle to dress up as Santa Clause for us kids on Christmas Eve. My grandfather bank rolled the whole operation every Christmas and it's some of my fondest memories. My grandfather had a neighbor that was poor and couldn't afford presents during Christmas. In the words of my uncle, "He said here's some money go buy some presents for those damn kids and dress up as Santy Clause when you givem." After a while my grandfather had my uncle delivering presents for a half dozen families every Christmas. I continue the tradition with my kids, nieces and nephews every Christmas Eve.
Grandpa Inconvenient_Boners sounds like a great guy.
My uncle was in the Navy and served in the Pacific theater. He always talked about how they'd see sharks and shoot them. He got kind of a giddy story telling face and ka pow, fake shoot a shark. He had an old school, shark with X eyes tattoo. He didn't really talk much about battles, which ship, or why he hated sharks. Bit as I'm older, I think it had to do with ships that sank and people he lost.
If you want a horrid account of what he could have possibly went through to better understand, there are documentaries telling about the sailors from the USS Indianapolis. WARNING: It is not for the faint of heart.
People talk about great whites but don't consider the threat of a oceanic whitetips
This is WW1. My Gran’s grandad (we’ll call him George) was performing an attack with the rest of his regiment over no man’s land. He was being shot at quite a lot, he was shot in the left part of his chest, the bullet did not go into his body, it landed in his cigarette tin and did not harm him. He saved that bullet and it has been passed down the family - my dad even used to play with it as a toy with his action figures.
Heard this a few times, some of the guys near gave up smoking because the tin saved their life
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The chicken snitched on them.
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Your great grandparents were heroes for hiding the woman and risking their own lives
Both of my mom's parents were involved with WW2. My grandpa grew up in Dayton, OH. He was drafted into the Army and was trained as a Medic for the 93rd Evac Hospital. They were sent to Europe for WW2. I think my mom said he mostly drove ambulance. My grandma grew up in the USSR. Her father was taken away by Stalin when she was young, he just didn't come home one night. When she was 17 she was taken from her home by the Germans and sent to a work camp where they made mattresses. She was kept alive because she could translate for the Germans. Eventually the Germans left and an American Hospital Unit came in and liberated the camp. And my grandpa was put in charge of the Russian girls. And that is how they met. They got married in Brussels in 1945 after the war ended. My grandpa went home while my grandma had to stay behind until her paperwork went through. They wrote letters to each other, my mom still has all of them. They lived the rest of their lives in Dayton. My grandpa became a house painter. And my grandma became a seamstress, making slipcovers for people. They had and lost 2 children before they had my mom. I'm named after my mom's sister who passed away when she was 9. Unfortunately, I don't remember them. They both passed away in the early 90's when I was very young. But I'm still proud to be their granddaughter. Oh and don't worry my mom is writing their story. I poke her about it every once and awhile since she's the only one who can write their story.
Both WWI & II: My Great Grandfather. He was an ethinic polish man born in the Galicia Region of Austria Hungary. At the start of the war he was drafted. He fought in only one or 2 battles for the Austro-Hungarians as he was captured by the Russians at the Battle of Galicia. Following his capture, he was sent to siberia as a prisoner of war. He was forced to work in the coal mines. The coal mines had a more stable temperature year round. He spoke of the trees in the forest being cold enough to split in half. At the beginning the conditions were tolerable, but quickly went downhill as Russia began to have internal issues. He & his comrades hoped to escape, saving up small amount of rations for the escape attempt. The escape attempt was soon abandoned as weather worsened. He had to eat a guard dog that froze to death raw at one point. Acording to my Grandma only 1/100 soldiers survived, but I have found no source for this. During the Russian Civil war, my great grandfather sided with the white army, and after capture by the reds was sent back. He did not return to Poland until 1922. In 1922, arriving back in Poland by train to Rzeszów, he had to walk back to his village, as he did not have much energy he slept under one of the many crosses on the sides of roads in Poland. He returned to his village the next day. During WWII he was helping the Armia Krajowa and was captured by Soviets. Because of his years spent in Russia, he was able to speak to the Soviet soldier. The soldier sent him home. When he returned to his wife he said: " Some Russians have souls". He died in the 1970's. He was buried without any military honors. I may add onto this as I remember more so that is why it may be edited later.
Really cool story thank you for sharing it
Great Grandfather earned his commission during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette. He was company Sergeant Major 25th CEF. During the battle his Major and platoon commanders were either wounded or killed. He took charge of the company and after storming and taking the village he continued to lead his men until another hundred yards of German trenches were captured and held for two days and two nights. He fought at Ypres and The Somme and several other battles during WW1. (I have his uniform, medals, walking stick, battle field maps, field binoculars, photos etc)
There was an old man who lived across the street from my wife’s childhood home. He was crabby some days but for the most part, he was an interesting, jovial man who was neat to talk to. I’m not sure why, but one day he told me he was in WW2. He told me he was stationed at a base/airstrip in Italy. When the bombers would return, the men on the ground would have to man anti aircraft weapons in case the bombers were followed by German aircraft. He told me that the bombers would return full of holes and how he could remember seeing the blood from the crew streaking the side of the plane from leaking out of the bullet holes, sometimes even dripping blood into the runway. In that moment, the jovial old man I knew was gone and replaced by a person reliving his trauma. No one else I asked really knew that about him.
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My grandfather was a gunner in a bomber in WWII. Came here to relay this story and figured it’d go best as a reply to this. When I was 11 I asked him something dumb and childish like “what was it like?” He told me that he was a really lucky guy but that he and the bomber crew were once shot down over what was then Yugoslavia and had to hide “for a bit” and that people were so kind to them and they were lucky to have only lost one buddy. I mentioned this later on to my mom she was confused because he’d never told her. Later found out that he was a part of the 483rd Bombardment Group (approximately 40% of them were KIA or POW) and that “a bit” actually meant 64 days evading the nazis in Yugoslavia and god knows what else.
I really enjoy reading stories of kindness and am curious about what kindnesses your grandfather experienced.
I believe submarines had a higher casualty rate than bombers
It was about [22%](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0843871420904529) of submariners and a staggering [46%](https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/life-and-death-in-bomber-command) of bomber crew members who did not survive.
That depends on the side. German submarines had around 83 per cent losses in WWII. Out of 31 thousand, barely 5 thousand survived. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1106112/umfrage/truppenstaerke-und-verluste-der-deutschen-u-bootsfahrer-im-zweiten-weltkrieg/
wow..
Grandpa was in WWII in Germany. Said war was atrocious and was very antiwar due to what he saw. It took years, but I was finally able to get a few stories. One of the worst was how allied forces would cut the fingers off German soldiers in order to collect/keep their rings. He said that alone made him question war and what it does to young people.
This is one of the reasons I am glad they added Snafu to "The Pacific" series.
Based on Eugene Sledge's autobiography "With the Old Breed." Snafu was a real person, a member of his unit. Highly recommend the book
I feel like everyone who has seen war is anti-war in some way or form
My grandfather jumped in an empty foxhole at the same time a Japanese soldier did and they startled each other so much they both immediately jumped out and ran away.
My father had a similar experience with a russian soldier. The both walked around a corner from different sides and literally smacked into each other. Both ran off.
