Have you ever asked your relatives about their wartime experience?

Also, he made a quick ref to Midway & Coral Seas, but I found out that from my Dad later that Grandpa was actually on a surface ship during those Battles.

Grandpa later transferred to submarine school, and spent the rest of his time in on sub boats. Patrolling in the Sea of Japan for years, they even picked up a few Japanese sailors from some recently sunk vessels. Even tho no one on the boat spoke a word of japanese, they made it quite clear that the Japanese were to stay in the barracks until they hit port. No brig to speak of, you see.

Oh yeah, and all the boats went to sea w/ mascots: cats, dogs, and one even had a pot-bellied pig. The thing was too short to hop thru any of the hatches, so it had to wait for someone to come along, pick it up, and carry it thru.

imagine our shock when cleaning out his attic after he died and finding all these insane Nazi officer swords. they were mostly ornamental and denoted different ranks, whether these were men that died by his hand or just his share of war souvenirs from other servicemen's kills, i guess we'll never know.

my other granddad fought in korea but hes been dead since 1967

Great-Grandpa was in the Great War, but I don't know what he did, and he died almost a half-century before I came on the scene. My parents had his doughboy helmet and saber on the wall of the family room for decades.

whoa, where at?

Also, did anybody have any relatives who served in the Red Army?

He was part of the occupation force in Japan. Said he liked the beer.

my dad's dad was a navigator in an allied bomber at the same time, ironically enough.

unfortunately I never had the chance to talk much with either of them about their experiences, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnther_von_Kluge

After the war, they stopped by one of the pacific islands that the Australian Marines had fought taken. One of his shipmates picked up a skull as a memento(not knowing or really caring if it was an Australian or Japanese corpse), and would polish it in his bunk. That guy didn't last too long after this was reported.

My dad's dad did not serve in WWII but his brother did, and volunteered to go back to the European theater even after having served there for a long while, and served in the 29th Infantry on D-Day (search by his name to find a brief record of some decisions on the day he made). He died later that year elsewhere in France.

Yeah, this was always one of my fave bits learning about WWII when growing up; about these american pilots who said "fuck it," risked imprisonment, and went to enlist in the RAF/RCAF to go fly Hurricanes & Spitfires against the Luftwaffe. They did this either out of a sense of moral duty or b/c they were seriously fucking crazy and wanted to fly the fastest thing with wings.

There's a book that just came out about this, called "The Few" or something, but I can't find it on Amazon.

These stories always underline the sadness and sacrifice of war for me. My grandfather didn't even know he had a son or how his wife's pregnancy was going until late July or early August of '44. My dad was born 5 days before D-day and the Army blacked out all correspondance between the troops and home.

My dad, though, was an Air Force loadmaster who was stationed in Okinawa (for the off-duty weeks; they were on rotation to fly into and out of Vietnam from there) where he raced motocross bikes, restored boat engines for fun, and took lots of photos (I just saw most of them a couple of years ago, on slide film!). There are a number of good stories about his problems with authority, including one about him being asked to stand with a hose and water the lawn of some military base WHILE IT WAS RAINING. Yeah, I think that one ended in fisticuffs. He didn't talk about the service much during my childhood, which is why the slide photos were such a revelation. Some crazy shit in those slides.

I was surprised by the size of the American cemetary in Grasse.

One of my uncles freaked out in Vietnam. He did night patrol for almost two years and killed a lot of people. He was destined to be a loser until he turned 45 years old, and somehow got his life together. He never spoke of Vietnam until a few years ago, and I'm pretty sure he was in therapy for much of that time. Another uncle spent his year in Vietnam trying to score heroin.

Plus it'd be funny to see what he had been busted for doing.

http://www.archives.gov/veterans/

You'll need his signature or your grandma's/parent's depending on who's next of kin.

He was torpedoed twice. The first time occurred when he was off-duty and sleeping in his bunk. After the explosion he didn't have enough time to grab his clothes before the ship sank - he ran for the window and managed to find a lifeboat with only a couple other survivors. Two weeks later they were finally picked up.

After that, he never bothered with the bunk - he always slept on deck. One evening the water was still enough that he could make out the periscope of a U-Boat a couple hundred yards distant and audible whir of a torpedo (he said that it was hard to describe the sound - there's nothing else like it). This time, the ship stayed afloat enough for everyone to transfer to a nearby rescue ship and in his words "I didn't even get wet."

After the two sinkings, my dad reasonably concluded that perhaps the Pacific would be a better place and worked the SF-Honolulu run. One weekend he and a shipmate of his picked up a couple girls in SF and took off for Yosemite for the weekend. They were late on returning and missed their ship - turned out that the ship was later torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank with all hands.

By then, my dad reasonably concluded that he had enough of the Merchant Marines and went back home to Ithaca and got a job making combat shotguns at the Ithaca Gun Company. My Rosie The Riveter mom was also working there and the rest is history...

As an aside: my dad didn't mind talking about his war experience at all. We saw Das Boot at least four or five times in the theater when it first came out.

sweet, thanks

(I'm serious here. No joke.)

Anyone in the sub service pretty much swears by this thing; my dad had read the book at least a couple of times before the movie version came out. When my parents got their first DVD player this was the first disc he bought, almost immediately.

I don't really remember him well, I was four or five years old when he passed, but anyone flying anything in WWI is a totally badass in my book. He later went on to take part in the first aerial survey of Africa. I still have his map-making tools, some of his hand-drawn maps, and a monster-sized book of aerial photographs from his reconnaissance missions.

jeez, getting swept in the Volksstrum and surviving a Soviet POW camp (which wasn't that easy, given the way the Red Army and the Wehrmacht treated each other's captured soldiers) is pretty hardcore.

