World War I and II - tell me about your relatives

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

I just remembered another story about my dad. He was a farm kid from Indiana when he joined up in early '43. He’d never had processed food in his life.

While he was at Fort Dix finishing training and getting ready to ship out, he discovered Spam, and he and a buddy fell in love with the stuff, even going so far as to haggle some sort of arrangement with the supply sergeant so they could take as many cans as they could carry with them when they left.

Of course, the sergeant got one over on them and didn’t bother to tell them that Spam was about to become a significant portion of their diet, particularly on the ship across. I don’t recall what they gave him in exchange for their pork shoulder bounty, but Dad was pissed about that sergeant swindling him and his buddy out of whatever it was until the day he died in 2004.

82

It’s always disappointing to me that WWI doesn’t get much attention. From what I’ve read and seen, it had plenty of drama in its own right. My great uncle, who passed before I came along, was a doughboy. I wished I could have heard some of his experiences. What I just recently connected about this era was that the nations lost millions…and on the heels of it came the killer Spanish flu epidemic.

In WWII my dad served on a merchant ship, hauling stuff here and there. He said that the convoy rule was that if a ship was torpedoed, the rest of the convoy just kept going because the wolf pack was probably around somewhere.

I don’t recall a single story about engaging the enemy; I think they were lucky, not that he was withholding. One of his funniest stories was about the fudge.

He and another guy longed for a taste of home, so they started scaring up the ingredients to make a batch. Then, having never made it in their lives (let alone with the utensils, pans, etc. available on the ship—and secretly because EVERYBODY was going to want some), they had to tinker with it. IIRC they blew up a batch somehow trying to cook it in a coffee pot. Anyway they finally got it right and for awhile, all was good. Dad made it while the other guy stood lookout. But finally, some bigwig busted them.

Dad was thinking a court martial was probably in the air. His “punishment” was to make it for the entire ship every movie night. And when he was discharged, he was ordered to show the cooks how to make it. He said they were really pissy about having an enlisted man telling them how to cook, and they ruined several batches acting on their own “better” judgment.

83

Me, three. Well, mostly. My uncle was drafted into the Marines during Vietnam, but the week before he was supposed to ship out, he fell off a diving board and broke his leg.

Past that, the closest anyone in my family came to a theater of war was my great uncle, whose honeymoon cruise to Hawaii was turned around because the Japanese had just blown up Pearl Harbor.

84

I never knew my paternal grandfather. He served in the US Army during WW1, having been drafted. He fought in five battles in France, though I don’t know the names.

One story my father told me was that he and a squad mate caught a German soldier, who raised his arms in surrender. Grandpa’s friend shot him dead, and Grandpa was upset until they found the man had a grenade hidden behind his hand, the ring around his finger - ready to be flipped at them as soon as they got close. The friend looted the body, and Grandpa checked the wallet, but when he found a picture of the man with his wife and two children, he walked away.

Grandpa spent more than a year stationed in Germany after the Armistice. He was quartered in a civilian home, and his hosts adored him because he’d bring back all the extra food he could cadge for them and their children.

My maternal grandfather was too young to serve in WW1 and too old for WW2.

My father was almost fourteen when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was the only one in the family who knew where it was. His oldest brother was already working as an oil roughneck and was exempt. His next older brother thought signing up or even being drafted was for chumps. He took off and traveled all over the place, so the draft board never caught up with him.

When my father was seventeen, he went down to enlist with the Marines. Unfortunately, the Marine recruiter was on lunch, and the Navy recruiter invited him over. So, Dad became a sailor. Two weeks later, as he and his mates were marching with full packs under drenching rain, their drill instructor came out and announced, “Gentlemen, Japan has surrendered!”

All the little sailors cheered and hollered and hopped up and down.

“AND YOU DIDN’T HELP! TWO MORE HOURS IN FORMATION!” The drill instructor yelled.

Dad ended up doing 26 years in the Navy and mustanging it to Lieutenant Commander. He served in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. He turns 81 this February, and I’m very, very proud of him.