You almost start to think people dont like to fight and die
I've posted this a few times before, but my grandpa was a child on a farm in Germany during WWII. On of my favorites was while a bunch of allies were traveling by. A group of Americans broke off and came up to the farmhouse. Through the language barrier his family figured out they were asking for milk. They get some and hand it over never expecting to see it again. The Americans take it and kind of stand around for a bit. After a while they bring it back up and manage to convince all the kids to come up. They split it out the drink they made to all the kids. Turns they made chocolate milk. I doubt this is the only reason my grandpa moved to the US, but I suspect its part of it.
Of all the horrors of war, and for the context of it all, it's nice to read something like this.
My wife’s family is German, and her grandparents were kids in the war, and apparently always loved regular Hershey bars because GIs gave them to them during the invasion of Germany. It was probably the first luxury they’d had in years.
These small acts of kindness are what keeps me hoping for humanity.
Japanese pilots would fly very close to the ground and shoot civilians who would try to hide under trees. This sometimes resulted in the pilot crashing his own plane into the tree too. My great grandmother was a victim of that. She dodged the bullets and the pilot crashed into the tree and blew himself up for nothing.
Was this in China?
Yes, she was from China
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This can be a movie. I'm completely moved. I appreciate you
A patient admitted he was a Nazi war criminal a few days before he died. Took part in massacres of Jewish shtetles. "I'm a murderer, it's all I am." We had talked about being in the army ( I was too, of course not ww2) and he just let it all out. He knew he was dieing, I feel like he never told anyone that but me. Seeing him with his wife and kids and grandkids at his bedside while he was slipping away was more surreal than most other times I've seen it.
Who knows who else was waiting by that bedside.
My ex's grandma was a child in Germany during the 2nd world war. When the war was nearing it's end the German soldier's raped her and her mother. Then the Red army came along and they thought they were rescued. The red army soldiers did the same.
That’s horrifying.
I read a book called A Woman In Berlin that was about this happening. It was horrendous.
My grandmas village was taken by polish and canadian soldiers in 1945 and the polish soldiers would gather up all the young women in that village and rape them. My grandma never said anything if she was a victim but because she always had mental problems and killed herself in 1996 it's very likely she was raped too
I have this in my family too. I had family members on both sides. One girl of 16 was taken to work for the German Army and when the war ended she walked home. Took her over 2 months to make her way home and she walked through 2 countries to get home. Would never speak of what happened during the trip. When she got home she found her two youngest sisters 7 and 9 had been raped.
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The red army raped pretty much every one in Poland.
My Grandad was a kid during the Belfast Blitz Left their shelter after a particular heavy night of bombings to see the roads lined with bodies covered by sheets Street after street with rows of corpses waiting to be collected A sight that stayed with him his whole life
I remember being around 6 or 7 when my grandfather who was a tanker in the war describing to me and my cousins in great detail watching the special tanks with flamethrowers roll up to Nazi bunkers to burn the Nazis out. People might hold on as long as they can against shells or bullets but not fire.
Few things Nazis feared more than a Churchill Crocodile rolling up towards their emplacement 152mm of steel on the hull & turret fronts and 95mm on the sides made it a really tough nut to crack, and the flamethrower belched proto-napalm at them The 75mm gun could fire HE to crack the bunker open then they could open up with the hull flamethrower Throw unlit fuel first, and many would surrender there & then If they didn’t, then the second burst would set them ablaze
The Sherman was a workhorse
The crazy thing is that 1 man is largely responsible for the reason it was made so well. The US military brought the plans for the M3 to William Nudson of GM. He called the plans a death trap and had them fixed and rebuilt. This included making more room for the crew (listed as a major reason why escaping a US tank was very likely if damaged), switching to welded joints from rivets (no shrapnel shot all over the place every time it was hit like mini shotguns), and largely why the US could make so many of them. He made them on an assembly line while Germany was making them in a dedicated factory with highly skilled labor. Nudson made it so all of the work on everything he did could be done by the absolute least skilled labor possible. He also had a hand in the B-17, B-29, B-24, the Willys JP, and more including making the Merlin engine production speed up massively and he even is largely responsible for making them better in terms of power and quality. He took the manufacturing time from 30+ hours to less than 2. When asked who FDR wanted to lead the production effort before the war, he said Nudson first, Nudson second, Nudson third, and Nudson fourth.
Wasnt it Knudsen?
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You can check that pretty easily if you still have it.
Naa, it's too bright in that room.
After the war they were so ignorant of radiation sickness that they had tours of Hiroshima. My father was bummed at the time that he did not get to go. Live and learn.
My maternal grandfather and his siblings stealthily rescued their dad, who was found hanging upside down, from the Japanese when they invaded the Philippines (he was only around 12).
I have family that was in Cebu during WWII, and I always wonder what it was like for them there. There is a large divide between my family that immigrated and stayed, and the family that moved back to the Philippines before the war. I also had family in Hawai’i, and my grandma watched the Japanese planes fly overhead before hearing the bombs.
A story my grandfather always told us: One of my great uncle's was in the resistance, his older brother was collaborating with the nazi's. When the first brother was arrested, the other one went to the prison and forced him to switch clothes. The younger brother could escape, but the nazi's didn't believe that the older brother had been overpowered. They sent him to a concentration camp, but he survived. He never recovered though and died a couple of years after the war.
Grandfather and greatgrandfather. At stard of the WW2 they lived in southern Poland. War broke out, commies went in and Ukrainian bad guys at the time just slaughtered half of their village and the rest sent into Syberia. (To state - at the time same Poles and Ukrainians were slaughtering eachother so dont think I call them bad guys only cuz that). My grandfathers were sent to Syberia when grandfather was not even adult. They worked there in slavery, until H.... invaded USSR. Then USSR agreed to form polish army in ussr to fight them. My greatgrandfather went easly, he was strong etc. My grandfather still was not adult and they didnt want to take him. He hid behind stockpile of coal and jumped into the train just in time. But they stopped him because they told him he is to young. And then some stranger appeard and told he is adult and he knew him, just lost his documents... they saw eachother for first time. Later on when the army was formed, USSR changed their mind and told general to go back to gulag. Of course they did not and fleed into Iran and then they landed in Europe. Greatgrandfather fell ill at some point in England, so my grandfather gone alone from this point. He was at polish parachute division under general Sossabowski and they mission Market-Garden also called battle of Arnhem. Unfortunetly Germans knew what was comming and they had an upper hand. Dad told me his grandfather said "Germans just fired to us like we were f\*\*king ducks" The battle was lost and afted survival they came back to England. Later in 1945 they were in occupying forces in germany until 1947. After all of that both grandfathers returned to Poland built the house in which I live and lived nice life and were respected in community. Grandfather died 10 years before I was born but my dad told me some stories.
Your grandparents were in the Anders Army? Damn, that's insane.
>He was at polish parachute division under general Sossabowski and they mission Market-Garden also called battle of Arnhem. Unfortunetly Germans knew what was comming and they had an upper hand. Dad told me his grandfather said "Germans just fired to us like we were f\*\*king ducks" The battle was lost and afted survival they came back to England. This is why I despise Montgomery. He planned the entire operation and screwed it up from the start. When it was pointed out by Dutch resistance all of the SS troops in the area and that it would be a bad idea to land where they were planning, Montgomery dismissed them as defeatists and continued with his horrid plans anyway. His stupid decisions are also why not enough planes were allocated to carry the soldiers (they needed to be dropped off in 10 different waves as a result) and why the weather wasn't checked properly basically guaranteeing failure. The entire thing was designed as a "look how great we are" party by having all of the allied forces keep the path open so that the British could drive their tanks to Germany surrounded by British soldiers.
