re: WW2 Grandpas thread

Here is my Grandfather and his B-29, Monsoon. 20th AF, 58th BW, 40th BG, 25th BS. CBI and Pacific Theaters. He was a bombardier.

He told of one mission where they returned with 408 holes, dead navigator, and two others wounded.



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Paternal grandfather was Army Air Force in Oklahoma. Never went overseas.

Maternal grandfather I'm guessing was too old as he would have been 33 in 1941. Was a married farmer as well which may have precluded his being drafted.

paternal grandfather - heavy vehicles, tanks and such from italy into berlin. he was in europe from 43-46. and i cant go more than a couple days without ac or power in his words "we drove around till someone shot at us then radioed in where we were" he had graduated harvard before the war. hard to imagine a harvard grad going to war now.

maternal grandfather - was younger, air force at the very end of the war, never saw and active duty

Maternal - European theatre. Ended up bombing a building harboring soldiers. Turned out to be full of civilians. fricked him up mentally pretty bad to the point of being admit to a ward. Never truly got back on track in life, spent the rest of his days traveling the world as a merchant marine fricking and drinking away every dollar he made, and working for the Marcelo family when back home in New Orleans. Only learned of this second hand from my mother years after his death

Paternal - Pacific theatre. Was going to be a part of the mainland assault pf Japan prior to the a bombs ending the war. I probably wouldn’t be here today if the military proceeded with that plan. My grandmother still has a photo of him and two friends walking the streets of Hawaii in uniform looking like absolute bosses in their home. I really need to scan that and upload one day.

Maternal grandfather - was an aircraft gunner in the Pacific theater. His plane crashed over China, but the crew survived and were able to return home safely.

Paternal grandfather - infantry on the western front. He apparently didn't talk much about his time there so I don't know many specifics. His brother was killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

My great uncle graduated from The Citadel in 1927 and didn't accept his commission. After teaching at the Rugby School in New Orleans he moved to Lafayette. When WW2 hit he asked for his commission and was refused. He then decided to attend officer training at the then Camp Polk as a private at 35 years of age and received his commission, went on to serve in North Africa and retired from the reserves as a Leutenant Colonel.
He also started the American Legion baseball program in Lafayette and has a park and baseball stadium named after him and my family in Lafayette.

He was a great man.

Maternal: Navy no idea what he did but was in Europe. We have a picture of him in uniform with his wife in France.

Paternal: army I think he loaded ordinance or something. Neither ever talked about it and I was young when they both passed.

My maternal grandfather spent most of WWII in a Balao class submarine after initially serving on a destroyer and a cruiser. He was already in the Navy when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In fact, he was stationed there at the time, but his cruiser was out to sea. He went to submarine school sometime after we declared war on the Japanese.

When I was a little kid, he would sometimes sketch a diagram of the submarine’s layout. He told a few stories but it was an effort to get him talking about his time in the Navy. His submarine was the only one in a three-sub wolfpack that made it through a minefield, and at times the chains attached to the mines dragged across the hull. The other rare stories I could get out of him were much more light-hearted, like the King Neptune ceremony, the little ways that sailors would haze new crewmen, and life in general as a 6’2 crewman on a submarine.

He learned a skill in the Navy that led to greater earning potential after he was discharged. I’ve never known a better man. I wish he was still with us.

His older brother was a coxswain on a Higgins landing craft in the Pacific theater.

My paternal grandfather was too young to serve in WWII.

Paternal grandfather flew P-51’s in Italy for the 325th mostly bomber escort.
Maternal grandfather was a 2nd lieutenant 2nd Marines and fought on Okinawa. He brought back some cool souvenirs. He died when I was still pretty young but I know he never really cared for Japanese people for the rest of his life. I don’t think it was a prejudice thing as much as he’d just seen how savage war was and they happened to be his enemy.
My paternal great-uncle who was to me my real grandfather figure was a B-17 pilot in the 8th AF. He flew out of Thorpe Abbots between 1943-1944 with the eventual rank of Captain. I loved that man like no other and I always begged him to tell me stories about the war but he never would talk too much about it. He was one of the lucky ones to survive as he flew missions before we had air supremacy and they took a beating. My great aunt told me he lost his best friend who was his navigator on one of his last missions before rotating home when he had 2 of his engines shot out and couldn’t maintain enough speed to stay in formation. On the way back they were alone and were jumped by a Luftwaffe fighter when his navigator was hit and bled out before they could get back to England. She said he was supposed to be his best man when they got back home and it really did something to my great uncle. He was the epitome of a tough guy but she said he had screaming fits while he slept for the rest of his life.