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Share your grandparents war stories....


Dr. Dazzle

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So, as some of you may or may not know, June 6th will be the 60th anniversary of D-Day. If you need an explanation of what D-Day was, then please, leave this thread now.

 

Now chances are that nearly everyone on here had grandparents that were involved in World War II. I think we should take the time to share some of their stories with others. Time is ticking away and their are fewer and fewer veterans alive each year.

 

In a somewhat lacklustre commemoration, this is where we can tell the stories that have been told to us. Some are emotional, some are horrific, some are just plain badass. So yeah, let's here them.

 

 

 

Grandad 1 - Like most people who fought in the war, he didn't talk about it once he got home. Even my dad doesn't know what he went through. All I know is that he fought in North Africa, and Italy for sure. He died when I was 4, so I never got a chance to talk to him about it.

 

Grandad 2 - I talked to him about the war when I was back in England (I should mention that both my grandparents fought for the British). He started off in Africa, but he didn't go in to too much detail about what he did. He mainly talked about how once the fighting had stopped, that the Allies and the German soldiers were all friendly together. They all hung out in like Tunisian hotels all being friends with each other, and there was no animosity. He joined the campaign in Europe towards the end, when the Allies had already advanced deep in to Germany. He was given the job as a delivery driver, which meant that a young kid who had never been behind the wheel before was driving huge trucks with tanks strapped to the back of them across Europe to deliver to the front lines. The only real resistance he had to deal with was with snipers and other infantrymen left behind. He told me a story of how he was walking beside one of the convoys in a forest, and the guy in front of him just got popped in the head and went down. They found the sniper who did it, he was already dead. My grandad said that he was only 17 years old.

 

He also told me how he got to see first hand the Bergen (I believe) concentration camp. By the time he got there it had mostly been cleaned up but he still saw piles of bodies, huge piles of glasses and shoes and clothes. I can't imagine what it would be like to walk in on something like that.

 

As I said, though, he really came in towards the end, and most of the fighting was already done. He said he spent most of his time in France and Germany, living in hotels and being treated like gods by the locals. The way he talked about it, it didn't sound too bad :D

 

 

 

So yeah, that's my granddad's experience. Not really too exciting, haha. It would be cool if anyone on here had stories from the German side, I know that my brother's friend's grandad was a German pilot or something. Yeah, this could be cool if anyone actually cares. But it doesn't mention tits or cars or something so most of you probably won't...

 

*Interesting sidenote, the History Channel is showing programs to commemorate D-Day all week long. You should definitely be checking them out....

 

Bleh.

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My grandma just sent me some actually... I have more somewhere... I gotta find them...

 

 

 

 

**** ****** came home to the ****** house when I was about 15, He

didn't

talk much about it. But one day before he came home I found a few

e-mail

letters in the closet upstairs in the room that was his before he went

away and I read them, they were not about the war but because they

were

from him in Europe it was very moving. They were letters to his

parents.

I have never told any one that I read those letters and I never saw

them

again.

 

He was a Staff Sergeant and the Company Clerk. When we went to his

Company Reunion the guys used to get away from the women and talk but

I

really didn't hear much from him about the war. I do not think he ever

really got over those experiences, We went to those reunions a lot of

times. We never talked about his experiences. I did sometimes overhear

the guys talking but it was usually something funny or they made it

sound

funny. They didn't talk serious stuff if any women were around.

 

All of our Family including our Brothers and our Boys and now our

Grandsons and a Granddaughters are doing their share to make our

country

safe for the next generations. We are very proud of what they are

doing.

And want them to know that we care. America is dedicated to the

security

of the world and all the people in it.

 

Yesterday while watching the dedication ***** brought out his leather

case with his medals in it and talked a bit about them. He has 3

battle

stars and several other items in it. He thinks people do not care

about

what they did. But yesterday's program showed me that a lot of people

still alive,

still care a lot and still hurt a lot. He showed me a picture of a

pontoon bridge that his outfit built to go across the river. He has

told

me about his group crossing that bridge and his seeing a pile of brush

and rubbish floating toward them as they were crossing, he realized it

could be a problem and pulled up his gun and fired it at the pile

which

exploded, It didn't get to the pontoon bridge and they went on

across. It

was a long bridge and could have been a big loss if it had reached the

bridge. No recognition was ever made of it but it is something he will

never forget.