85

That’s a great story! Well done by the big-wigs :slight_smile:

86

Yours and several other of the posters mentioned this and I thought I should mention that the RAF and the Eighth airforce were tasked with destroying or rendering inoperative the production centers for the nazi war machine.

Everything that soldiers carry, drive or operate and even wear is made by workers in factorys , and while we know now that the germans had no means of attacking American factorys, your grandfathers were as much soldiers as anybody else.

I remember watching Band of Brothers and a scene in the series ilustrates that, Easy company is redeploying somewhere and they are being transported in those six wheeled trucks and they pass a coloum of germans heading for a pow camp, and the germans are riding horses or being transported on wagons , which is how much of the german army still moved at that point and he is yelling , we have trucks , you have horses , what were you thinking.

The guys at the front lines made history , but your grandpa’s made miracles in moving hell on earth with everyone else to make sure that Americas best were supplied with the best.

Declan

87

In the UK many thousands of men were drafted into the coal mines instead of the armed services. The selection process was done by a ballot and, except in a few instances, these men had no say in the matter. In all 48,000 of these “Bevan Boys” (named ofter the then Minister of Labour) ended up working in the vital coal industry, not only in WW2, but for a few years after the end of hostilities.

It is only in the last couple of years that this essential work has been given official recognition with the award of a special badge to those men who are still alive. Similarly many thousands of women were drafted into farm work, into a force called the Women’s Land Army.

In many ways their work was as important as those of the fighting forces.

88

Maternal Grandfather - Aircraft mechanic, Hickam Field. Assigned there in Sept of 1941. Hawaii sounded like a great assignment…

Paternal Grandfather - Anti aircraft gunner on a landing ship, don’t know which one. He doesen’t like talking about it even decades later, apparently his ship took alot of casualties and they participated in many of the landings in the south pacific. Considering what we know about some of those landings, I don’t think I blame him.

Great uncle (PG’s brother) Flight Deck Crew - USS Yorktown. Survived having a carrier blown out from under him. Just passed away a few years ago from lung cancer.

Maternal step great grandfather - was some form of mechanic/ground support for the Luftwaffe. He died when I was like 8.

89

As I said elsewhere, Dad’s a middle child of a sickly laborer and a woman who was something of a con artist and didn’t really want anything to do with her kids, to the point of not using their real names in public. Dad was born in Racine and pretty much grew up in an orphanage there.

After Pearl, Dad and his brother George (aka “Buddy”) saw enlisting as their way to a better life. Buddy was old enough to have left the orphanage and was likely living with their eldest sibling in Kentucky, his enlistment papers show him as having been proccesed in Louisville. Dad was splitting time between the orphanage and taking care of his father. He was 16 in '41 and lied about his age in order to follow Buddy into the Navy.

Buddy was assigned to a carrier but Dad ended up being moved from place to place, ending up as fire control on a destroyer escort in the South Pacific. I’m not sure which DE he was on but I think it was the Wesson. Dad doesn’t say much about the war but he has spoken of taking part in the invasion of Iwo Jima and surviving a Kamikaze attack unscathed. One story he does tell is how he earned his purple heart–he broke his wrist while rollerskating.

I had no idea bout the Kamikaze attack until a few years ago. AC asked him about his service while we were visiting one of my sisters for Christmas. He later sent the details of the attack to some veterans’ magazine. He was racing around the deck looking for victims of the fire when he came across an officer’s sidearm in an unoccupied room and decided to take it for himself, then he immediately ran into an officer. The officer saw Dad with the sidearm and Dad sheepishly handed it over.

That same officer read Dad’s account of the attack in that veterans’ magazine and thanked him for the sidearm. It was his and there would have been hell to pay if it turned up missing! He sent me copies of both his story and the officer’s response but I don’t know where I put them.

Sadly, I never got to know Uncle Buddy. Both he and Dad used their GI Bill to get a degree in chemistry. Buddy passed away after a work-related accident when I was about five.

90

My great grandfather, Pte. Wolstencroft, was called up to serve in one of Lord Kitchener’s Pals battalions in World War I (units formed of men from the same town or area). He served in the 24th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment (the Oldham Pals) until losing a leg and being invalided out of the army.