Has a low tolerance for bullshit historians and pro-Iraq politicians.

yeah, I always wondered how most of these guys viewed the current slate of neo-con vainglory hounds. My grandpa's response was, "Well, you're too old to get drafted now, right?" Uh, no, grandpa, the draft age was raised.

but couldn't swing a sponsorship (you have to be nominated by your congressman)

yeah, this still happens. When a young me was applying to the Air Force Academy, I had to meet with a panel of vets & retirees working for my senators and my representative before the latter folks gave me the nod.

Once a year someone from military intelligence calls and reminds him that he that he still has to keep shtum.

Once a year someone from military intelligence calls and reminds him that he that he still has to keep shtum.

-- Stephen X (figmentfragmen...), January 10th, 2007 8:30 PM. (Stephen X) (later)

cthulhu??

seriously though that story kinda gives me the chills!

My dad dropped a couple of hints here and there and mentioned some really intriguing stuff about his work, but he's kept pretty quiet as well most of the time, though since the publication of Blind Man's Bluff, which I linked above, he's confirmed a few things here and there. There are a couple of names in the book I recognize as being among his fellow sub captains from Mare Island or Point Loma but that's the extent of it.

There's always the possibility he's just making it up to cover up something shabby and dull, though.

When I got home, I had an acceptance letter from the Univ of Michigan College of Engineering waiting for me, so I took the slack way and went to ann arbor instead. I couldn't get an AFROTC scholarship, so I decided not to join.

My liasion officer said that I had a good chance of getting in, not so good a chance at staying in. He was probably right.

I know my maternal grandfather was an American soldier stationed in England in WWII (where he met my grandmother) but he died when my mom was a kid. I think one of my dad's uncles fought in Italy briefly and then spent the rest of the war writing for Stars and Stripes (he became an art historian after the war); another one had some other noncombat job but I don't know what.

This thread is really interesting for me because my family doesn't have much of a military background and I'm not at all close to my living relatives.

Dunno about my other grandpa, he died when I was 5 and didn't serve I don't think (academia and all that). My maternal grandmother I'm not sure what she did, I should ask her (she's 96 and still sharp). My paternal grandmother died before I was born, but my grandpa's second wife (who effectively acted as my grandmother) did repeat some pretty racist "I saw Japanese people signalling boats off the coast of California"-type stories up until her death.

the cool part is that after the fact, my uncle, father, and grandmother all told me that they had never seen that notebook or knew of its existence. he didn't show it to any of my siblings either. it turned out to be the last time i spent any time with him as he died a few months later.

My grandmother on my mother's side signed up for the Red Cross along with her best friend and the two of them were stationed in France and Italy as Donut Girls during most of the war. their main job was to have hot coffee and warm donuts waiting for soldiers when they returned from flying missions. My mother has her diary from that time. There were a few dozen of these american women in the midst of thousands of american men. her diary is pretty hilarious in the way that it jumps from one crush to the next until it lands on her meeting my grandfather (name misspelled.) they were both from well to do chicago families and committed heresy by eloping in germany after the end of the war.

there's also some story she used to tell about how she was in allied-occupied italy (i think) and was riding a motorcycle from one base to the next when all of a sudden a few itallian soldiers who'd been holed up for weeks and were starving ran out and surrendered to her. apparently they had just taken a vote to surrender to the next allied forces they came across. she marched them to the nearby base with nothing but this tiny little pistol the red cross had issued her.

far right:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/117/297139194_45df3701a6_b.jpg

ditto:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/99/297144635_55a4c7e22d_b.jpg

third from left:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/108/297130579_59d5155c42_b.jpg

my father was a conscientious objector during vietnam, which is a whole different thing but pretty fascinating itself. i tape recorded a long interview with him about it a few years ago, with an eye toward writing something eventually. i also talked to one of his friends, who was in the army, stateside, and not in any actual danger of being sent to vietnam but got so disgusted with the whole thing that he quit and made them charge him with desertion and lock him up.

my granddad was in belgium during ww2

Where exactly?

I didn't and don't really ask/talk about the wartime. The relationship with my grandparents isn't the greatest and as such I'm not that interested in their past life (nor present one). If I'm not mistaken my husband's grandfather was in the resistance.

This is probably one of my favorite threads that I've ever started.

I have yet to transcribe those tapes from last December. I should probably get on that before heading back east this year w/ a new batch of questions.

I can't find the sandbox thread, but I know that there are two threads on here with the exact same title.

Still, thinking about this, it kind of astounds me that even though we ILXors are spread through-out the globe and the anglosphere, you go back two(or less) generations to find this common cause, this linkage. My American grandfather was stationed out of Perth for a long time, took part in a coupla of the biggest naval battles in human history, and more than likely was in a few scrapes shared by your grandpas, too. I just have this sense of wonder about this remote connection shared by so many thru this horrible event.

And it kind of boggles that so many of those who lived thru this tremendous period, this birth of modernity, are still with us(for a little while, at least), either going fishing with us or listening when we patiently try to show them how to check email or the bassmasters website or knitting afghans for us.

On another note, did Tuomas ever post if any of his relatives got involved during the Winter War and the Red Army invasion?

my grandfather married my lithuanian grandmother and brought her back to england after the war. that's all i know.