My father was stationed somewhere in Nevada for just a regular Army hitch sometime during the Korean War. I have no idea what he did.
My father was an electrician on the USS Eldorado, the flagship and communications hub during the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in WWII. He would have been involved in keeping the radio and other communications equipment going between the fleet and the troops on the beach. The photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima was developed on his ship.
He never talked about it much, but his ship, like the rest of the fleet, was frequently under kamikaze attack during the battles.
My great-uncle was a machine-gunner in WWI. He was gassed and his lungs were damaged. He ran a newstand after the war because that was the heaviest work he could manage.
My dad was a bombardier (sp?) on a B-29 (?) – I had all his military papers but now I can’t find them. He was drafted, served for a year or so, left the service, and then re-entlisted. He was shot down over Bavaria (?) and was in a POW camp for several months.
My husband was in the Navy and served in Viet Nam, but he doesn’t talk about it, except that he did tell me he was in a seaplane that crashed or was shot down. He has a shrapnel scar on his butt. He also said they were lost in the jungle for several weeks, and he blames that for his hearing problem – says everyone’s ears got “moldy”. He hasn’t said word one about combat, and I don’t ask.
My dad did a tour flying helicopters in Vietnam. He hasn’t told me much about it, but part of his job was to take South Vietnamese up north to infiltrate or observe things, and then to pick them up again later.
He went back to flying cargo planes after that, and flew one of the planes that brought the POWs back to the U.S.
My father was twelve and my mother was ten in 1945. So I can’t imagine either of them did much more than work on the farms they grew up on. My father did later join the army and served in Germany as part of the NATO forces.
I had an uncle who was a paratrooper in WWII. I don’t know if he was in the 82nd or 101st but he was part of Operation Market Garden in 1944. He was captured and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.
My dad and one of his brothers went to the enlistment office on 8 DEC 1941. (the other brother wasn’t even in high school yet)
My Uncle Bruce enlisted in the Marine corps. He was wounded on Iwo Jima, but mostly recovered…we lost him a few years ago.
My dad was rejected because he had recently been hired by a railroad, and this work was considered essential to the war effort. He was then drafted into the Army a few months later…apparently his railroad work wasn’t that essential.
He was shipped off to North Africa. It was a long voyage on a troop ship. The ships supply of flour was weevil infested, so the bread had extra protein. The only meat was Spam…which pretty much cured him of the stuff.
He had origionally been assigned as a cooks mate. But it was soon discovered that he knew how to fix cars and trucks. So he was moved to an engineering company, mostly fixing their trucks, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment, but also doing anything else that needed doing.
They followed close behind the German retreat, repairing infrastructure that hat been either damaged in the fighting or deliberately destroyed as part of the German scorched earth policy.
The work eventually took him across the Med. into Italy. He was there for a year or so.
He was carrying a footlocker on his shoulder and caught it on a low doorway, rupturing two disks.
That was the end of Dad’s war. He was hospitalized for nearly a year. He was in pain from his back for the rest of his life…though there were only a couple of years it was too bad to work.
Oh yeah. Mom and Dad got married right after dad finished basic. Her in her best white dress, and him in is army dress uniform. They tried for 10 years or so, but no kids. So they adopted my brother and sister. Then 10 years later my mom found out she didn’t have the flu, but was pregnant. My mom was 46 when I was born.
I have never met anyone younger than me with a WW2 vet dad.
My dad was in the Navy in the early-mid 60s. He worked in communications technology at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Not a very exciting sounding job, but an important one.
During WWII, my father worked on the Canol Road project in Canada. It’s a little-remembered project that was designed to build an oil pipeline road from Norman Wells, NWT to Whitehorse. I have the only surviving letter he wrote to his sister from Norman Wells in 1943. When the project died out, he went to Haines, AK and worked on the Haines Junction cutoff from the AlCan Highway. Since he was married with children, he was exempt from the draft.
My stepfather was in the Army in WWII and held the rank of Sargent. He was in the Pacific theater, but I don’t know where.
My dad was infrantry WWII - Pacific arena. 2 Purple hearts
My dad fixed planes, avionics. Total chair force, all the way; he was married throughout most of Vietnam, and I’m presuming that’s why he didn’t go overseas, although…we did <he still does> have a Buddha made in Vietnam that he got from ‘friends’; I’ll have to ask him. Hell, should have done it today. /facepalm
He also chased his little brother back home from Canada and into the draft office. I would be visiting my uncle in Canada <or jail> rather than the US if he hadn’t. My uncle built ships, and I don’t believe he went overseas either. Another uncle spent 40 years in the Navy doing something so ‘secret’ that his family was never allowed to know where he was at any given time. (I am 99 percent sure it was related to nuclear development, not sniping or some such) So…a fair history of military service, but little to no active combat.
