Family in WWII

[Ming]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Who died and made you moderator?

Well... nobody died... and he isn't a moderator. But he does have a valid point.

If you want to discuss the differences... feel free too, but in another thread... This one is about Family history.
And it should be kept that way.

So stop the threadjacks and post on topic... or don't bother to post at all ....

[Capt Dizle]

My dad is a little guy and this probably explained his posting. He ended up running a NCO club in Panama. Best stories were of fishing, getting lost in the countryside, tennis tourneys, etc.

OTOH, my uncle was in Europe and was a driver. He never would tell us anything of his experiences and never drove once he got home. Walked, hitched, or took a taxi.

Second hand info was that he was the sort of guy that never got hurt. Shell would hit and kill everyone but he would be thrown clear. I really never knew the details, but he was strange in his way, though he was fun to be around.

[Playa del Carmen]

My mother's grandfather used to go and round up draft dodgers.

My mother's father fought, in Europe I think, but she said that he never talked about it. His brothers also fought too, and they all came back, as far as I know.

My dad's father either worked in the steel industry or the in the railroad. Steel I think. And he served as an Air Raid Warden.

My dad's uncle was a tail gunner on a B-17 in Austrailia.

[Sikander]

My family in WWII.

Mother's Father: Legally blind, did not serve.
His Cousin however was a waist gunner on a B-17, and was killed in 1943 over Germany.

Mother's Uncles:

Albert, the oldest of the uncles. He joined the Army in 1939, and was trained as a horse cavalryman. When the war broke out in the U.S., he became a drill sargeant. He went to Tunisia in 1943 as a tank driver, but didn't see any action. He was deployed to Normandy in 1944 as part of the 9th Armored Division, which was part of the 3rd (Patton's) Army. He fought in operation Cobra (Normandy Breakout), where his tank was hit by a high velocity gun. The turret was knocked off, and all three men there were killed. Next to him in the hull the bow machine-gunner would have lived except that a tommy-gun from the turret was blasted down into the hull, where pierced his body. He bled to death quickly. Albert was issued a new Sherman and crew and soldiered on. His unit was stationed about as far forward as any when the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) kicked off. His unit was obliterated by German Rockets (Nebelwerfers?). He was only able to find one guy from his tank alive, and that guy had the top of his head opened up, and his eyeballs were blasted out of their sockets and dangled on his cheeks. He was still conscious though, and Albert talked to him until he bled to death. Albert walked and hitched rides out of there. After the battle was over Albert got a new tank, this time a Pershing with a 90mm gun. He was at Remagen bridge, and his tank was the second across the Rhine. He maintains that Remagen was the hardest fought battle that he took part in, at least from his perspective. His outfit liberated a concentration camp during the tour of Southern Germany period of the war, and he ended up in Czechoslovakia IIRC where they met up with the Russians.

---

Red joined the Marines right after Pearl Harbor, and was still 17 years old when he arrived at Guadalcanal with the 2nd Marine Division to replace the depleted 1st Marines during the mop up phase. Mentally he is still 17 years old. His next campaign was Saipan, where his most memorable service was as a runner, very dangerous work in one of the longest island campaigns that the Marines fought during the war. By the time he got to Okinawa he was a corporal in a weapons unit. He was a sniper (a good move by the Marines, the man is a crack shot) and was issued one of the first infrared scopes used in combat. According to him the scope was used mainly for surveillance. (Once you fired the rifle the scope was blinded for quite a while from the muzzle flash.) His unit would mostly lay low during the daytime, and then move to exposed sectors at night to deal with Banzai charges with their machine guns and his scope. He would mainly direct the machine gun fire, and only occasionally take a shot, always at an officer, since often that would be enough to break up the attack. The Americans erected a cordon, cutting off most of the island (the north) from the vast majority of the Japanese troops. The Japanese tried to intermingle with the large numbers of innocent Okinawan civilians in order to escape to the north, where they were ordered to fight guerilla style. Red's unit was manning a checkpoint when a group of Okinawans tried to pass. Red noticed a couple of Japanese soldiers trying to slip past, and he ordered the machine gunner near him to kill them. The kid on the gun probably didn't see the soldiers, and opened up on the civilians instead, killing several. Red said he almost killed that kid before the other Marines pulled him off. Red says that the two Japanese soldiers took off for some nearby jungle and were cut down by the second machine gun he had concealed for just such an eventuality. He laughs when he mentions this part. He laughs about all the horrible stuff, like pulling bodies out of bunkers hit by napalm or flame throwers. Like I said, he's still 17 years old in many ways. While manning another checkpoint at night a little while later his unit opened fire on some people moving out in front. They hit a woman who screamed most of the night before bleeding to death in the early morning. Finally Simon Bolivar Buckner (Hey diddle diddle, right up the middle), the General in charge of the 10th Army and the invasion of Okinawa had run out of dogfaces and started to throw marines into the meatgrinder along the MLR (main line of resistance). Red's unit got sent to a hill that was totally registered by Japanese artillery. On the first day all of the officers and sargeants in his platoon were killed, and Red took command. Moving from shell hole to shell hole checking on his men Red was hit by machine gun fire and left in the open where he was further wounded by shell fragments. He would have died there, but two of his men rushed into the open and rolled his body into a muddy shell crater before sprinting back to cover. Red spent almost 48 hours in that crater slipping in and out of consciousness. He was too weak to move, his white skin burned red, his wounds open and soaking in filthy muddy water. He spent 8 months in the hospital after he was evacuated, and left about an inch of very sensitive anatomy behind due to infection.

