My grandfather has much franker, more down to earth stories of his service. Too young for WWII, and not super-interested in going to Korea, he volunteered for the Air Force circa 1951/2 and became a clerk, thanks in part to having completed a year of college by then. He was successful, and his most remote posting during his three or four years of service was to Newfoundland.
And that’s the end of the story.
Why doesn’t anyone ever make up stories like that?
But I do know a guy who was in Iraq during the recent unpleasantness there. I hear he’s pretty cool. And smart. And incredibly handsome.
My Dad was also too young for WWII and his time in the Air Force overlapped Korea but he was in Iceland as an enlisted weatherman.
I do have a Great Uncle though that won a Bronze star in Italy. I only learned this in the last few months while going through my Dad’s papers.
Also a few years back I did some digging and found out my step-Grandfather was on the Indy when it went down. I never knew that while he was alive, just that he was onboard in WWII. But as it was never mentioned, I assumed he wasn’t there when she sank. I had come across a database and saw his very common name listed among the survivors. So I called my Dad and he verified that my step-Grandfather did tell him about it back in the late 60s and never spoke of it again.
So glad I found that database and my Dad was still around to verify it.
I also had a bunch of drunk uncles and a drunk grandfather that served in the Merchant Marines. The best story out of this crowd was that while in Italy and when the Germans were strafing the port, My one uncle jumped into a ditch onto another Merchant Marine from another ship. As he was being cursed to high heaven, he realized it was his brother.
My dad was in the Navy in the 1950s as a Machinist’s Mate. Didn’t go to war at all (just about missed the Korean War), but his ship was part of the effort to help Cephalonia after the big 1953 earthquake. Most of his time in service was spent toodling around the Mediterranean, although he was in Thule for a brief period too.
My grandparents were on their honeymoon, on a cruise ship halfway to Hawaii, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My grand dad had a state department job that kept him out of the military, so he never served. My other grand dad was basically blind - he could see well enough to walk without a cane, but could drive a car, much less shoot a gun.
I had an uncle who was drafted into the marines for Vietnam, and would have been sent overseas, but his last weekend before shipping out, he fell off a diving board and broke his leg. Ended up serving the rest of his enlistment stateside.
Going further back, according to my genealogist aunt, I had a relative who joined a South Carolina militia during the Civil War - in March, 1865. Suffice to say, he didn’t see much action.
Most people I’ve known who’ve ever seen and heard real combat aren’t too keen to talk about it - if they do it’s usually under the influence of alcohol.
Well, actually, the one thing that my dad’s father ever spoke about from his time deployed was meeting Kurt Vonnegut, implying but not saying that they were together in the Dresden slaughterhouse. I was a huge fan of Vonnegut at the time, and had brought up his experiences in the war. My grandmother was surprised, as that was the only time he ever spoke of anything that happened during the war, even to her.
A few years later, I went with him to a talk by Vonnegut. After the talk, there was a meet and greet, and he called out my grandfather by name, remembering him over 50 years later.
My uncle was on a submarine during WWII. Would not talk about it at all. And my FIL was career Army with two tours in Vietnam (and “environs”). Most of the stories were indeed told under the influence, and were not particularly nice or remotely self-aggrandizing.
Hell, my brother was nowhere near combat and has never really said anything about Berlin other than alluding to the legal trouble which led to a rather difficult time when his tour was over.
My Uncle George was a Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy. Never saw combat, but did help my dad (another George, young, cash-strapped, and marooned in vacay Europe) get back across the Atlantic free of charge in Uncle George’s submarine. Utterly terrifying experience for dad, as evidenced by his wan, almost, yes - terrified - expression in a newspaper photo of him just after he arrived.
Slightly different, in WW1, two of my great uncles fell in the Battle of Miraumont. One was 21, the other - 19. The only thing on the spotless dashboards of both my trucks is a single poppy, in their memory.
Both my grandfathers saw plenty of combat in WWII. One was a bomber pilot, the other a fighter pilot; the latter was shot down in Holland in late 1944 and served with the Dutch resistance until war’s end. They were quite willing to tell the most extraordinary stories and I ate 'em up.
My grandfather was lucky, born late in 1901 so too young for WWI and too old for WWII. My other grandfather did serve in WWI, having been born in 1889. He was a mule teamster (we have photos), which is slightly ironic since our German last name means something like teamster.
My father was in the Merchant Marine in the Pacific in WWII. He worked his way up from engine gang to non-com (I don’t know what rank) by studying and taking tests. We used to have his dress lid, but it got lost somewhere; we still have his uniform buttons.
I have an ex-Marine friend in my writers group who has combat experience and he tells the wildest stories. Swimming with sharks and blowing out part of his hearing with an IED and UFO sightings and working with the CIA and all kinds of shit. But he doesn’t talk about combat. It’s easy to forget he’s a lethal force until one of us screws up a combat scene and then he’s demonstrating the best way to slit someone’s throat.
My father served one tour in Vietnam, but was supposed to have been deferred for two reasons: he had a civil servant job as a firefighter, and his wife was expecting their first child, my older brother.
He was artillery, firing mortar shells. The only story I ever heard about his time in the Army was when he mortared a school bus.
I never learned who was inside the bus. He may have killed several soldiers, or several children.