My grandfather initially served on home defence duties with a battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (we haven’t been able to identify which one, or why an Oldhamer would end up in a Scottish infantry battalion). He spent the early years of the war standing guard at fuel depots in the Clyde area of Scotland (apparently a fairly nervewracking place to be during German air raids).

He later transferred to the Royal Artillery, and based on what I’ve pieced together he served in 382 Battery of 96th (Royal Devon Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Artillery from 1944 to 1946. We know he fought in the Far East - Burma and Malaya, based on telegrams he sent home - and we know he was a gunner in a battery of 25-pounder field guns, but that’s about all. We recently went through his collection of papers, telegrams and service medals, but there’s very little specific beyond that. It seems he was known as a quiet and solid sort, and other than one conversation just before he died when never talked about his experiences.

91

My maternal grandfather was a Saddler in WW1. The story goes that he was in a tent/stable tending the animals when a shell exploded nearby, which sent him flying several yards. He woke up in a dressing station completely paralyzed, and yet was back with his unit within 48 hours.

The reason we were told this story over and over as kids was to explain why we couldn’t see him – ever. From 1932 until the day he died in 1969 he was in a V.A. psych ward, suffering from what we were told was “shell shock.”

I saw him once when I was 14 years old. At his funeral.

92

In the WWI timeframe my maternal grandfather was a mining engineer in Alaska and my paternal grandfather was a rancher in California–no military service.

In WWII my dad joined the USAAF and flew an A-20 twin-engined attack bomber in New Guinea and the Phillippines. He had 98 combat missions but didn’t talk a lot about them. The kind of stories that did come out were usually self-deprecating or humorous.

One time some P-38 fighters landed at Dad’s unit’s airfield. He got to talking with one of the P-38 pilots and since they both flew twin-engined aircraft, they decided that they would swap planes for a joy ride. Of course, neither was checked out in the other’s aircraft type, but that was no big concern to two young hotshot pilots. They never got to find out how stupid that might have been, because the base commander apparently could smell potential shenanigans from 200 yards and intercepted them as they were walking down the flight line.

Other stories had to do with stolen jeeps secreted away in the jungle and trying to stock the officer’s club with scrounged booze. Occasionally he and another pilot would use the squadron’s B-25 to fly “fat cats” (colonels and the like) to Australia. The thing about the B-25 was that if you goosed the throttles in a certain way you could get a tremendous backfire. Dad and his copilot would be doing all the pretakeoff checklist items, with the fat cat in the seat right behind them, and if the fat cat wasn’t a pilot they’d give each other the look and let rip with a monumental backfire. Then they’d look at each with worried expressions and have a somber conversation: “Well, whaddya think, is this old crate going to get off the ground this time?” “I dunno, it is a war-weary old SOB . . .” “It made it the last time . . .” “Yeah, I guess we can give it a try.” And off they went, occasionally checking the expression on their passenger’s face as the plane did its normal amount of rattling and groaning.

Dad’s older brother had joined the Army Air Corps before the war, and when war came he went to England and flew B-17s in the Eighth Air Force. By war’s end he was commander of a bombardment group. I don’t recall him telling any stories. He’s a young 91–maybe I’ll bug him the next time I see him.

Mom had just graduated from Stanford with a degree in Psychology. At the start of the war she went to work in San Francisco in the personnel department of Bethlehem Steel.

93

During WWI, my father’s mother’s father (got it?) was a surgeon with Great Britian, despite the fact that he was from Virginia. Joined up and went before the US got involved. He became the head of two hospitals in France, one of which was located at Chateau de Chenonceau, the other was down the road. He rode his bike between the two. At some point, he gave fishing poles to each patient whose bed was by a window in the Chateau, which was essentially everyone - they were lined up and down the corridors of the place. When he arrived at Chenonceau on his bike, he could immediately tell who was feeling poorly if the respective fishing rod was absent from the window outside. So the story goes. He told my father of the enormous piles of bodies he would see as a doctor in the field.

