re: WW2 Grandpas thread

My father was in the navy in the pacific. Joined up right after Pearl Harbor. Came back with a bronze star for shooting down a kamakazi. Exec officer on a LST. His brother shot down some jap planes at Guadalcanal and got shipped home to be an instructor. My grandmother was so happy that he was safe in the states. Then he was killed in a training crash. Maternal uncle was in the army in the pacific. Both he and my father hated the Japanese till they died.

My uncle was a Merchant Marine captain during WW2. His ship was torpedoed in the Florida Straits in 1942. The surviving crew got into the four lifeboats but the lifeboats were separated the next night.

A few days later a sub chaser locates my uncle's lifeboat and takes them to Havana. The next day the Port Captain orders my uncle to a meeting. At the meeting, my uncle is given the keys to a car and introduced to a Cuban police officer who will act as his driver. My uncle's orders were to go and find his crew and bring them back to Havana.

My uncle protested that he had no idea where his crew were. The Port Captain told him not to worry, the driver knew where they were. The driver proceeds to take my uncle to every town and village on the northeastern coast of Cuba and search every whore house in each town.

Sure enough, that's where all the crew were hiding. As they were all in the Seamen's International Union and got combat pay whenever they were out of port jurisdiction, they all just sailed and rowed ashore and shacked up with the girls for as long as they could. They were making the big money every day they were out and certainly weren't going to get torpedoed. It took my uncle over six weeks but he got them all back.

However, as he was married before the war started, he kept this entire story to himself until the 1980's, when one night at a family party the passage of time and a few young Scotches got the better of him and he told the story. His wife - my aunt - did exactly as he had feared all those years. He tried to tell her that he had not done anything wrong but she blew up and didn't talk to him for a week. I can still hear her yelling, "Goddamn it Frank, don't you lie to me. I KNOW what happened in those places!"

Not my grandpa, but I remember when I was young, Mr. Ray

Mr. Ray and Mrs. Evelyn, she would make banana pudding.

He parachuted into France, I don’t recall where. Landed in a tree that stuck him through the guts. He had a glass eye that drooped, and an old, threadbare deck of cards that sat next to a stack of lottery tickets on a shelf next to a window unit.

There was a black and white, wood grain TV with rabbit ears, tinfoil wrapped on the end. It was on a stand and Mrs. Evelyn chain smoked Winstons through her wrinkly smile.

And he’d play solitaire on a TV tray. And he wore suspenders. He was tall and gaunt and grey and I remember that I loved him and I cried when he was in the hospital and didn’t remember who I was anymore.

I wish I had asked him to tell me more stories.

I remember seeing his scar once, a wicked river that twisted up his belly.

He loved to crack pecans.

Dad joined the Navy in 1939 seeing that war may be on the way and didn't want to walk everywhere. He was on the cruiser, USS Nashville and sank U Boats in 1940 early 41. They even captured a German merchant vessel set up to raid US/British freighters before the war.

He then did a stint teaching diesel mechanic school in St Louis. After that spent his time in the Aleutians on a fleet tug performing salvage and patrol duty in the Bering Strait. They rescue the back half of a tanker which had broken in two (this happened to a lot of the ships rushed out for the war effort in quantity was more important than quality) They were ordered to let the half ship go into port under its own power for the press to show how heroic the merchant mariners were.

Just before the end of the war with Japan he was decommissioning a USN weather base in Russia on the Kamchatka Pennisula. The only Russia who spoke English was the political officer who described to my dad how the USA was way to powerful to defeat but to use the far right and the far left to create divisions and rot it out from within. For this reason he loathed the John Birch Society.

An Uncle fought in the Army in the Pacific. He manned a machine gun and had lots of war souvenirs, including a 4 foot long string of Japanese gold teeth he had removed from the dead Japanese after firefights. Nary a problem bringing it home due we had good rules of engagement back then. He was against the Vietnam war because in his mind you could not trust any Asian.

Another uncle had been in college (tuition paid with money dad sent home from his USN pay) and joined the US Army Air Corps flying P-38's in Europe as troop support and German train and truck convoy destroying roles. In the 80's he was a 1/3 partner in a business deal funded by the 1/3 partner, a German steel company. When at a meeting in Germany the Germans asked if he had ever been there before. He responded that he never had but had flown over it a few times. He had heart problems likely from small strokes suffered from his plane diving to attack from which he had experienced brief blackouts.

My grandfather was in the army on the European front. He never talked about it. He met my grandmother over there and they were married until his death in 93.

My grandmother had horror stories about Germany during the 1930’s. Absolute horror stories

Both of my grandfathers were end of WWI; neither went overseas. My father was in North Africa and Italy with the 313th Medical Battalion, 88th Infantry Division, 5th Army. He was company clerk for the forward clearing station. Nazis bombed his station one night (US tanks were across the road); his admissions tent took a direct hit killing several. I’m here so Dad made it ok with no wounds. He was behind a trunk.

Maternal Grandfather was a staff sergeant in the Pacific during WWII. Was very talkative but never said much about his time over there. I love history, and in my teenage years I asked a few times but he never said much. I asked him if he killed anyone one time, and he didn't reply so I left it at that. I know he hated Japanese people until the day he died. Somehow, he was able to sneak out a Japanese soldiers sword which was pretty cool.

Paternal grandfather. WW2. Was a mechanic. I think he made it to California or MAYBE an island in the pacific. A fricking truck tire fell on his foot. Crushed it and destroyed his big toe. His toenail was always a thing of nightmares as a kid. Lol. Sent his ugly assed foot home.

Maternal Granfather always had a hitch in his giddy-up. One leg was shorter than the other. He was rejected. Must have been early in the draft/war.

Vietnam.

My Dad. Sent to San Antonio for Field Medic or hospital tech training. Got sent to Japan.

My moms dad was a POW in Germany.
He talked to me about it.

One of my prized possessions is a book written about his bombardment group. His name is in there several times. He has hand written notes on the pages.

On missions they went on He put notes on the side about what they experienced. The mission their B52 got shot down by flack... all he put was "Bingo".


Eta: the book is called first over Germany, a history of the 306th bombardment group. His plane was 'Peck's Bad Boys". Shot down on July 26 1942 over Kassel