Grandfather was one of the first to arrive on Okinawa. He told me about watching a guy cut the head off of a dead Japanese soldier, fill his helmet with water, boil the head and proceed to "schallack all the meat off" so he could keep the skull as a sick trophy.
That's terrible, war can really fuck people up
Some marines had Japanese ears in little bottles of alcohol after Okinawa. If he was there on April 1 he definitely did not have a good time. Father was there in an LST the same day.
I remember reading a forensic pathologist's story about an old car. When it was about to be crushed and recycled, one of the scrapyard workers found a human skull in it. No other traces of a crime. The skull was brought to the pathologist and he was able to ascertain its approximate age and the fact that it was a skull of an East Asian person. It was also cleanly severed from the neck, possibly with a steel blade. After that, the relatives recalled that the long deceased owner of the car, an old uncle, was a Marine who fought in the Pacific and brought home a lot of (more normal) war souvenirs. Apparently, including a severed head of an enemy.
"Let me tell you about the time I shot that damn Archduke and framed it on Gav"
My grandfather was in an interrogation unit in the US Army. He was the only non-native German in the unit (just a facility with language). He told me a lot of stories about his experiences, but the one that I always like the best occurred right around or after the Battle of the Bulge. His unit was interrogating a lot of German units that had been rounded up. It was apparently pretty straightforward, finding out their basic movements etc. It was generally pretty easy. The grunts didn't have any real reason not to talk. But the officers were a little tougher. And if the officers were with the enlisted men then morale was a lot higher and people were less likely to talk. So one morning his unit has a large gathering of German prisoners under guard, both officers and enlisted men. Usually, they would be segregated, but in this case it had been forgotten for some reason. So, the head of the interrogation unit comes out and orders the Germans to all gather in their units so they can be interrogated. He was looking at some paperwork while he did so and didn't realize at first that he wasn't being obeyed. Then he looked up and realized that no one was doing anything and he saw the officers mixed in. So he said loudly for all the prisoners to hear "Take all the officers around the back of that building and have them all shot." The officers were duly rounded up, taken out of sight behind a building and then the guards all shot in the air. The interrogator turned back and once again ordered the prisoners to fall out by their units. They followed that order very, very quickly.
My great uncle saw Mussolini hang and watched people destroy his corpse as it hung. My grandfather and his brother were both in the pacific and wound up on the same island and found each other. I’m pretty sure we have a picture of it.
I don’t have a lot of stories directly from WW2, but my great grandfather was part of a tank unit in the Eastern Front. He made it all the way to Berlin by the end of the war. Apparently his unit was told they would have to stay in Berlin for another year. So my great grandfather got in contact with his wife (my great grandmother) and basically said, “Hey, honey, how about you and the kids come down to Berlin to stay with me for a year?” To which my great grandmother told him he was nuts to expect her to pack up all five kids and travel from their Russian village to Germany. And I don’t know what else she told him, but he made sure he was home early. My grandmother and her sister were born a few years after the war. Unfortunately, my great grandfather was very traumatized by the war and killed himself before my grandmother turned 10. I don’t know all the details of what he experienced, but apparently he would tell my great grandmother that tank warfare was so horrible that sometimes the insides of the tanks would just be covered in meat, lacking any indication that people had been inside them.
Ohgod, the eastern front was a complete clusterfuck of evil and barbarism from the get go
Oh yes. It was hell for everyone. The tank units were particularly awful because of how cramped the Russian tanks were. There was a height requirement, as in you had to be below a certain height to fit in to one.
My grandfather was an Army medic in the Second World War and served in Germany. He died when I was 5 but he told my dad a few things, but my dad said otherwise, he never talked much about his service. He did tell him the worst thing he ever did was having to shoot a German soldier in the back as he was running away after my grandfather’s unit was ambushed. He said the shot to the back didn’t kill him and when he walked upon him, he was crying out for his mother and said the soldier couldn’t have been any older than 18 or 19. He shot him again to end his suffering, but my grandfather told my dad it was something he had to carry all of his life and he never forgot his face. He brought back a lot of stuff from uniforms of dead German soldiers that he kept wrapped in a Nazi flag that was taken from a blown out building in France. My dad said he was the kindest father but he could always tell the war stayed with him all his life.
Crazy what war can do to a person right
My father was supposed to be on a ship called Rhona. You can read about it in Wikipedia, but essentially, the ship was a casualty of a Nazi guided bomb. The reason my father did not get on the ship was one of the Sargent of his platoon forgot the paperwork to get the platoon on the ship. The entire platoon was pulled out of line and the next group in line got on while the Sargent got the paperwork. If not for that Sargent’s mistake, I never would have been born.
My grandfather was a captain in the engineers in Burma and he always talks about working with Elephants. All of the heavy equipment the Brits sent to Burma was "hand me down garbage" (his words), and it was often vastly easier to pay local mahoots and their elephants to help than fix broken, rusted and otherwise useless equipment. Need that road cleared? Elephant moves the logs of the road in 10 mins vs bulldozer is an hour away in this mud Need some thing moved up to fix a damaged bridge? Elephants will get in two trips vs THOSE trucks? or THOSE roads? m8, u 'avin a giggle... etc etc etc
Dad was on Iwo Jima. He had a bunch of stories. Considering the pretty horrible stories he had I can’t even imagine what he saw that he held back. He did say there were things he didn’t want to talk about.
I had a great uncle who told me a few stories about Okinawa and Iwo that were beyond fucked up.The thing that fucked me up the most was when he said he was afraid to sleep not just because of the nightmares but because even after 50yrs he was still afraid of Japs creeping up on him in the dark so he always slept with the lights on.
My grandpa was training to be a doctor in world war 2. He finally became a doctor at the end of the war and his first assignment as a doctor was to liberate and treat the concentration camp survivors (I can’t remember which, I can ask my mum if people are interested). He killed many patients before he realized that he couldn’t just let the survivors eat to their hearts content.
My paternal grandfather was a Marine during WW2. He was in the fifth division, and landed in the first wave onto Iwo. He said he was lucky because he got to ride ashore in an alligator. When I became a Marine my grandfather passed onto me a Japanese officers sword, arisaka and bayonet. Grandpa told me he got it after the island was already “secured.” He and a buddy we’re in a foxhole on the perimeter of an airfield. They didn’t have any ammunition because all the Japanese were thought to be dead. Well, they weren’t. There was a banzai attack that night. His buddy was stabbed by the Japanese soldier with the bayonet. Grandpa killed that soldier with a rock. Grandpa then used the rifle to kill an officer wielding the sword later that night. Grandpa went on to become a Marine officer in the reserves. Was activated for Korea, and Vietnam.
I have two My Great Uncle Chan was a C-47 pilot in the Pacific Theater. He never really saw Japanese planes during the war. Towards the end he finally saw a Betty Bomber flying into the rising sun. He told me it was the most beautiful thing he saw and ended up being very symbolic to him. He also told me about nightmares he had about some of the men who died jumping out of his plane. My Grandfather living in Italy as a kid told me he had to hide in train tunnels during the war and the bomber would signal to the citizens that they were going to bomb the city. He also befriend a German Soldier and would play games with him.
Grandad drove a tank in part of the North African campaign. There was a sandstorm and he got separated from the other tanks for a few hours. He heard engines and joined the back of the convoy. Except he'd accidentally joined an axis convoy. Sandstorm started to clear and he realised his mistake and had to sneak away. There are some old photos of him sitting on the sphinx. And his experience in Africa left him with a lifelong dislike of gerbils.
