People with families luckily spared in the World Wars?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It occurs to me that by the standards of countries heavily involved in World Wars I and II: the families – father’s, and mother’s – from which I (British by nationality), come; were, to the best of my knowledge, unusually fortunate as regards losses in those great conflicts.

This can be ascribed in part to few of my family members having been – for various reasons – actually in combat in those wars. “Working backward” by starting with World War II, because I know more about family situation therein, than in the earlier conflict: my mother and my father were, each of them, one of five siblings – four thereof, male. Three of my mother’s four brothers were never in battlefield-type harm’s way in WWII: the fourth was in the army throughout and for a while after, but came through unscathed. My mother was in the UK throughout, and came to no harm. My father and all his siblings, survived the war: he was a merchant seaman, had some close calls but basically made it through undamaged – one of his brothers was in the army and in combat, but survived; died a few years after the war, but so far as I know, not because of anything war-related. I don’t know details about the other three; but they survived, and went on to live long lives post-war.

In World War I: my maternal grandfather was one of six siblings, five male. Again, for various reasons none of those five went directly into harm’s way in the war: one died in 1915, but for reasons nothing to do with the war. My maternal grandmother had two male siblings, both of a prime age for military service. Both survived the war: one, about whom I know little – I don’t know whether he participated – died in 1933. The other joined the army, and had a bad time in the war, including finishing it as a POW in Germany: came home in poor shape, but recovered, and lived to the age of about ninety. I don’t know about my father’s side in World War I; save for his father, who being born circa 1878, would have been basically of military age WWI-wise, though too old to be obvious cannon-fodder for the trenches: at all events, he came to no harm in that war, and died in his vigorous early 70s.

Would be interested to hear similar cases of folk whose countries had a big involvement in the World Wars; and whose families had – for whatever reasons – better fortune than the norm, as regards loss of family members in those wars.

2

My Polish great-grandfather was in the Prussian cavalry but got injured just before WW1, and subsequently moved to America.

His son, my grandfather, became an aircraft mechanic in Pearl Harbor during WW2 due to some combination of his mechanical skills and his 6 foot 4 height which meant he couldn’t fit in many places the armed forces might want to stick him.

3

As a young officer in WWII, my grandfather is said to have missed the Battle of the Bulge because his superiors sent him back to France to obtain wine, and he got stuck there. I don’t know how accurate that story is, but that’s how he told it.

4

My father was the youngest of five children in California. The oldest was his sister, the other three were boys. He was in junior high and high school during WWII, but all three of his older brothers served. However, none saw combat. One was OSS, based in London in some sort of aerial photographic unit. He served under John Ford, the Hollywood director, and while he seems to have been on the film-developing end of the job, he did occasionally fly behind German lines to take aerial photographs. (He was among the first in the world to see photos of the liberated concentration camps and to his dying day had zero tolerance for Holocaust deniers. He was also interviewed along with others for a program on the History Channel about 20 years ago.) Another brother, I’m not sure what he did, but after the war he was a navigator for the Flying Tigers cargo line. I think he must have been a navigator in the war too, but I recall hearing he was not with the Flying Tigers until after the war. He died in a plane crash in the mid-1960s. The last one alive now, my 95-year-old uncle, was in the Army and occupied the Philippines after the war.

5

Farmers in Canada were encouraged to keep farming rather than enlist. So, coming from a long line of farmers, I have no ancestors (or even brothers of ancestors) who fought.

6

USAian,

For Vietnam, my oldest brother was old enough, but due to a childhood injury, was 4F. My other male siblings and cousins were not old enough.

Nobody in my family was the right age for Korea.

My father and one uncle were the right age for WWII. My father was in college and enlisted in the Navy to be an officer after graduation. He graduated in 1945 and never shipped out. My uncle was a few years older, graduated and deployed to the Aleutian Islands to protect Alaska from invasion. He never saw any combat.

My paternal grandfather was in the tank corps in WWI (can you imagine what a WWI tank was like?). I was told he was at the Hoboken embarkation center when the Armistice was signed, so he never went overseas, but was partially deaf “from the war” ever since I knew him (he passed in the 1980s).

My maternal grandfather fought “in the trenches” in WWI, but I never knew him. He made it through the war, but died when my parents were engaged (long before I was born).