My father’s father graduated from West Point on D-Day, with John Eisenhower, among others. Another classmate was featured in Band of Brothers. They were sent to Europe, and arrived in Belgium on Christmas Eve, just in time for the Ardennes & the Battle of the Bulge. He said the truck ride from Normandy to Belgium was so cold that nobody could stand up when they got where they were going - their feet were numb from the layer of ice on the truck bed. Belgian women were handing out any kind of white linen they could find to help keep the underdressed men warm. My grandfather kept his tablecloth, with the head hole repaired, for the rest of his life.

He and my father went back to visit a city in Belgium later in life (he was stationed in Germany for 4 or 6 years in the 50s), and several of the townspeople remembered him. The mayor (or equivalent) had them to his house for lunch and showed my father and uncle a picture of my grandfather taken with him 10 or 15 years earlier during the war. I can’t remember now what he did for those people to earn their respect and admiration.

94

Only my uncle (and namesake) fought in WWII. I don’t know much about him other than he wanted to be a poet and argued mightily with my grandfather when he enlisted.

He was killed in the D-Day invasion. That’s about all I know.

95

My maternal grandfather (deceased 1991) was serving in the Australia Army in Darwin when it was bombed by Japanese air forces. He was officially listed as “permanently disabled”, but I never understood what that really meant, because he could get around alright, and hold up his end of a conversation, just. It was only later when it dawned on me that it must have been traumatic stress or something similar. He was always (all the time I knew him) pretty frail, quiet and a bit ‘lost’.

96

My paternal grandfather enlisted in 1915 in the New Brunswick Rangers (a militia regiment), then resigned his commission and re-enlisted as a private in the 104th Battalion in 1916 to be able to go overseas. He was re-commissioned as a Lieutenant and served in the 26th Battalion in France (the 104th was broken up and used as replacements for units already at the front), then volunteered for the RFC in July 1918. He was trained as a pilot, but was switched over as an observer when it was discovered that he was partially colour-blind (colour-blind observers were believed to be better able to detect camouflaged guns and emplacements). He arrived back in France on Nov 9, 1918 and reached his unit just in time for the Armistice. He remained in the New Brunswick Rangers after the war and rose to the rank of Major, then volunteered for active service in WW2. He was rejected as over age, but managed to get as far as England anyway for a short while, but broke his leg in an accident and was sent home. He spent the rest of the war training soldiers, with a stint in Labrador testing Eliason Motor Toboggans. He was appointed commander of the 2nd Battalion, NBR in 1945 and retired shortly afterwards. I have both of his commissions and a lot of his other WW1 documents (movement orders, pilot’s certificate, etc.), as well as a few WW2 documents. He died when I was young, and I never had a chance to talk to him about his service in either war.

His older brother, my granduncle, enlisted in 1917. He was a railway employee and went into the 13th Canadian Light Railway Operating Company. He was killed in action on March 28th, 1918. I have his army death certificate, as well as the letters written to my grandfather by his RSM advising him that his brother was missing in action, and four days later confirming his death after his body had been found. He is buried in the Maroeuil British Cemetery in Nievre, France. He was 24. Coincidently, just at the beginning of this week I received a copy of the page in the Book of Remembrance which has his name listed.

My maternal grandfather was too young for WW1 and died shortly after WW2 started.

My father was too young for WW2, but was in the militia after the war as an officer in the 8th New Brunswick Hussars. He told me once that he was asked to volunteer for active service in the Korean War, but declined as he was about to be married.

97

Two men who were sadly, ignorantly underestimated by their own children, but are permanently enshrined in my panetheon of heroes.

My uncle, Bob Graham, my mom’s oldest brother. Waded ashore at Normandy as a corporal, walked into Berlin as a lieutenant, fought door-to-door, got drunk with the Russians then nearly resigned his commission when U.S. decided to not march on Moscow. He was shot down in his reconnaissance aircraft over Korea, retired as a lieutenant colonel and was the most bombastic asshole I ever knew. I loved the man only slightly less than my own father. He died two years ago because he refused to give up either Jack Daniels or New York strip steaks seared and rare. He loved life and lived it very, very large.

My father-in-law was a mechanic and driver for the Third Army and drove in the Redball Express. He always said Patton and the Red Ball could have taken Moscow in six weeks. He was wrong, of course, but that didn’t matter. After the war he came back and farmed the land on which I now live for nearly fifty years. He died in my wife’s arms of a ruptured aorta. He was 90.