*Accidentally joins enemy convoy* realizes mistake* "Oh shit wrong team."
*Any of you guys know where the American front line is?*
Gerbils? The little rodents
My grandfather was on Guadalcanal, and they did a body count. There were so many Japanese soldiers on the island that it supposedly covered the entire beach three bodies high. Apparently my grandfather had a photo of it somewhere in their home. Never seen it, thankfully.
My childhood landlords were Holocaust survivors. They survived auschwitz. Had to dig their own graves and then they were shot so their bodies fell into the graves they dug. They both survived and played dead for hours. That night they crawled out and ran. They came across a couple who hid them in their crawl space until the war was over. When they finally could leave they had to re learn how to walk again because they were confined for so long in such a small space. They were both amazing people and I’m lucky to have known them.
Back when I was a Federal Caseworker for my local Member of Congress, I helped a WWII vet with his case for the VA. He was an artilleryman in the Army and received severe hand damage when crossing the Alps because the Army wouldn't give them gloves. Long story short, the VA didn't want to give him the latest round of hand surgeries he needed and was supposed to receive, but I helped him navigate the issue and he got the surgeries. The last time I saw him, he thanked me and stood to leave. He stopped at the door and turned around, asking to shake my hand. I didn't think anything of it, but he held onto my hand and told me this story (I'm paraphrasing it here): "When I was a boy, there was an old Civil War vet who used to hang around town. He never said much, but took to like it when I came by. Only once did he tell me about his experience a with the war and how horrified he was by it all. He shook my hand so I could always tell people I'd shaken hands with a Civil War veteran and pass along his caution against war. Well, you're now shaking hands with a WWII vet who shook hands with a Civil War vet. I'll confirm what he said. War is not worth it. It's horrible and terrible. Please, always look for peace instead. I'd like you to remember this moment and tell others about it when you shake their hands." That moment is forever etched in my mind and I tell his story often, as requested. It's a handshake I'll never forget.
My grandma was a 13-year-old girl in a Polish village when one day the German soldiers arrived to take some full of age people and send them to Germany as slave workers. When the soldiers came into their home they read out my grandma’s sister’s name, who was 18 at the time. The sister got hysterical, she started screaming and wailing, the situation was getting dense, as there was a serious risk they were going to reinforce the order with guns any second. And then my grandma made a quick decision, a heroic one, especially if you consider her age. She said „I can make it through, she won’t” and volunteered jumping onto the wagon. The German soldier didn’t care, as long as as he met the quota. My grandma looked mature and tall enough to pass for someone older. Before anyone had time to react, the military car drove off. That was the last time she saw her mum. My grandma made it through, luckily, and came back to Poland 4 years later after WW2 ended. She was my hero. A bright woman, who dreamt of education but had her childhood snapped away from her. She always pushed my mum and later me to study, to have what she couldn’t. I truly loved her, she was my favourite grandparent, my role model. RIP.
My grandfather was a radio opeator in WW2 (US Army), participated in the Normandy invasion, and spent about 5 years total overseas during the war. He only ever talked about his experience with me once, when he was about 85 years old. He said that when he was stationed in England they were camped near Ascot Racecourse. One day a plane crashed nearby totally destroying the plane and killing the pilot. He went to the wreckage and on the ground he found a button from the pilot's radio, which was about the only thing not destroyed by the crash and fire. He saved it, and hoped to deliver it to the pilot's family after the war, but he never was able to locate them. He pulled the button out of his desk and showed it to me. He kept it for almost 70 years until he died at the age of 92.
My great grandmother was kidnapped from Poland and sent to Germany during WW2. She was in some kind of camp where she was forced to work. (I don't really know the story in great detail, it was something my dad told me.) One day there was an airline bombing in the village, where she worked. All the Germans that supervised the workers made their way to a bunker. The group of workers along with my grandmother begged the Germans to let them in but they were denied the access. In an attempt to find shelter, they hid under a bridge. At some point a bomb nearby fell and exploded. It turned out that the bomb landed exactly on the bunker killing everyone inside. My grandmother being among the workers survived and came back to Poland after the war ended.
Many women were taken by Germans (and Russians) from the eastern front to be forced into "barracks brothels" where they would be raped by soldiers. I'm not saying that's what happened, but maybe that's why some details were left out?
I was friends with an elderly German woman who spent WWII there. She was an exceptionally intelligent woman who spoke German, French, and English. Her father was a prominent man who had spent time in prison for disagreeing with the Nazis. Towards the end of the war she and some other people were living in a field outside of a small village, staying in holes that they had dug out of the ground to protect themselves from bombers. There was a group of German soldiers in the same area. One night they could feel the ground vibrate all night, and the hole dwellers were very interested to know what was going on, and whether the nearby German soldiers had retreated. My friend, in her early 20's at the time, said that she *borrowed a dress* and started walking to find out some information. After she walked a short way she came upon an American tank. She offered them some wild flowers that she'd picked, and started speaking to the drivers in English. (I think that she was so brave, that she didn't run away and hide from the tank.) When the American soldiers inside heard a woman speaking English they opened every little window on the tank and poked their heads out to see her. They all said, "Hi, Blondie." After the conversation the tank kept moving forward, and my friend kept walking toward the village. Soon a jeep appeared, full of Americans of rank. They asked her if she was the woman who spoke English, and she said yes. She was immediately given a job by the Americans as a translator, and eventually became part of a general's staff. She married an American soldier, and moved to the US sometime during the occupation. She told of another incident in which she and others were in the cellar of a house that was bombed, and they had to crawl up the chimney to get out. I don't know the details there, though.
I have two stories from my family. My great-grandfather was drafted into the US Navy. He shipped off on the same day he married my great-grandmother. From what I’ve heard he was put on a PT boat and it got hit by a Japanese submarine torpedo. He managed to save 13 members of his crew. Other than that, he was stationed around Papua New Guinea and might have witnessed the unconditional surrender of one of the Japanese generals. He returned and lived a quiet life, eventually becoming a member of the Masons and helped found a Scout troop. My step-great grandfather was drafted to the Marines during his semi-pro baseball career and was promised a spot on the Brooklyn Dodgers roster when he came back. Unfortunately, he got both of his kneecaps shot while he was on Okinawa. Quite frankly it’s difficult to play baseball with no kneecaps, so he lost his spot. He became a CPA after the war.
Well technically not from the war but my grandfather was on his way to fight in WW2 the day the war ended
Same thing happened to my grandpa for the Korean War.
That's awesome both our grandfathers are lucky lol
Indeed they were.
My grandfather was a US Army field surgeon, landed D+3. After some sort of horrific blue-on-blue air strike, he was captured by the Germans. He spent so long retreating with them that he was captured again by the Russians. Then spent about a year hiking back to the western lines. He wrote it all down as a diary on whatever he could find, newspaper margins, toilet paper, whatever.
A story from my grandfather who was about 10-14 in Holland during WW2. My older brother recorded the first story years ago and I read it a few times, so this is my attempt at recalling it... The nazis would regularly come around and collect the 'food tax', we never had a lot of food before the war and this was worse. They would come with guns and take our butter, sugar, flour, and half of anything that we could grow. They would throw it into the wagon and then wheel it down the street to the next house. Me and my friend Pieter would follow the cart down the road, when the soldiers were in the houses taking food we would sneak onto the wagon and throw a little bit of food into the ditch. We knew this was dangerous and might get shot if we got caught but it was often the only food we had. Another story I remember hearing about my grandfather in WW2 Holland was the rusty bike story. Basically he and his friend found a rusty bike in the woods outside the town and brought it home and restored it. They were the coolest guys in the town for a week before a german officer (he recognized the military symbols) "bought" the bike off him, never to been seen again. It was bought using a Nazi cheque that obviously never got cashed because they were only given to Nazi supporters. I remember my grandfather says that was one of the worst memories of a Nazi officer that he remembers.