7

Likewise in Britain in WWII, I gather – we were frantically trying to produce all the food of our own that we could, to lessen the need to import stuff, with all that that entailed. In my early-1950s childhood, we lived on a farm – of our landlords, the “old farmer”, in his sixties, had been in the army in WWI; his son the “young farmer” had I, presume, stayed home and gone on farming in WWII, in which national priorities and organising / directing thereof, had become clearer.

A rather poignant tale – my first girlfriend was the daughter of a railwayman; this being in WWII, a “reserved occupation”, in which he spent the war. She told of his feeling, in the war, guilty about this circumstance; and trying to assuage his guilt by copiously donating blood, to the point of endangering his health – and being ordered by his employers, “stop this – we need you in a condition where you’re in a state to be competent to do your job”. It wasn’t made clear whether he’d wanted to go and fight, but was rejected – “you’re needed back home, to keep the trains running”; or whether he was glad and relieved not to have to join the armed forces, but to go on with his civilian job (in a fairly remote and rural part of the UK, not high on the Luftwaffe’s hit-list) – but experienced guilt about his good fortune, and thus over-compensated with the blood-donating. Honourable conduct on his part, whichever way.

8

My maternal grandfather just missed the draft for WWI, since he turned eighteen towards the end of 1918. He had no sons. His older brothers were essential farm workers and got an exemption. Grandpa had only daughters. His nephews, sons of his brothers, mostly got the same deferments for WWII because they were farming too. Their only personal involvement with WWII was that German POW’s were assigned, during the day, to be laborers on their land. The fmily men all knew German well, this is one reason they were assigned to them.

On my dad’side, my paternal grandfather, besides being a member of the clergy, in his thirties when WWI started. His son, my father, was only thirteen when WWII started, being as he wasn’t born until my grandfather was forty-five or so. Dad was in the Army during the Korean war, but never sent overseas. He lucked out.

9

My husband’s family survived as DPs during WWII, by the skin of their teeth, fleeing both the Communists and the Nazis. My husband’s brother (6 years old at the time) incurred rather severe shell shock (AKA PTSD) and was mentally disabled the rest of his life. When the Vietnam War was raging, my husband was exempt because he had to support his by then widowed mother and his disabled brother.

My own father was exempt from the WWII draft because he was working in the steel industry, doing heavy work that required able-bodied young men.

My mother’s brother was in the air force and suffered some sort of back injury which kept him in pain much of the rest of his life.

I don’t know exactly how my grandparents escaped harm in WWI, but I do know my father’s father was orphaned in Germany when his parents died in the influenza epidemic during that war.

10

The maternal grandfather I mentioned went to auto mechanic’s school in Kansis City, Missouri, right at the end of 1918. He told me once about seeing trains loaded with soldiers suffering the flu. He said local hospitals ran out of rooms to treat them.

11

My paternal grandfather was a railyard manager and was rejected for enlistment in WWII as an essential worker. He used to tell my father that the townsfolk would look askance at him as if to ask why he, a healthy young man, wasn’t serving.

My father was of age in the Vietnam War but was low on the draft list as he had two young children by then.

My maternal grandfather saw extensive combat as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Pacific while serving in WWII in the Navy. He was quite traumatized by the experience having survived explosions that killed the rest of his gun crew twice. Family story is that he kept a detailed diary of his war experiences and threw it overboard the day the Japanese surrender was announced.

My maternal grandmother’s only brother served in WWII but was some sort of research refining navigational equipment so he never saw combat.

12

Pops was too young for WWII but was drafted in the Korean War. However, he got shipped to northern Italy, where the U.S. was still maintaining a presence after WWII. That ended shortly after he got out a year or two later.

I asked him once what it was like during during the big war and he said it seemed far away, just something they heard about on the radio and in the papers. Of course he was a kid then, but I’m thinking none of his close relatives were drafted or it would have made a bigger impression on him. Some were farmers, I know, but those who lived in Detroit like his family did, must have been needed at the automobile factories to crank out tanks and weapons and such. His father worked for Ford, keeping the huge factory roofs in good repair. I’m sure he was too old for the draft by then and had respiratory issues besides.

My Mom was an only child and died while I was young but, given her father’s age, I’m sure he was never in WWI or II. I don’t know much about that side of the family but may now ask my youngest sister, who did an ancestry search on them. If anyone knew, it would be her.