 

It is hard to get him to talk about the bad stuff but he saw plenty of

action including his group going into a German prison camp and the

experience of what he saw and the look of those starving people as

they

were taken out. The piles of bones and piles of teeth with gold in

them,

He has told me of shooting out the steeple of a church and killing the

sniper that was shooting at him. And the lady being removed from her

house and how she very carefully stepped over one of the front steps.

After she passed him he shot up the step which exploded. If any of

them

had stepped on it they would have been goners. These are just a few of

the memories he has of those experiences. I cannot get him to write

any

of this down except His description of the radio antenna he put up

out of

the Plexiglass canopy of the fighter plane. It is going to be

published

in a book about the **th division. We saw it in a movie once. And I

have

seen pictures.

 

Sure they did some fun things like when they found the big wine

cellar

and had a celebration. And about being in the hospital when his

buddies

were shipped home. He was too sick to go with them so he ended up

staying

in Germany and working with the recovery program for almost a year

after

the war was over.

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My grandparents never talked about the war but this guy I used to work with was always talking about how many people he killed during the war and how when they were digging holes so they could stuff the dead bodies in them he would be takin pictures of all the dead bodies.......He said that when he went to get them developed the photo place took all the ones that had the gruesome parts out cause the gov't didnt want anyone taking back photo's to the states.....This guy was trippin me out the entire time....Talking in description about how he killed people with his fuckin kinfe.....Crazy ass stories.....

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I only asked my Grandpa about fighting in the war once, and you could tell he was very uncomfortable telling stories about what he saw.

 

But what he told me was that he was a radio operator in a tank. One day he was called to report to his commanding officer back at headquarters or whatever you want to call it. So he goes and talks to his CO, he said he was gone no longer than half an hour, and when he returned he found his tank destroyed and everyone inside dead.

 

Thats all he would say about it. Much respect goes to the men and women who fought in WWII

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One was stationed in Burma, he had his right leg blown off and was stung by a scorpian..he`s like 85 now..Was a P.T instructor and a boxer for his regiment..

 

The other was in the Navy..

 

Both don`t talk about about at all, tho I did hear from my mum that the Navy grandad had to help pull dead kids out of a primary school that had been bombed..So for good reason he doesn`t really want to talk to much on that subject..

 

Both alive and still kicking, well hopping the the case of my other grandad..

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Guest imported_Europe

My country was occupied by the germans for 5 years, from 16th April 1940 to 5th May 1945. I remember my grandparents would talk about the occupation from time to time. They were minorly involved in the resistance movement. They mainly hide people that were on the run from the germans, help them with food and shelter and so on.

 

My dad had a pyjamas made from a parachute, people used anything they could get their hands on cause supplies of everything was so short, everything was rationed. Allied troops were very popular, they would have chocolate and cigarettes which had been very rare during the war.

 

Its a national tradition to place lit candles in your windows on the evening of May 4th, to commemorate the liberation. During the war a law was made by the germans that all houses should be blackened with thick black drapes so allied planes couldnt see the cities and bomb them. When the liberation came, huge fires were build in the streets with all the drapes.

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Not my grandfathers' but still tough, the abridged version:

 

My girlfriend's uncle was in the infantry in Japan. After a day or two of fighting all these bodies were floating down the river they were camped next to. They had to wade out into the river to retrieve these bodies (for whatever reason) and all he can remember is the massive amount of maggots crawling all over the half-decomposed corpses. He says he quit eating rice because of that.

 

She also did a paper as an undergrad on WWII aerial photographers that put her in touch with some gnarly old guys from the 91st Bomb Group who are all about telling their stories.

 

We need more shit in here from the Europe(an) perspective too... History geeks rise up. I just think it's funny that Americans are so apt to forget that we weren't the only ones fighting.