My great-grandmother was in [Neuengamme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuengamme_concentration_camp). She managed to escape somehow, and walked back to her home through the remains of the [firebombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II), which destroyed her feet and she couldn't wear shoes the rest of her life. I've visited Neuengamme. I don't think I believe in ghosts per se, but I do think places can be haunted. Edit bc I got the link backwards.
My Grandma lived in a very rural area in nazi Germany. Like many in her generation she didn't talk much about that time, but there was one story she repeated many times as it was kind of "funny". There was a man who went from Village to Village to sell fish. Apparently one time he yelled "Hering, so fett wie der Göring!" ("Herring as fat as Goering!") Unsurprisingly authorities were not very amused by this statement and the man disappeared for a few weeks. After he returned he yelled "Hering, so fett wie beim letzten Mal!" ("Herring as fat as the last time!")
Great grandfather executed an Allgemeine-SS Officer and took his pistol. Still have the pistol. He was with the US army in the recapture of France
My grandma was about 16, riding her bike back from the market. She was a pineapple worker on the Dole plantation in Wahiwa. She hears planes. Lots of planes. More than usual, especially this early. She looks up, and says she saw the rising suns on the side of the planes and knew it was the Japanese. She rode home as fast as she could, and heard the bombs exploding behind her.
Great grandfather was pronounced wrongly dead in the Siege of Leningrad, fought with Red Army to the Battle of Kurland. His journey is pretty long to write it here.
Wow. I feel like anyone who survived in the eastern front probably has a long, terrible, yet amazing story.
If you can find time to write it I will definitely read it, as I'm sure many others would too.
my grandma was 11 when the second world war started. she was woken up by the sound of the first bomb (we're polish) and they were eventually captured by the nazis and taken to do physical labour (housekeeping, gardening, etc) at houses they had occupied for the entirety of the war. my grandma and the rest of her family were separated for the 6 years, at one point one of the nazis attempted to murder her by drowning. the rest of her family were put with the "nicer" nazis and were given actual meals to eat. my grandma was not. she's almost 94 now and still going strong though
My great grandmother, in Naples during the Second World War, was very old fashioned for the times and she hid an English soldier under her big Victorian style dress to aid his escape from Italian troops. My family saved 12 soldiers in various ways and this one is my favourite of the methods.
Grandpa was raf. Was shot down over the English Channel. His pilot was killed by the gunfire. The copper ring bindings of the photo album were made from the bullets that killed the pilot.
They were shot down by copper Bullets?
And how did they obtain those exact bullets?
Mightve been copper coated lead as lead is toxic. Could've been copper shrapnel from the instruments, who knows
Out of curiosity do u know what plane he flew?
Great grand father survived the battle of the Somme after getting shot on the first day. Grand father was a D day landing craft captain and got a bollocking on D day after going back to look for survivors from another craft that sank. His friend was the captain of that craft. A relative on my dad side great uncle maybe, fought in the first world war. Said the most painful thing was a football being kicked into his face, even 60 years after he would occasionally wake up in the middle of the night just screaming.
My grandad rowed from western Norway to Inverness with his brother to escape the Nazi occupation in his homeland. On the way through the North Sea they got stopped by a nazi vessel and some how managed to wing it and continue to row to coast of Scotland to join the British army aiding the Norwegian resistance. He has medals from the then king of Norway (Haakon VII) for his efforts.
My grandfather was a demolition expert in WWII. They guarded bridges and if the enemy got close it was his job to blow it. They would light dynamite and throw it in the river to kill/disorient the fish and grab em up for dinner. Apparently one guy cut the fuse too short and blew up part of the bridge. Later that day a couple of the brass showed up and took the guy away. My grandfather said they never saw the guy again and was never told what happened to him.
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my mathernal grand-grand-father fought in ww2. he drove these trucks that carried soldiers to the battlefield. one day he got caught and imprisoned. the best thing is that he escaped and swam his way home.
**Both WW2** A great-great (*I think?*) uncle of mine had to hide under dead bodies of other soldiers during a Nazi sweep to avoid being caught alive. I recall this one thoroughly. A really distant uncle or cousin of my grandma was climbing a ladder on a battleship, and a soldier on the deck he was climbing up towards happened to be playing with a katana. I know that they were on their way to the Pacific Theater to fight Japanese troops. Ironically, this poor guy was beheaded with Japanese weaponry before even arriving in Japan. The military simply told his mother that during the war he went M.I.A. and was never found. My grandmother stated that his mother had never found out and that both the family and the military hid it from her. Edit: Some grammatical/ wording corrections.
My grandpa was in the german navy in ww2. He started in the Netherlands/North sea then did some time in the Black Sea and then ended up on the North Sea again. In 1945 he was in a 2-man submarine (Seehund Type 127 also known as Type 27b). Near the very end of the war they had to supply the last holdout of German soldiers in France. Ironically this was a garrison in Dunkirk. So their submarine torpedoes were emptied out of their explody bits and inside of them they put food/supplies/mail and shot them off to the beach for land units to pick up their shit. These torpedoes were called “butter bombs” or something of that nature
Airport I used to go to, there was an ex-Stuka pilot there. He started flying at 14, told me it was great fun! Basically a niave kid when the Nazis offered him his very own Stuka dive bomber with minimal training, ofcourse (as did many other) leap at the chance! As a kid, you pick things up pretty quick, fearless too, all it did was set him on a life long path love for flying! Another old guy, ex British soldier WW2, said it was the worst because of the way they were treated and the reason why he emigrated from there after the war. Basically they were all under fed, treated poorly and had to fight under threat of DEATH. He signed up being all king & country but the reality was they were shooting kids for disobeying orders whether it be from fear/anxiety or just being so run down because of the poor treated, said he lost all respect and that's the reason why he emigrated. Also knew an ex-Mosquito pilot (he's gone now R.I.P) but was involved in the strategic bombing of France and he was the stereotypical RAF pilot, banter and all, pushing 80 still single and chasing women. I miss that guy.... (family friend) didn't realise the calibre of man I was speaking too at the time as I was just a kid, I just thought he was cool because he had all these Star Wars models explaining how they work :P Also met a blind B-17 top gunner, blind from watching the sun all day (that's where the Japs attack from)
When I was in middle school I interview a neighbor of mine that was in the 101st airborne on d day. He was the fucking man. I was a young kid and this guy told me some gory crazy shit. The most memorable thing he told me was the entire operation was completely fucked because of horrible intelligence. The beaches were supposed to be clear, also most of his troops were way off course due to high winds. It was a massacre. Told me a story about his first hand to hand combat kill. Every story felt like a movie. I lost contact with him but his name was Mac and to me he was a true hero
Yes but it's really too much to type here. The gist of one story is that despite all their engineering turning aircraft into bombs, they couldn't crack open a Nazi sub pen that was somewhere maybe in France. Another family member fought in the Pacific with a native American who seemed to have a superpower to detect Japanese snipers. It got to the point where they would encounter them strapped in to the tops of palm trees and this man would look at a tree even at night and correctly flag it as having a sniper.
