My grandfather was in the Welsh Territorials and got called up just before WWII became official. He started out fixing cars, and then was trained as a radar station “engineer” (by a guy who’d never actually seen a radar set…). He spent most of the shooting part of the war keeping his radar site up and running, before being sent across to France as the Allies pushed the Axis out. He went back to his original unit as a quartermaster and followed the front lines escorting supplies and establishing rear bases. I’m pretty sure he never fired a shot, despite seven years active service.
My uncle was infantry during Korea, and tells only one story about a friend getting shot. He’s pretty closed-mouthed about the rest.
My dad joined the Air Force right after he graduated from high school, and got sent to Vietnam four months after he and my mom got married. He was there during the Tet Offensive, but I don’t know much about his service–he never talked about it. I do know he was an MP, and that he did see some combat, but that’s about it. He wasn’t proud of his military service, and he opposed the war when he got home.
Both my grandpas served during WWII. One was stationed in the Aleutians and the other was a Sea Bee stationed in Hawaii. I don’t know anything at all about what they did or what their time in the service was like.
My mother was one of 8 siblings, 4 boys and 4 girls. My grandfather was a baker, and the boys were brought up to inherit the bakery. When World War 2 broke out, my uncles got drafted, so my mother and aunts had to run the bakery.
My father had very bad hay fever, so could not go into combat. Instead, they had him inspect airplanes. I never knew about this until after his death.
The funniest thing was my brother during the Viet Nam war. He has always been afraid of flying, so he enlisted in the navy, thinking he’d get around on water rather than in the air. Surprise: they had him ride in helicopters that collected data from inside the eyes of hurricanes. :eek: (He is still afraid of flying.)
My dad was a radio operator in New Guinea and the Philippines. Shortly before his discharge he was promoted to something to do with quartermaster duties. He never would talk about it so all I know is from his discharge papers. I also have his little notebook from his classes when he was learning Morse code and the phonetic alphabet.
In WWII, my grandfather did something involving post-battle clean-up in Europe. Back at home, grandma (who then was just his girlfriend) took a job working in for a freight train line, routing trains in and out of the city or something like that - not quite as cool as building ship or airplanes, but still in the category of “never would have gotten the job as a woman if there hadn’t been a war”.
Dad’s eyes were bad enough that the draft board wanted nothing to do with him.
My father was away in Vietnam for a good chunk of my childhood in the '60s. He’d come back home sporadically, but he was away much, much, more than he was home. We lived in what was called a “Waiting Wives Home” in Salina Kansas, which was a community of wives and their children whose husbands/fathers were off in the war.
I never knew what my father’s official job was, but once, when he was home for a few weeks, he drove me to a base in Fort Riley, Kansas and I was allowed in the cockpit area of a huge supply helicopter that he flew to another location where some other guys offloaded crates that were in the back. That was the first time I knew my father could even fly a helicopter as he never talked about his work, at least not to me. It certainly seemed like a job someone would boast about, and since he didn’t, my impression was that his real job was something else.
Father-in-Law joined the HLI in 1917, when he turned 18. Saw WWI in France, where he apparently learned to play cribbage in the trenches. [He said riding a mule bareback, while wearing a kilt (he had to fetch supplies) was a lasting memory].
Father, born in '05, joined Canadian Army in '39 or early '40, shortly after his marriage. Was considered too old to go overseas - to his lasting regret - and spent WWII as an instructor here in Canada. He was in the Signal Corps. Even attending/passing Officer Training didn’t help him get out of Canada; he was invalided out with pneumonia, with the rank of acting Captain, in '45.
My family has a long tradition of just missing wars. My grandfather was in the army (drafted? I’m not sure if there was a draft then) at the tail end of the Korean War, but spent his whole tour as an admin type at Ft. Sam Houston, TX. My father was a truck driver at White Sands in the late 70s, and I managed to spend the last 4 years in the army as a medic and not get deployed once (and not for lack of trying either).
My Dad was called up to the (British) army early in WWII. I believe he was mostly on anti-aircraft batteries in the early part of the war. During rifle training, the sergeant in charge unexpectedly asked the recruits how many rounds they had fired. Dad was the only one who got it right, and this got him promoted to lance corporal. By the time of the Normandy landings he was an officer (a lieutenant, I think, at that time, although he was a captain by the time he was discharged) and he landed there a couple of days after D-day as part of a contingent of officers sent to replace those who had been killed or incapacitated during the initial landings. I believe he saw quite a bit of action in Northern France, as an artillery officer, but by the time of the Battle of the Bulge he was a junior staff officer on Montgomery’s staff. He had some souvenirs such as a German walking stick and a rather nice set of wine glasses that he said came from the house of a German admiral.
The whole experience left him a devout pacifist.
My mother had married him just after the war started. While he was in training she managed to find lodgings in a house near to the camp, and he would sneak out in the evenings to meet her. Later on she worked as a schoolteacher (for which she had already trained) in various places. I think she was in London during part of the blitz. Her parents certainly were.
My dad was drafted into the (American) 65th Division and assigned to a machine gun. The 65th shipped out while my dad was still 18…President Roosevelt had promised no one would have to go overseas before turning 19, so my grandmother was mad as hell, and cornered the governor of North Carolina and gave him an earful.
My dad was subsequently transferred to the 69th Division which shipped out after his birthday. Years later the governor told him at a party he’d rather have shipped out himself than face my grandmother again.
The 69th fought across Belgium and France into Germany. It was on the fringe of the Battle of the Bulge, and fought at or near the Hurtgen Forest. Dad served with a mortar team instead of machine guns, which was a nicer assignment (mortars hide and lob shells over hills, machine gunners are everybody’s target and also kill people up close).
Dad got a Bronze Star for action at a lignite mine (open coal pit) in…I believe Belgium. He passed out in the snow during the time of the Bulge battle (which he was on the flanks of) and might have died except for someone prodding him to see if he was alive. He suffered permanent hearing damage when a salvo of Nebelwerfer rockets landed around him, but the coil of field telephone cable he was carrying around his shoulders stopped the shrapnel (and was reduced to tatters thereby). He was at the Leipzig Battle Monument fight, rooting out Germans hiding in the monument.
He was affected by the war. He saw a lot of terrible things and was pretty bitter about the losses. He never owned a gun after the war. He reminded me that the “Good War” wasn’t all that good. He said that by the end, Hitler Youth would pop up and shoot off a panzerfaust or all their small arms ammunition and then throw their hands up and try to surrender…but the Americans regarded that as a dirty trick (surrendering right after using up your ammo trying to kill someone) and said “we shot every one of those guys.”
My dad was a tank commander in WW2. If a German 88mm shell had blown up 6 inches higher on the tank facing, I wouldn’t be typing this message right now.
My father was drafted into the army during the Korean war and served out his term in Yuma Arizona. The worse danger he faced was forgetting to put sunscreen on and getting a sun burn.
Kevbo, this is sort of related to how my mom got into the navy. She worked for the power company in downstate Illinois, but got offered a better job. She asked her boss to release her, because she was working in an ‘essential industry’, so she had to have permission to quit. He refused to let her go, so she went and enlisted.
During the Korean war, my father taught English as a second language to American troops whose grasp of the language wasn’t up to military standards. He never left the U.S. during his military career.