“Taps” has a special meaning to me.

98

My Dad fought at Guadacanal.

My Mom’s Brother fought under Patton.
My husband’s Opa ( Grandfather, dad side) was left for dead during a Germans VS Russians bit. In the aftermath, the Russian Soldiers were going around and shooting anyone they could in the head. Some how his Opa was in such bad shape with an injury to his arm, that he was left there to suffer. Not worth a bullet.

A while later, the Americans came along and took care of what was left. His Opa lost that arm from above the elbow. (When my husband and his sister found a picture of Opa, it was a little odd to hear them say, " Oh! Here’s a picture of him with TWO arms!")

That Opa’s wife was left with six children 10 and under, ( the youngest were 11 months apart.), to take care of while he was away. The women who held the home together then were fierce creatures.

Her eldest had some hip deformity and had a limp her entire life until Socialized Medicine called her number and she had the surgery that corrected this problem in her 70’s.) She was about 11 when there was a car full of Nazi guys watching the kids playing. They noticed the gimpy girl and called her over to them. Well, Oma was watching them watch the kids. She went over to those guys and gave them an earful. You don’t fuck with German Housewives and the Nazi’s figured that out and left.

They had to grow their own food, had no car and could hear the bombings of Bremen from their area. You don’t farking mess with anyone of her generation when they got a bee up their nose. They also took in a guy who lived with them until he died. He had saved Opa’s life during the war. He suffered from PSTD and was an Uncle to their kids.
His other Opa on his Mom’s side was a cook in the Army. I think he was in Egypt. He never missed a meal and was probably the only guy to return home after it was all over with meat on him. My husband’s genetic barrel chestedness comes from this man.

His wife had one child ( my MIL) and during the war she worked for a wealth landed gentleman. Old Aristocracy, a count I think. She was their cook. 19 years old and cooking for the entire estate. (Think about that for a second.) Well, as war happens, the Russians happened along and took over the entire place. This didn’t happen overnight, as LARGE groups like this don’t move forward very fast so they had warning. So, the Gentlemen rode his horse around the property to say goodbye to those that decided to stay. Wished them all good luck and safety ( most fled, as the Russians were known to be Bastards.) and as the first Russian vechicle came on the property, the Gentleman and his family left ( with whatever valueables they could cram into their wagon. The vehicle had been taken by Zee Nazi’s.)

Oma stayed on because she had no where else to go and having a roof over your head and at least a pantry full of food during a war is vital. Moreso when you have a baby. The Russians signed her on as their cook ( no pay.) and played with the baby alot. They loved her cooking and raped her fairly regularly. I’m not sure how long she stayed there.

Years later, she ended up helping get the Gentleman a job somewhere else.Despite the fact that they were a country away from where he had lived his whole life, they ran into each other in the Hamburg area. Small world.

She was such a neat lady who could out-sew, out-cook, out-repair, out anything YOU COULD EVER DO. My MIL is the same way. You suck.

99

The only relative that I have absolute knowledge of service in either world war is my Great-Uncle Hugh Johnston. He served in World War 1. The only story I know was that he was wounded going over the top. He remained on the battlefield all day until stretcher bearers reached him that evening. Once he was loaded on the stretcher, the bearers picked him up and were both killed by machine guns. My uncle received a further wound through the bottom of his foot then.

He was evacuated from the battlefield after dark and taken for medical attention. For that, he received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, which my brother has in a frame on his wall.

100

My maternal grandfather was just barely too young for WWI, and a little too old by WWII. My paternal grandfather was dead before WWII, and probably wouldn’t have been able to go for WWI, because of a heart murmur. My dad was too young for WWII, was drafted and in the Army during Korea, but never sent overseas.

The only relative I know of who saw fighting was my Uncle Larry, who was in a tank battalion during WWII. He wasn’t in the first wave at Normandy, but was ashore within a day after, and in either Belgium or the Netherlands when the war ended in Europe. I never heard him speak of the war, I learned all this later. He was a small, gentle, quiet man and it’s hard to think of him in combat.