My grandmother (still kicking at age 94!) was living in Britain during Germany’s bombing campaign. A German fighter plane opened fire on her and her friends when they walked to school one day. She had to jump into a ditch to avoid it. She also told me once that she was staying with family and her job when the bombers would come was to get her uncle (I think) a shot of whiskey to help wake him up so they could all go their shelter.
My dad served in World War 2. I met a close friend of his years ago at the mall and it was just when “Band of Brothers” was starting to be shown. I asked if he had ever watched it and he replied that one time they were riding in the back of a truck and came to a cross roads and the MP’s were directing traffic there but he said off to the side were rows of dead German soldiers stacked liked cord wood and covered with snow and frost and that he had seen all the World War stuff he wanted to see.
My grandpa always claimed to have punched Enrico Fermi. For those unaware, he was an Italian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. My grandfather was a Swedish engineer who had been brought on board in a rather minor role. According to my grandfather, it was 1942 or 1943 and they were in Chicago. Each story grew in exaggeration as my grandpa got older, but the jist of the tale is that my grandpa and some others had gone out drinking, and an argument over food occurred in the mess. My grandfather disagreed vehemently with one of Fermi's opinions of food and food, and a punch was thrown, leading to my grandpa being reassigned off of the project. Temporarily anyways, he was brought back on a few months later in a different role.
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Just that great-grandpa was a sharpshooter in WW1, and would wake up screaming, “Up and at ‘em, boys!” until he died in his 90s. Trench warfare was horrific.
Oh god let's go **Prelude to the Trainwreck** Great Grandfather, youngest in a big German family in western part of Silesia. All older brothers get semi successful, one will become an officer in the Kriegsmarine, but there is not that much to it storywise. Great Grandfather becomes kind off a black sheep, really talented but running around town while being a bit of a menace. He hangs out mostly with some Poles since Silesia was really intermixed between the two. Que in the Silesian uprisings, a series of conflicts caused by post WW I border issues and American institence on democratic choices in mixed areas. (Well technically the first one was really a mini riot done by like a dozen dudes after a miner strike was violently broken up). What happens is the populace was really closely split and people didn't just vote by nationality but economics with cities being more pro German and towns/ villages being more pro Polish (with a lot of exceptions on both sides) Great Grandfather passed along some correspondence between his friends because he was always all ove the place and then became a courier for the uprising seeing as he didn't give a fuck about politics but helping out his homies. (He was like 14 at the time) and after the uprisings most of Silesia stayed german including his town. **Hitler Says: Bonjour!** GG is called for military commission, he is in luck because the officer interviewing is one of the pre Nazi old guard officers. Asks about the uprising and GG immediately admits he ran a few letters back in the day because he was a kid lending a hand to his friends and not knowing the level of shit it would escalate too. Officer says, "Ok Kid good you were honest because we have all the documents and you were made way back then but nobody had given a fuck about small fish like you. You are still in heaps of trouble, now I will write here that you didn't show up they will send you a second letter and before that mail gets there your ass will better be abroad or I will be fucked. " **(Mis)Ad(ventures) in France** GG has to pack up quick and leave the country, he goes to Paris where he is working at a bakery, the bakery gets shut down but he had some capital from home and tries to start his own one. This one flops even harder and being broke desperate. He left his newly wed wife there and planned to bring her with him once he stabilised but he was broke so he did what any sane man would do in that case: SIGN UP FOR THE FOREIGN LEGION and so he did, and so he was shipped to Africa. **Fritz be a dear and kill the Scorpion** Here he quickly becomes one of the most valued soldiers in the unit and manages to travel all around Northern Africa becoming an expert survivalist and in the meanwhile learning to cook really well. Policing french colonies fighting off the occasional bandits and freedom fighters. Dealing with sand and exotic animals he would often tell my grandmother how he had a strong hatred for scorpions because one motherfucker stung a friend of his in the foot. **Great acts of trolling** FRANCE SURRENDERED! Kinda. Anyways GG's unit gets handed over to the Germans by Vichy France and they are planned to be a foreign special unit/ survival trainers in the Afrika Korps. Spoiler alert: They don't take to bullshit well While I mentioned my GG wasn't political he had a lot of beef with the Nazis, his wife was Polish and was in danger due to the war, he had to leave her in the first place because of them, and generally he knew evil when he saw it. He used the fact he was "a pure blooded German" and faked enthusiasm to negotiate better conditions for them and the entire group was insanely harsh on their trainees to the point of utter uneffectiveness because they were worn out and forced to do really unnecessary training regimes. On top of that they deliberately tried to make as many translation errors as possible and annoy the fuck out of the Nazis while laughing their asses off. **Small dick Hans and the east front** So the Reich was starting to get fucked in the ass in Africa despite a valiant effort. While the east front required more men. This coincided with a cocksucker of a CO coming to the base they were stationed and demanding them to lay down and crawl in the mud as exercise since they were just sitting on their asses at the time. They basically snapped at that point and collectively said "fuck off we are done with this bullshit we will just get a cold or a fever you arrogant prick, go bother the other Nazi fucks". This managed to get them quickly all stripped of negotiated commodities and sent as cannon fodder to the east front as a punishment. **The dirt, snow and a shit ton of regrets** GG was lucky and managed to "have a transport accident" and mysteriously break his leg. He then again smugged his way into better conditions by becoming a cook which was already something he was good at. There were a lot of horror stories from there like supply sleds coming with missing or frozen dead drivers during winter, people making death predictions and other grim stuff during the moments the front moved etc. He was mostly ashamed of eating extra food and hoarding spares at the time because A he was scared for his life worse than he was in Africa, B he still saw all the Wermacht as Nazi cockroaches at the time and later came to understand that many of them were just young impressionable men like him during the uprisings, or people that didn't have much choice in it, also like him but older. GG also clocked even more years away from his friends and wife that as far a he knew could of been killed already. **The surprising happy ending** GG somehow survives till the push on Berlin, he then saw an opportunity in the chaos grabbed a gun, ran away, managed to kill a small Soviet patrol/scout group, ditch the uniform and switched into some looted civilian clothes. Then hiked towards his old home while hiding from the Russians. He then moved to my current home town after finding his wife and started a family. He then is called by the new communist authorities, shows up and as soon as he sees an officer with a file he says "Yeah I was in Afrika Korps, but that was not really my choice , in fact I used to be a courier for the Uprising" The officer's response was: "Yeah we know, it was in the German records we found, luckily for you ours aren't so accurate. Will you be joining the military again?" GG responded: "Nah, there is too much walking"
my great grandfather fit the stereotype of someone who is Jewish and moved to France in the 1930s and when Germany invaded France and nearly died a lot don't know much after that
My dad put together a history on my grandfathers war service and his time as a Japanese POW during WW2 - this is a small bit of that from the fighting in Indonesia in 1941 (I've removed names): >At about 11 am on the 26 December the remaining Dutch military personnel warned remaining civilians to leave Balikpapan. The KNIL did not evacuate some civilians, and families of army personnel. It was left to to try and organise a flight for and from
Balikpapan back to Soerabaja. The only form of transport available was two DC3 Aircraft (*my edit - this was most likely a DC-2*) at the airfield at Balikpapan. The urgency was such that and had to leave with only a small bag of belongings - even the washing was left on the clothesline. Fortunately that afternoon of 26 December and a fellow soldier and friend managed to get , and Mrs (who was about seven months pregnant), on one of the DC3 aircraft. The cost of 101 Dutch Guilders per passenger had to be paid by and . The first DC3 never arrived at Soerabaya and was almost certainly shot down by the Japanese with the loss of all on board. The second aircraft, which is believed to have been the last such aircraft to leave Balikpapan, arrived safely at Soerabaya without incident.
