re: Spinoff: Where did your relatives serve in WWII?

My mom's only brother was a top turret gunner / flight engineer on B-17's. 384th Bomb Group, 547th Bomber Squadron, Eighth Air Force at Grafton Underwood. Did 35 missions, came home after 6 months in a "rest home". Never talked about it until perhaps a year before his death. Died in an accident coming back from his unit reunion.

Uncle Matt - Army AAA unit in North Africa and Italy campaigns.

Uncle Henry - US Navy - PTO

Uncle Bobby - Army Engineers - ETO

My other Uncle Bobby - US Navy - PTO

Uncle Earl, married to my Dad's oldest sister - P-47 pilot, 1st Lt, served in the ETO with the Hell Hawks - 365th Fighter Group, 387th Squadron, part of the 9th Air Force. In his mid-90's still with us, as is my aunt.

In my earlier post I forgot to mention another uncle. He served out WWII in Saudi Arabia. He was Army Air Corps.

Great uncles in New Britain and another on the Yorktown. They didn't discuss their exploits much until the very end of their lives, and then sparingly. My uncle that served in New Britain won the bronze star. Told me " you remember all of those atrocities the enemy committed? Well we whipped their asses, so you can imagine what we laid on them. The winner gets to clean up the history books to make things look better for their side but make no mistake, we were tough as hell and matched their brutality when necessary"

Grandpa 1 was a marine served in the Philippines and went through bataan. Grandpa 2 flew b17s shot down on mission 17 and spent 2 1/2 years in stalag luft 1. Towards the end when the guards were getting jittery due to Russian advances he and 3 other guys left and took the camp flag with them. I still have a quarter of it. They wandered around for a bit after leaving camp and ran into a Cossack on horseback who was shitfaced drunk. Cossack informed them they were liberated before falling off the horse. At that point they went west until they ran into the Americans. After he got home he went on a month long bender with his back pay knocked my grandma up, became a chemist, helped invent saran wrap and pvc piping and taugh me how to drive a stick shift. Died at 90 from lung cancer even though he quit smoking in 1980.

Side note he went to his first reunion in 2001 and found out his ball turret gunner was still alive, he had thought he died in the crash. Pretty neat

Grandpa 1 died before I was born but he ended up a US Marshal and was at central high school and ole miss during integration. Got a few pellets in the arm in Oxford and I have two commendation letters from JFK and RFK. His brother Terrell was interim superintendent of little rock unified school district after the Feds ordered the national guard activated and the segregationist faction walked out, so he was named as the defendant in one of thurgood marshal's suits. He was principal of hall high school prior.

Here's some pictures of grandpa 2

Germany, 1944-45...wasn't a pleasant experience. He won't talk about it.

Which camp was he in?

i'm not sure which division of the military, but one grandfather was in the pacific, the other in Europe

Generally you got the Western Union telegram saying they were MIA. My grandpa's parents got that. They didn't know anything until he was verified as a POW by the Red Cross.

Patrons third army