My father joined the Navy to avoid being drafted and winding up in Vietnam. Didn’t stop the local draft board from trying to draft him (while he was serving on a carriar in the middle of the Pacific). His then wife had a very hard time convincing the draft board of this. Both of my uncles (Mom’s side) were avoided the draft. One of them had metal rods in his leg as a result of breaking it twice in the same school year, the other pretended to be a transvestite and faked having TB.
Both of my parents managed to avoid any military contact. He even skipped his military service, having failed the medical due to bad eyesight (his eyesight was bad but not bad enough for that): he was furious when he found out that his mother had been pulling strings to get that discharge.
Middlebro has “Tales from the Draft”, Littlebro did Civilian Service instead, and the generation of my grandparents saw enough war to tide the country over for quite a long time.
My step-grandfather (the only one I really knew) was in WWII but never talked about it. The only thing he ever said was that he went to Europe on the Queen Mary. It stuck in my memory because it was amazing to think that one of the most beautiful cruise ships of its day was striped down bare to transport soldiers. As a young kid, before I ever knew he was on it, I toured the restored Queen Mary on vacation with my family and thought it the height of wealth and class. The fact that he was on it amazed me in both his personal history and the vastness of the war effort.
My Dad volunteered for the Marines during Vietnam. He was a crew chief on the Sea Knight double rotor helicopters. The one thing that my Mom (a hippie in high school at the time, born in 56) won’t let me or my siblings forget is that at the end of his first tour he spent 6 months in California and then signed on for a second tour. In her view it was bigger than any medals, and she made us kids proud of it even though my Dad rarely mentioned it. He did win one bigger flying medal but I can’t recall the name. The way he tells it, he had some sort of writer on board while picking up troops from a hot LZ, they went about their business as usual but by the time the “epic” was put to paper he was supposedly “bravely returning under heavy fire with a damaged aircraft” or something of the sort, its been years since I have read the write up.
Someday I hope to get him, a tape recorder, and a fifth of bourbon together for a little quality time, we will see.
My dad was too young for WWII, and my mom was too not-yet-born. I did have a great aunt and uncle who were on a cruise ship halfway to Hawaii when word came that the Japanese had attacked, though.
In more recent conflicts, my uncle was drafted into the marines and was scheduled to be shipped over to Vietnam. A week before he was supposed to ship out, he fell off a diving board and broke his leg. Ended up in traction, and got a medical discharge out of it.
In more ancient conflicts, I had an ancestor name of Tarwater who lived in South Carolina during the Civil War. He didn’t put on a uniform until 1865, after the Confederates withdrew from the state. I like to think that was out of principle, but maybe he was just good at knowing when to join the winning side.
My parents were too young to have been involved in WW2. My uncle was in the Falklands. My paternal grandfather was in the merchant marine in WW1 and sunk several times; my paternal grandmother ran a hospital in WW1, first in the U.K., and later in France.
My dad was in the infantry in Korea. Mortar squad. The closest call he had was from American artillery. He got there after the back and forth so it was mostly guarding the line along the 38th parallel, but there was plenty of shooting going on. He was drafted, but afraid the war would end before he could be sent overseas. It was an opportunity for a poor kid from Idaho to see the world.
In the second world war, my Dad ran around avoiding evacuation and my mum wasn’t born. There hasn’t been a war with conscription since then (for the UK).
My maternal Grandad was in the Royal Engineers, in bomb disposal, right from the start of the war to the end. Apparently it’s quite amazing to live that long disposing bombs. My Grandmother was in the WAAF - Women’s Auiliary Air Force, but I’m not sure what that actually means apart from a rather cool uniform.
I think my Dad’s Dad was in an exempted job, which, along with them refusing evacuation, I guess means that they were one of the few full families left in London, especially as they lived in a shack by the Woolwich Dockyards - hardly bomb-proof!
My father did a brief stint in, I believe, the Army Signal Corps in the Korean Era. Don’t know exactly when, as he never really talked about it much. Don’t think he ever saw any combat, though. Time to e-mail my brother, see if he knows.
My grandma cleaned the home of the head of British Military Intelligence during the war.
If he had gone to work knowing he had a dusty mantelpiece his mind would not have been on the job, and Nazi spies would have run rampant through the streets of London.
My mother was only 10 when WW2 started, 16 when it finished. Dad was older, and was trainee aircrew when it finished - he was in Canada training on Liberators when the big fireworks got dropped on Japan, and if they hadn’t been, he’d have been flying over there a little later.
Grandad was an infantryman in WW1 and certainly saw service on the Somme.