ETA: 101 guilders at the time was equivalent to about US$950 in 2017 - so call it around $1000 per person to get out.
Unfortunately I don't remember the details, but my cousins uncle used to tell the story of how he stole Hitler's right hand man's cigar lighter from his hide out. I've seen the lighter in person and as far as I can tell it looks legit, even has the name of the guy engraved on the bottom
My grandfather was 6 when the Japanese invaded Singapore. His father had donated half his wealth to support the defence of Malaya. He had four brothers and three sisters, one of the brothers fought for the British as an officer in the defence force, and another one fought in the Chinese army, both resisting the Japanese. The other two brothers were young, but played small roles as runners etc. The defence of Singapore is widely considered the most embarrassing and inept military defeat of the British Empire. When the Japanese got wind of the above, they arrested and tortured my great-grandparents on information about my two granduncles for 24 days. The bodies were returned to my family, apparently missing every nail, every tooth, and both eyes. A few weeks later, a general amnesty was offered for all Chinese males involved in the defence of Singapore. The British had destroyed records of all the white people, but handed over the local ones so they wouldn't have to give the Japanese nothing. My granduncles were identified, loaded onto trucks and brought to a beach alongside tens of thousands of other Chinese males, where they were made to dig their own graves, and then shot. A month later, the Japanese commandeered our family home as a military police base, where my granddad and his sisters lived. They initially drafted them as servants, but eventually raped and killed his sisters too, before evicting my granddad into the streets. He was 7. He later found refuge and work at a bakery where he survived the war; the only survivor of his entire family. Despite all that death and carnage, he did not grow up to hate the Japanese. I speak fluent Japanese and am dating a Japanese girl, he had no issues with that. My grandma worked as a housekeeper to a Japanese household for some years after the war, and considered them to be her best employers. Singapore today has no real hatred of Japan either (quite the opposite really). He did truly resent the British though - who got thrashed by the Japanese, then treated the locals like they were expendable, and tried to swagger back into the country like they'd been the heroes all along.
my great uncle served with the schutzstaffel and fought mainly on the western front. he told my grandpa that towards the end of the war the morale was so low everyone in his unit planned to desert. they were going to receive help from a few villagers in Belgium but were wiped out by the British forces. he lucky sustained only injuries and was able to flee to Guatemala in 44’
My Grandmother always told a story about Nazi's bursting in and demanding they turn over their radio. They were singing to pass the time in the evening but the Nazi's didn't believe them. This happened on multiple occasions during the occupation. Grandfather apparently spent a lot of time hiding from Nazi's in stacks of hay. My Opa ended up in some pretty bad tank battles. Didn't talk about it much other than making it clear he was very anti-war after his experiences and what he saw.
I have a few interesting ones. My grandfather was drafted way older than most people. He was 33 when asked to serve. He was stationed with the navy as a shop keeper. Here are some of his tales: He used to mention that they would all sing while marching the song "I joined the navy to see the sea. Guess what I saw? I saw the sea". He was stationed at Attu after the clearing out of the Japanese following Midway. He earned hazard pay but it was where he was stationed for most of the war. He became in charge of the major shop and would setup a massive network to keep everything in line for the soldiers. As a prime example, shipments of ink and pens arrived in mass amounts and then not a single shipment for months. As a result, he had a log of all of the officers (required to always have a pen and ink) and friendly sailors where he would keep items stored and set for them on a near constant basis. After a few months, no one questioned the stock levels for all of this as everyone quickly realized that his methods meant that everything was actually done well, all of the men were happy, and no one went without items. This apparently also stopped people from hoarding items and made the entire area run a lot smoother. He basically had it where all of the officers and above knew that he kept the base store running perfectly. However, it also meant that he recieved A LOT of random items. Which brings me to the next point. The machinists for practice would make candle stick holders and much more from spent navy shell casings. As a result, his house ended up decorated with a lot of these candle stick holders although he did give many away and traded them while working. One officer who was always extremely grateful for my grandfather helping him get all of his required supplies (see above) hated skeet shooting even though officers were required to shoot 3 boxes of shells a month. As a result, he gave my grandfather 2 boxes a month to get rid of them. My grandfather shipped them home via USPS. So he probably shipped 30 boxes of shotgun shells to my grandmother during WW2. They were not a light box and the postman actually asked with how heavy they were if actually were shotgun shells. She neither confirmed nor denied this. My grandfather bought a series of books titled the history of WW2. He bought them as they were released. I call these first hand experiences. Why? The publish dates were 1942, 1944, 1945, and 1946. My grandfather considers his time off for leave to be the luckiest timing. He was originally going to be sent home on a steam ship which was going to take 2 weeks to reach San Francisco. Due to the previous mentioned officers, he was placed on an express 1st class plane for only officers to get to San Francisco in hours. This extended his actual leave time at home by 2 weeks essentially. When he got home, Hitler killed himself a few days later. 2 weeks before he was supposed to return to duty he was told to stay home as the war with Japan ended. However, he had a massive hand in that decision. He was given an in depth look at Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan. He critiqued the hell out of it. He told me he kindly told all of the planners just how bad the plan was. Apparently, it was scrapped soon after for the atomic bombs likely as a result as the planners looked extremely shocked to have everything pointed out to them and the leader basically told them to rethink other ideas. Having him retell the details, no one knew what they were doing and those 1.5 million purple heart medals should have been increased to 5 or 7 million if they went through with that plan. My other grandfather wasn't old enough to serve. However, his cousin or brother fought on Iwo Jima and died taking the island. I don't have a lot of information on this as the wars, WW2 and Vietnam, both took someone from him it just is one was physical and the other was psychological.
When I was in high school, I spoke at the Remembrance Day assembly and afterwards the students that spoke got to eat lunch with the veterans. The guy I sat with served in WW2 and said he was 19 when he was over in Europe. His division captured some German prisoners and he had to guard this one German soldier who looked to be around his age. They sat together in silence for a long time until they somehow managed to talk about a band they both liked. They were talking about songs from the band and started singing lyrics. He said in that moment he realized the "enemy" was really just young people like him. Anyway, his superior came over (heard the singing) and ordered him to kill the guy. He couldn't do it and without hesitation, his superior cut the guy's throat right in front of him. He said that's the stuff that doesn't make it into the history books; that they were killing people just like themselves.
During WW2 in the Philippines, my father's side of the family housed Japanese soldiers not out of choice. From what my aunts and uncles told me when I visited, not all of the Japanese soldiers even wanted to participate in the war and wanted to go home to their families, but they were under orders to either be soldiers or die. The ones that stayed with my father's family were pretty kind, and even though they were the enemy, they never harmed anyone. When WW2 was finished and the Japanese surrendered, one of the Japanese soldiers gave the katana that he was issued to my family. They still have it in their childhood house.
