re: Do any of you have war stories shared by your parents or grandparents?

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My papaw was shot in the leg on Christmas in Vietnam. After he came back and was going through rough times he was at a bar on Christmas and was hit in the same leg by a ricochet when someone pulled a gun during a biker fight. He hates Christmas needles to say.

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Did he deliver newspapers in West Monroe?

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Butch O'Hare 

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Son of Al Capone's bookkeeper. He turned states evidence in exchange for an appointment to the Naval Academy for his son. He got whacked and his son went on to receive the Medal of Honor.

My grandfather fought in the pacific. After that he worked in the oil field for the rest of his working life. He’d tell stories for days about the oil field and the men he worked with. I never once heard him tell a story about WW2.

A buddy of mines dad fought in Europe. At one point was around 101st and easy company. Buddy said one day his dad met an old German millwright and learned they had been in the same areas, invited him home to talk. He just remembers his dad telling him to go away, that it was grown men talk.

My grandfather was on the USS San Fransisco heavy cruiser. I think he was a medic on the ship. He was on it for all the big battles. Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf. He passed when I was about and never talked to me about it.

My Uncle Johnny from Staten Island was on one of Patton’s tank crews and he got sent home for “ battle fatigue “. He looked a lot like comedian Buddy Hackett and he drove a big sedan with little American flags on the front and he drank Schlitz and Falstaff beer and we were instructed not to ask him about the war.

My Dad invited a guy to dinner at the house for my brother and I in the 70s who was at Pearl Harbor and he told us stories of hearing the tapping and I’ve carried that with me my whole life.

My FIL and BIL’s were in the S Vietnamese army and they’ve told me all kinds of crazy shite.

My Uncle Rip was in the 10th Mountain division in WW2 and he always talked about Training in Colorado and Fort Drum In NY and the war in Italy. Once he got home in 1945 , he never got on another plane again until he died in the 1990s.

When I was an Engrish teacher in Japan I heard a million stories, the most memorable being three elderly students who were in Manchuria, eventually captured and ended up for YEARS in post war Soviet labor camps. A couple hundred thousand may have died in captivity although the number is up for debate . A lot of people don’t know that.

Dad turned 71 this month. He was in the battle of Hue in Vietnam. He never said much about it, but from what I have read it was a brutal fight. He was sent home shortly after it ended. He was in the 101st Airborne. Seems like him and the men I have read about are totally different from the men of today.

My dad was in the 1st ID, in Vietnam, around 1970. Said you had the shits all the time, and only "changed" your uniform when the one you had on literally rotted off.

My dad enlisted in us army in 1936 after hearing a Bund meeting of German Americans.

Was in india and china before ww2. Flew.

During ww2 was wounded on 26th mission of day missions over Italy.

Volunteered to fly glider for 82 airborne pre dawn normandy. Just said germans flooded the fields and so some brits and canadians drowned.

2 silver stars.
Distinguished flying for normandy.
2 purple hearts.
1 north africa.
1 over italy.
Flak.
Handful of bronze.


Best story about was lend lease b17 flights from panama to brits trinidad.
Said his flight leader sold two planes in Venezuela, pretended he ditched in sea. Reminds of catch 22.

One of my grandfathers was just a little too young and my other grandpa was stationed stateside but my great uncle had a pretty eventful career.

I've told his story on here before but he was a pilot in the air corps. He happened to be stationed and on duty at Hickam Field on the morning of Dec 7, 1941. He managed to start several airplanes that were exposed to fire and move them into better cover inside hangers. He received the Silver Star for that action.

A few years (and many missions) later he was piloting a B-24 Liberator on a recon mission over Saipan when one of the other planes had engine problems and started dropping back. My Uncle Loren dropped out of formation to provide protection to the malfunctioning plane (my uncle is the "Cpt Stoddard" mentioned):

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Tim McCarthy of VD-4 adds: "One fighter, believed to be a "Tony", a Japanese fighter that resembled the P-47, placed himself in front of and over this group and was joined by a second fighter. They made a coordinated attack, diving out of the sun and their gunfire set fire to the number two engine on Captain Stoddard’s plane.

One of our planes (VD-4's Lt. Mather) and Lt. Sheerin of the 98th attempted to provide protection for Stoddard but the damage had already been done. Captain Stoddard managed to make a crash landing in the water about 40 miles from Saipan after two of the crew used their parachutes to evacuate the plane. Some of our people who observed the attack, reported that the fighters strafed the crewmen in their parachutes. After Captain Stoddard made a successful water landing, they strafed the wreckage and men in the water.

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LINK


He was reported KIA but had actually been picked up by the Japanese who threw them in the infamous Omori pow camp (if you've seen the movie Unbroken, it's the same camp). Most of the POW's were pretty malnourished, but he kept fairly healthy by trading his cigarette ration for extra food (he was a mormon so he didn't smoke).

He stayed at that camp until being liberated in '45. My entire family already thought he had died over a year before until they heard his name read over the radio when they liberated the camp. I have often wondered what it was like to be in that room when they all learned that he was alive and well.

He went on to serve in Korea and Vietnam as well and had a pretty colorful life. He became involved in construction in Las Vegas and was a central figure in the Mormon-Mafia collaborations that helped build Vegas.


*Many years later he was tracked down by the crew members of that plane he dropped back to cover and they credited him with saving their lives that day.

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Said a favorite booby trap of Germans was to stretch a fine sharp wire across a town street. If you were careless riding in a Jeep you would lose your head. It happened more than once he said.

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The issue was that our Jeeps’ windshields folded down forward onto the Jeep’s hood. If you left the windshield up, it would catch & break the wire.

Windshield down? Decapitation.

My pop told me that US soldiers started mounting serrated blades on the steel uprights of the Jeep’s windshields so the boobytrap wires would get on the blades and cut cleanly.