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Guest imported_Tesseract

On the civil war my grandad and all his family where captured by the commies and held as prisoners of war for 5 years, they've been transfered to many countries behind the iron curtain with the longest stay in Hungary. After all that i wonder how my dad ended up on the left side

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I never heard many of my grandpa's stories from him... I dont fully understand a lot of older Italian.

 

But I do know that he faught for the Axis... and that at one point his unit got seperated and stranded in the mountains for weeks, and it was some brutal shit.

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Originally posted by thecarwreck

Not my grandfathers' but still tough, the abridged version:

 

I just think it's funny that Americans are so apt to forget that we weren't the only ones fighting.

 

 

 

 

 

Apt.....!?!?!?!Fucking stupid if anyone thinks that.....!!

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I lost both of my grandfathers at an early age. RIP. The only war related item I know about my dad's dad is that he came home from the war with a bullet hole 'groove' down the middle of his helmet. The family has never talked about it to the grandkids as far as I know.

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this is a really great thread...props to whoever thought of it

 

my grandad (who is still alive) fought in ww2 (australian) in the pacific...like most he doesnt talk about it much but he does make the occasional comment. He talks about how the japs decapitated his friends and how him and his mates would go into enemy lines and cut throats of sentrys... i also remember a story involving some jap's finger in little tin box which was used for practical jokes..bad ass shit

 

my grandad is fucking mean old cunt who holds a huge grudge and can get a little crazy...

 

i remember abought ten years ago (he was 76 at the time) he saw a young guy throw rubbish out of his car..grandad went over and told him to pick it up..guy got lippy and refused..guy swore in front of ladies (you dont do this)...grandad ripped him out of car and grabbed him by the balls proceeded to make him pick up the rubbish...the guy cracked my grandad who ''got a crazy look in his eyes like he was going to kill somone" (mother's quote) and threw the guy on the bonnet of his car in front of his girlfriend and then slashed all his tyres..

 

:lol:

i will think of some stories eventually

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Originally posted by se_FOUR

Apt.....!?!?!?!Fucking stupid if anyone thinks that.....!!

 

That's what I'm saying... but you can't escape the "we came in and saved the day" mentality that pervades the accepted American history story. No shit it's stupid to think like that but the feel-good self-congradulatory image (in America at least) is what the whole post-WWII society was centered around. While Europe was busy digging out from beneath tons of rubble, we were building suburbs.

 

Not fighting man, just discussing. ;)

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My american granddad was a bureaucrat in the army. He was sent to...Err....do paperwork and things in things when the Allies arrived in Algeria in 43. That's where he met my grandmother.

Not the best of stories Dazzle, I'm sorry. He never actually fought, but my mother told me some stories of trying to run an office under fire. I wish i could ask him about it, but he's no longer unable to put his pants on or eat by himself. I really feel bad for him, and I feel even worse i haven't seen him in too long (6 months maybe ?) because I can't face seeing him in that state. Last of him I saw i had to convince him he shouldn't be attacking nurses and trying to escape the rest home, and he was shouting gibberish to me; it took ages to calm him down.

Sorry for this rant, nobody cares. Yay for D-Day.

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Guest sneak

My dads parents were involved in the war. My grandmother (who had already survied a POW camp in WW1) had gone out to Malaysia to see her husband who was working out there. They were caught up somehow (i never found out) and ended up in a Japanese concentration camp for 4 years. She never told me any stories, you could see she wouldnt even think about it. My grandfather died before i was born.

 

The British Government promised to pay all survivors of Japanese camps £10, 000 each. I dont think they ever saw it.....

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My grandfather also told me that he once on leave in Darwin and and an american soldier was mouthing off so he cracked him and the guys head hit the gutter really hard. He legged it and came back the next day to find a pool of blood far too big for anyone to have survived.

 

I he was saw a group of asians and said "ive shot these people out of trees"

 

He also made the australian record for being AWOL - 137 days

 

He once described seeing a american fighter mustang taxi into a girl riding on a pony while it was trying to take off.

 

Hes never actually told and combat stories, almost all over his war stories are about breaking into ration buildings and armouries and stealing food and and gear ...He has mad war sourveineers, a luger and a bayard pistol (very cool) as well a couple of swords with scabbards and shit

 

ill report back when i think of some more of his stories

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Sorry about your granddad pinup... If it's any consolation I will probably be that way if I live that long.