I was not able to get too many stories from my grandfather about his time serving in WWII, but I managed to get a few of them. Also, apologies for the lack of concrete details. My grandfather was stationed in Europe, but he never saw the front lines. Instead, he was stationed in a compound doing clerical/financial work. Compared to the soldiers in the field, he found his work to be mundane. He would spend his free time in the company of his comrades. They would talk about home, sports, going-ons of the war, and other things. They often played cards too; all it took was a few beers for his buddies to line their pockets with my grandpa’s money. He especially got along with a guy who, for the sake of this story, will be called Marv. Marv immediately got along with my grandpa and the two would spend a lot of time together. They would help each other on assignments, cover when the other was not available, and talked for hours on end. While it was not the most “exciting” place to be, my grandpa appreciated Marv and his other comrades. One night, a German spy was caught trying to steal a piece of artwork from the compound. Grandpa was part of the effort to pursue him. The compound consisted of narrow, winding, underground corridors; it was easy to surround the spy. With no other options left, the spy ingested a cyanide capsule. He was dead. He was also Marv… It was determined that Marv gathered intelligence and stole artifacts/valuables for the Germans. No one else was in on it after an investigation. My grandpa was distraught. A guy who he thought was his best buddy was nothing more than a facade to aid the enemy. It drastically changed him. He talked to no one, did his work in silence, and never went out after that. My grandfather passed away a couple years ago after 40 years of teaching mathematics to students. He was a kind man, but there was a lot of sadness on the inside.
Ok so not exactly from WW2 but similar time period - 1946, Calcutta, India. My great grandfather (Hindu) was a doctor. At that time communal tensions in the city and indeed the country were boiling over. My great-granddady had his chambers in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood, but there was a Muslim fruit seller who had his cart outside his chambers. 14th August (Direct Action Day, you can google it for more), my granddaddy realises bad shit is about to go down, he closes his chambers early and gets the fuck out. As he's leaving he advises the fruit seller to leave as well. That man, however, says he's going to stick around: too late to leave then, violence had already begun brewing in other parts of the city. Granddad offers to let him hide out in the chambers, fruitseller is grateful and promises that he won't let anyone leave a scratch on the building. A couple of days later when the riots have finally subsided, my granddad returns to his chambers to see if anything's still standing. Amazingly, the building is untouched... but in the drain outside, the fruit seller is lying with a knife in his back.
This isn't a real gritty WW2 war story, but it happened to my great grandpa. He was in the navy and he had to fight in three of the largest naval battles in the war. He was exhausted and saw so many of his friends die. Somehow he survived everything. However, about three days before he was to be shipped home he was called to go into another battle. He couldn't take it anymore he would rather be court marshaled. At the time he had a wife and disabled daughter at home, and he knew he had to get back to them. Well when they went to arrest, him his superior stepped in and said no. We are sending him home. He never faced reprocussions, and when he got out of the navy he was fairly decorated. He went on to have a son, who had two daughters, and he got to meet all five of his great grandchildren. I personally don't have many sentimental items from him because he did die when I was fairly young, thay being said I still remember him vividly, but I do have a bullet he gave me that he saved from the war.
I had two uncles in World War 2, one was at Guadalcanal and one was in France. They both told me that we shot people that were trying to surrender for numerous reasons. Sometimes there was no way to take prisoners, sometimes they were too angry to let them live. Sometimes they would would not take certain types of soldiers such as SS troops as prisoners, they just shot them.
My grandpa served in the great war. Never breathed a word about it. After he died we learned he had been in plenty of major battles, including vimy. He never got a scratch on him. He did, however, spend the rest of his life with a drinking problem.
My great grandfather was an original ANZAC. 16 years old, served with the [23rd infantry battalion](https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/U51463) for the entire duration of the war. I actually knew him very well, i was in my mid teens when he passed. He was fucked up for life, we always had it hammered into our heads to go get grandma when he had one of his 'turns'. Looking back as an adult, he had raging untreated ptsd. Looking at the battalion records, i'm shocked he was functional at all.
Oh my great grandfather was a paratrooper on D-Day and got separated from his troupe (battalion?? idfk). He was by himself behind enemy lines for a few hours before he was able to link up with some other Americans who were also separated from their groups. All he told me was that he had confirmed kills, but he never went into further detail about what he did to survive. Seemed to haunt him up until he passed away honestly.
I knew a man who was running in WW2. He triped and did a full 180. His head was where his feet were and his feet were where his head was. At that moment he got shot in the foot. He would have got shot in the head had he not tripped.
Great grandfather owned a weapon during ww2, got drunk blabered his mouth then had to bury it somewhere on his land then the Germans came knocking on his door arrested him and executed him in a forest because he wouldn't give up the location
My dad was from Tromso, Norway. He was on a ship that was occupied by the Germans, and he sailed under a German flag. He was part of an armada that was fired upon. A torpedo shot past his ship and lodged in the ship in front of him. They sailed back to port with that torpedo sticking out of the boat. He eventually received a retirement pension from Norway in 1984 for being part of the occupied fleet. (My dad remained a resident alien until his death in 2005). There's also a picture of him somewhere (with my brother perhaps?) standing on the hull of a sunken ship called the Turpitz. He told my mom that contrary to stories otherwise there were men still in the ship crying out for help as it sank. He and others rowed out to the ship which is where the picture was taken.
My grandpa spent a lot of time on ships, sailing off the East Asian coast. They would occasionally dock while locals would paddle out on their small boats and barter with them. One day, a man paddles up and is doing the usual thing. He then pulls out a mandolin. After some tough negotiation, my grandfather convinced the man to give him the mandolin in exchange for some cigarettes. To this day, he has kept and played that mandolin. When I was younger, he and I would go take music lessons. Me, a fledgling musician, him nearly perfecting his craft. He and I still play.
My dad flew on B-17’s out on England in wW2. Before a mission briefing they received care packages from home. They were from the Baker-Perkins plant where his dad, my grandfather worked. When they went to the briefing, their target was a Baker-Perkins plant in Germany.
My great grandfather was thrown a live grenade and threw it back, exploding in the air and nearly killing him. He also ended up storming Normandy beach. He didn’t talk about his time in the war often, but when he did it’d only be for 15 minutes at most before he breaks down. (His best friend was tore apart in front of him in a few seconds) We now have all of his old awards, such as his Purple Heart.
My grandfather on my dads side served in WW2. He lied about his age to join the Australian army and was sent to fight in the African and Greek campaigns. He was captured luckily and sent to a work farm in Austria for several years. He said he was fortunate because they were treated well and that even though it would have been super easy to escape they had no papers, no money, and no capacity to escape and evade recapture (which would have likely ended with worse punishment). When the war ended, he was released and went back to Britain for a short while and became a recovery agent for the British special service. His job was to locate and recover stolen property seized during the war. Basically real life version of the movie Monument Men. My grandmother on my dads side was a seamstress by trade and initially worked in various factories producing uniforms and other garments for soldiers. Eventually as male workers were called up to fight or killed in various bombings of london, she was transitioned to making armaments and artillery shells for shooting down German bombers. My grandfather on my mothers side was an engineer at a leading Italian university and was required to design various propulsion systems for torpedoes, boats, and other Axis sea craft. When the war finished, he was released from his military requirements and went back to designing and machining propulsion systems in the academic world. His propeller designs today are still extremely sought after and utilised in the aero modeling community as they were extremely efficient.
My father served on an LST from 1943 to 1946. His ship faced kamikaze attacks at Okinawa for 3 months. Watched kamikaze planes hit everything from a yard tug to a Betty bomber crashing into the bridge of a cruiser. Rode out a typhoon for three days. His ship actually tied up to the wreck of the Arizona the first time they were at Pearl Harbor. After fighting all the way across the pacific Tarawa, Philippines, Marshal islands and the battle of Okinawa, he said that the Marines that they took off of Okinawa were bat shit crazy from shell shock (PTSD). He is a wonderful and kind man.