13

Five maternal uncles served as front-line troops in WWII - three in the Pacific as island-hopping Marines, one in Europe in the 101st airborne (captured, POW, nearly starved to death before the end of the war) and another marched across Europe and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

All five made it home, no major wounds or mental traumas (although, of course, they had some nightmares and such, but nothing that impaired them making a living, raising a family, etc.)

14

My maternal grandfather emigrated from Hungary – partly to avoid the Austro-Hungarian army – but enrolled in the US Army. He never left the US however.

I don’t know anything earlier than my father on his side. He was nearly 4F due to extreme myopia, but spent the war in Iran and Iraq working in a motor pool. I never knew until when I retired recently and went through some old boxes that this was in a combined US-USSR mission. That’s where the Russian karakul hat with the enameled red star with sickle pin I inherited came from.

My brother turned 18 after Vietnam, but never (I think maybe ever) signed up for the draft. It became a moot point when the services became all volunteer.

15

My paternal grandfather was the same. He was classed as a primary producer and not allowed to enlist. He became the head of the local ‘Dad’s Army’ and was given a machine-gun with no ammunition (when ammo became available after the war the army took the MG away - he never got a chance to fire it :o ) This was the middle of Victoria in Australia so if he ever had to use it in anger the country was screwed to the point of no-return.

A great-uncle was a crew-member in a Costal Command aircraft (Wellington IIRC) which was lost over he Bay of Biscay.

During Vietnam my dad was in university but his number in the draft lottery didn’t come out so he avoided having to go.

Mums family had plenty of war-time ‘adventures’ - POW’s, last-plane-out type stuff.

16

My grandfather was in the US Navy during WWI, but spent it stateside (raising the flag at the White House, according to my mom). My dad was drafted in the Korean conflict, but they pulled him off the train to basic because some Army doctors wanted to examine his knee, which had been repaired in some novel way after a football injury. It turned out to be easiest just to give him a discharge. They had arleady sold the house and my mom had moved in with her parents. :smack:

17

My maternal grandfather missed out on both world wars–he was too old by WWII and missed WWI for some unknown reason (he would have been 37 by the time we were involved in it; maybe that was also too old.) I did have a second cousin on my mother’s side who was in WWII but I don’t know the details. There was also a cousin who knitted a washcloth for a soldier in WWI; he sent her a letter back telling her the washcloth came in handy.

On my father’s side, Granpa was too young for WWI and too old for WWII, though he was a block captain. I had a distant cousin on that side of the family who died in Nam, though that wasn’t a world war.

18

My father enlisted in WWII in the Navy. Didn’t last very long and got some kind of medical discharge for bad knees. Never left the States. His brother, my uncle, enlisted in the Marines, and saw no combat action, although he was in Hawaii when the war ended, and would have been part of the invasion of the Japanese mainland. He still ended up going to Japan after the war.

My paternal grandfather was too old for WWI (33), and my maternal grandfather died before WWII began (right, II, not a typo). He would have been 30 when the US entered the war. His father would have probably been too old for WWI (27).

You have to go back to the Civil War in my family to find an actual war casualty.

19

My paternal grandfather was thirty and the father of two kids by the time the US got into WWI. I’m not sure how old my maternal grandfather was, but he had one child by then.

My father was in the Navy before WWII, but was discharged due to a head injury and was 4F for the war. My older paternal uncle was 27 and a father before WWII started. My second uncle worked in a machine shop and had a occupational exemption.

My maternal uncle didn’t serve, but I don’t know why. I do know he was a father with at least one child by the time the war started.

I had a high draft number during the Viet Nam War (and almost certainly would have been 4F). My brother also had a high draft number. One of my male cousins was too old for the war. The other two served. The younger of the two eventually died almost certainly due to Agent Orange exposure.

20

My mother is a Hungarian Jew spared from the death camps by a spectacular series of fortunate events.

This web site talks about some of the details.

The key point is in this paragraph:

“In at least one case trains were accidentally switched: A train carrying 3,000 Jews from Győr and Komárom, including the rabbi of Győr, Rabbi Emil Roth, was mistakenly sent to Auschwitz and Eichmann refused to allow it to change direction. It was replaced by a train from Debrecen that had been slated to go to Auschwitz.”

My mother was on that train from Debrecen.