 

I've gained some interesting insight on WW2... It turns out that what really broke the German Army is the push into Russia. I've always wondered why they would do something ludicrous like that but know I know. They were trying to get to Azerbaijan... they were running out of oil.

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The germans were always going to have to fight on two fronts. Hitler made the mistake of starting the major offensive against russia just before winter set in. It became logistically impossible to reinforce and resupply men fighting so far east in sub zero temperatures aginst the Russian home team

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Guest imported_Tesseract
Originally posted by WhiteOx

the japanese should all be ashamed of their treatment of prisoners in their POW camps :mad:

 

I dont think theres a single army in the world that treated their POW's kindly or even based on International law...war sucks gents

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Well my grandparents were not in the war, we are from central america.

 

My father however was in the civil war in my country and so was my stepfather. Hell i was born during it was going on.

 

My father was a frontline guy fighting the guarillas straight on. My mother said she would follow him when he was there like so many other wives did, since the war wasnt happening a thousand miles away it was happening on your front step, that's how the whole country was. She tells me storys of how they used to take captured guirillas and do some torture shit to find locations and other information. Electrodes to their ears and water buckets she said were the favorite. Not A lot of people talk about the attrocities of war since it is fucked up to remember it. I dont know a lot about other things my father did. He joined when he was 14 and got out when he was 26 i think.

 

My stepfather was a seargant (sp?) in the war, he joined when he was 13. He was "taken" by the military, that's how a lot of people joined. They would come into towns and take the first borns or the last borns and either it was you joined us or your whole family died, it was the same on the military and the guirillas side. Well he joined and they strapped him with an M60, i think that's the gun (think. scarfaces's last gun) and he was put out on the front. He eventually did a lot of killing and his commanding officers sent him to get "special training" at the legendary "School of the Americas". If you dont know about this school then read up on it. Interesting Stuff the Americans Came out with, and by stuff i mean people. Well he got out of that school and graduated with honors. He went back to my country and did a whole lot of more wiping out of people. The fucked up part about it, and essentiallly any civil war is that he was fighting his brothers, literally, they joined the FMLN which was the communist party and he was on the Military side. He never talks about it, only to my mother, and once when an old gun buddy came into town i overheard things when they were drunk. They were talking about how when they shot each other in firefights they always kept wondering if they were killing their brothers. The military special forces did some fucked up shit in my country, like taking a guirillas entire family, stapling their heads to the kitchen table and leaving the guarilla a surprise when he got home. The guirillas did the same shit too.

The war was funded by the Unites states also, kinda funny, they sold weapons to the guerillas and backed the military. Fighting on both sides. Motherfuckers.

 

 

My boss is an ex-vietnam vet special forces. He enlisted when he was 17 in the marines and went on to do 8 terms in vietnam. He was commander of some "mungs" he told me they used to do the same thing like i mentioned above, they used to go to vietcong villages and try to convert them or to get them to give information, if they refused that night they would go and take the entire head family and spike their heads in the center of the village, children, women, men, didnt matter. He tells me how they would sometimes go on shooting missions, where they would fly low and start to do some target practice with the villagers, wether they were vietcong or not was not his problem. When he left vietnam he got into Delta. He was a narcotics extradicter (sp?) so essentially he chased down people like Pablo Escobar down in central and south america. He was also one of the "guides" down in my country during the civil war. So he tells me all the fucked up shit the u.s did and has done down there.

 

Once my stepfather came and talked to him, essentially they both came to the conclusion that they both miss the killing, since that's all that they know how to do and love. They were both at a very young age when they first killed someone so they miss being able to not agree with someone and killing them. They both have this look in their eyes that they are not there sometimes. I remember that once a cop pulled over my stepfather and he got out of his car and essentially brushed him aside, there was a fear in the cops face with gun and all. I guess after being trained how to kill a man with a spoon there's really nothing to stop you from doing anything.

 

I have to say i feel incredibly safe when im around either.

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