My uncle was there.
He was killed a few days later.
Data such as that would be in his Official Military Personnel File (OMPF) in the National Archives. Next-of-kin can obtain it for free. Being over 62 years old the record can be requested by anyone but a fee will be charged.
The record will not include any actions he participated in, just training, qualifications, and awards. Also, thanks to a fire in 1975, it may be lost.
Same here. Dad’s older brother was in the Royal Canadian Navy, and served in the Battle of the Atlantic, and a cousin was in the RCAF flying bombers over Europe, but that’s as close as our family got.
The average age of the 160,000 Allied troops that landed on D-Day was 20 years old. More than 77,000 Allied troops died that day and in the subsequent Battle of Normandy. Sadly, a large portion of the D-Day invasion forces and those who followed in the coming days never became father or grandfather to anyone. I think it is an obligation for all of us to remember them and their sacrifice since they have no descendants to do so.
My great-great grandfather was at Shilo, but due to the American frequency of hot wars skipping a generation, all our services were “peacetime:” My dad was with a peacetime maintenance crew of a new type of aircraft sent to Korea, was surprised to be handed an M-14, and after repulsing an assault where he had to kill someone, was told never to speak of it or else. I participated in a peacetime training deployment to the Philippines where wounded Marines would appear on the mess decks, refusing to answer inquiries as to “what the fuck happened to you guys?”
One of my SO’s uncles had half his hand shot off in Italy. The family album has his photo on one page, wearing his GI khakis. On the opposite page is another cousin in his gleaming white Imperial Japanese Navy uniform. Her grandfather had been approached by Bernard Julius Otto Kuehn in Honolulu, and for this he was harshly interrogated and imprisoned until 1945. Her grandmother performed superhuman efforts to maintain the family during all this, and then stayed in bed all through 1946.
This topic makes me sad.
My dad was definitely in the Army in 1944, and he definitely served in France during the war. The sad part, for me, is that I was too self-centered as a kid to ask him a lot of questions about his service during the war, and he’s been dead for several decades so I can’t ask him any questions now that I’m interested in his life story before I was born.
Like most veterans, he didn’t talk about his wartime experience much, but he would volunteer a few details in passing now and then. He told one funny anecdote about GIs offering to buy some corn from a French farmer who told them just to take it, because no one ate corn except pigs and Americans, and he used to line up me and my brother and march us in formation around the living room sometimes, things like that.
I tried looking up his service record (I have his enlistment date and his service number) but apparently the records have gotten destroyed, so I’m left with a few tatters of details from my lousy memory to go on. I imagine that if he served on the ground in France in 1944 he might have gotten there by landing on D-Day, but maybe not. That’s all I have. Kind of sad, no?
My father was not. He was in the Merchant Marines, and I gather he spent most his time in the Pacific.
Dad was USAAF at the time, teaching men how to fly medium bombers. Never left the States.
Had relatives in the WW2 British Air Force, who fought in Italy, and who drove tanks across Africa.
But no-one at Normandy AFAIK.
My dad was roughly a 4-week-old blastocyst, if my calculations are correct. I know his father analyzed foreign aircraft for Air Force intelligence during the 50s and 60s, but I don’t know his role during the war.
My maternal grandfather tried to enlist but was deemed too old. He remained at his job as a radio announcer, reporting on the war, and kept doing that for decades.
Grandad was a B24 pilot in the army air force, but not at DDay. He didn’t talk about it much before he died, so no one knows much more detail than that. Going back and trying to pull his service records is on my rainy day list of things, but I haven’t gotten around to doing so yet. Someday.
My grandfather was in Hawaii repairing airplanes. Was almost but not quite essential because he was a journeyman apple farmer. But still he was able to parley his mechanical ability into staying behind the front lines for the duration.
My Grandfather was not at D-day but at Dieppe, a nightmare rehearsal for D-Day in 1942, that you probably have never heard of if you are not Canadian.
He made it off the beach with just a handful of companions, most of whom did not last much longer. He managed to survive somehow for two years in rural France until he made contact with resistance and was smuggled back to England sometime in 1944.
He never spoke about his experience. We only know what we do because a colleague came to visit him one day in the seventies with a military historian and while they interviewed in a private room the colleague told my Father and Uncle what he knew of my grandads story.
No, due to generational timing.
My grandfathers were both in their 40s during WWII, Knowing what little I know about my paternal grandfather, he was very self-interested, and would have had no interest in enlisting, even as a volunteer. My maternal grandfather was the sole breadwinner for a family of, at that point, eight kids (he and my grandmother then had an additional three kids after the war ended); he was also an electrician, which may have made him an essential worker stateside.
Meanwhile, my father was too young to serve at that time: he was only 10 when D-Day occurred.
My grandfather had a similar experience. He was an engineer in the British Army who spent the war mainly in India and Burma but did not see combat. He said the most dangerous thing he did during WW2 was removing the booby traps that had been hastily installed along the English coast when it was thought a German invasion was imminent.
He stayed in the army as retired as a major. He was stationed in Korea and that’s when he saw very intense combat for the only time in his career.
Oh, yes, I’ve heard of Dieppe, being a history buff. What a disaster!
My father was in the Army Air Corp 385th Fighter Squadron of the 364th Fighter Group during WWII. Dad didn’t discuss his missions much, and it’s too late to ask him, but I know they were involved in D-Day.
My maternal grandfather was a little too old and working on the docks so he wasn’t called up. Due to weird generational timing my paternal grandfather was too old for WWI. They would have taken him but he wasn’t getting drafted. For WWII he was way too old. My father pressured his father to sign the papers so he could join at 17 but the war ended while he was in training.
I had multiple uncles who were in the war but none at Normandy. One piloted landing craft in the Pacific. One was on North Atlantic convoy duty on a destroyer. One was in the Caribbean taking out Uboat replenishment sites. One was in coastal artillery in the states until they sent him to the Aleutian Islands to help root out the Japanese.
We focus, rightfully so, on the terrific heroism of those who participated in D-Day, but those who served elsewhere in the world war effort were also facing the horrors and perils of their service.
Welcome to the old granddads club. Mine was born in 1882. As someone born in 1967 that was pretty unusual. He was still around when I was a kid.
There is a well known piece of trivia from the movie you might know. Richard Todd played Maj John Howard. Howard was Todd’s commanding officer on D-Day. Another actor played Captain Richard Todd. They were the unit that captured Pegasus Bridge.