After the war he got married and had a son, and then he and his wife had several children who died very young (RH incompatability). They adopted 4 children orphaned during the Korean War, and I'm sure that the unintentional slaughter of Okinawan civilians he witnessed had some impact on his decision to adopt all those kids at once. Red is still alive, almost blind and still pulling shrapnel from his body every month or two. I saw him and one of his daughters last year at my mother's funeral.

[chequita guevara]

That was an excellent contribution, Sikander. Thanks.

[joseph1944]

My brother served in the Army in the PI, 1945 mopping up and told me a lot of his buddy were killed while mopping up. The Japanese did not want to quit so they had to kill most of the ones they found.
My Mother had 3 brothers, they all served in the US Navy. The oldest brother (born 1898) served in the Navy during WW I in the Atl. Had 2 or 3 ship sunk that he was on. I once saw a picture of one of his ships as it was going down. Some girl who was a ex-wife of his ex-stepson took all of his picture so the family could not have them. No. 2 brother (born 1900 served during the 20s and No. 3 (born 1910) during the early 30s.
My father was to young for WW I (born 1905) and to old for WW II. He did serve in the Army when he was in his 20s. My dad had 13 brothers, he was no. 9 so some of them may have served, just don't know. My war would have been Nam, however the Navy discharge me on my discharge date and I missed Vietnam by about 60 days. I was station at San Diego NTC Division 9118 Security during the Cuban missile crisis.
I have 2 first cousin that served, one Army, Korea 1954-55 the other Navy 63-66, he did see Nam. My brother-in-law (Navy) served 64-66 in Korea and Nam.

A school friend father was in a foxhole with his best buddy in Europe during a battle. He head his buddy groan, turn around and saw a German killing his buddy with a knife and shot him dead from a 3 to 4 feet away. He was sick a second after he kill the German.

[Tingkai]

When the second world war started, my dad and his brother's tried to sign up in the Canadian military. They went down to the recruiting office and the guy in charge said boys, even though you were born in Canada,you're not considered citizens because you're Chinese so you can't serve in the military.

The government did allow Chinese-Canadians to work as civilian support staff so my dad ended at a British Commonwealth Air Training Program airfield. There so many support staff that my dad was assigned to the engine starting crew (the guys who would grab the prop and give a spin to get the engine going).

So first thing in the morning, my dad would help start engines, then he would sit around until after lunch when he would start engines for the afternoon flights. Then he would sit around until the end of the day and help put the aircraft away.

After doing this for a couple of months, my dad said screw this and went home.

Hey, not eveyone can be a war hero.

[GeneralTacticus]

Both my grandfathers served in WWII. My mother's dad served as a messenger, I think it was in North Africa . My mum says he doesn't really like to talk about the war, and he's not in a very good way currently, so I don't know if he has any stories about it.

My father's dad flew bombers, in Europe I think. Apparently they took him off pilot duty after an incident in which he bashed the wing of his plane on the ground after taking off.

All of my mother's brothers served in the war as well, I don't know where. The only story I ever heard about them was that they were one of the few families in which nobody died.

My Great-Uncle served in Pacific Navy. I think his job was to watch out enemy planes (especially kamakazies). We were told at the Coral Sea or somewhere like that a Japanese aircraft crashed into the funnel of the ship he was and a few weeks later (as for some reason they left it there) the machine gun ammo started going off.

[Dry]

On my mother's side, my grandfather was fastly taken as POW. He came back after only a few month, because as worker in the steel industry he was usefull for the Germs. With my grandmother, they took care of their 4 children (one was a baby).

On my father's side, my grandfather was father of 6 children (between 1 and 11) and was thus not mobilized. With such a family they only took part in very tiny little resistance acts like playing monopoly, hiding a jew for one night, and holding their tongues for a jew boy hidden by friends the hole war through (The small boy is now a man and lives in NY. He managed to have those friends proclamed 'justs' after their death).

The real hero of the family is Gaston Vandermeerssche - a cousin of my grandfather, he wrote a book of his resistance war and a film was even made, based on the book.
book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0891412913/atriumA/002-7427606-1830400

film:

http://www.hartnett.nl/_fgaston.htm

[Eli]

Originally posted by Rex Little
My father was a pacifist. Despite being Jewish, ..bla bla bla..

We have another ZOG member!

[Hydey]

My Dad was in the british navy towards the end of WW2, his ship was one of the support vessals at the Japanese surrender and he was in Nagasaki 10 days after the bomb, Images he saw there made him become a passifist.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

Originally posted by Eli


We have another ZOG member!

ZOG ??

Like "zog-zog ! Dabouh ! Yoktar ?" ?

[chequita guevara]

bump

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Also, on one side of my family half the brothers, 3 of 6, were Stalinist communists whilst the other half went off to fight. The Communists opposed the war and did their best to sabotage the war effort through strikes until Hitler invaded Russia.

Troublemaking runs in the family, eh?