September 21, 2004

• My grandfather's story in France, 1944
• I have a great-uncle who was a POW in a Japanese prison camp during WW2. I have another great-uncle who was a Marine on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941. My grandfather was a Marine in the Pacific theater, and my other grandfather was in the Air Force in Europe. None of them would talk about their war experiences. I realize this is not helpful to your question, but perhaps you've seen this same reluctance in other veterans.
• I had two brothers in Gulf War the original. They both came back messed up (in the head) although one is normal now.
• Well, Mickey, my father was a band leader in the Korean war. He spent most of his time making charts for his octet and travelling around making jazz for the troops. He was strafed once, he told me that story with a laugh - how they had to dive into a ditch, but other than that he didn't like to talk about it. I don't know why, but it seemed a dark memory for him. Maybe things he saw (they played MASH units too) were hard to remember and describe. So I guess war silences are as important to hear as war stories.
• Wow, shawnj, that's some story. I've never served, (though I too felt the terror of registering), but there's a story I tell about my father (who was drafted during Vietnam) whenever I get a chance: When I was ten my family took a vacation to Washington D.C., hitting various tourist spots along the way. We made our tour of the monuments, but Dad split off from us at the Vietnam Memorial so he could be alone to look for a friend's name. Mom explained to us later that this was Dad's radio man (IIRC) in his platoon (Dad was a Sergeant in the Big Red One -- his ID was Danger Devil Dracula Delta Lima Five, how cool is that?). They had become fast friends, really relied on each other. Unfortunately this friend got careless when he left camp one night, hit a tripwire, and was literally blown to pieces. Some people believe that a man's life can be summed up in a single moment. If that is true, then this was my father's. After the explosion, my father went around and gathered all the pieces of his friend's corpse that he could find. You see, he wanted the family to have something to bury. So he gathered the pieces and put them in a pillowcase to keep them until he could get them to a base and ship them home. He had to carry them for well over a week. I don't know what he had to go through physically or emotionally to do this, and I don't ever want to know, but he did it, and he did it to honor his friend. He won plenty of combat medals, but that's the story I think of when I think of his service.
• My grandfather was in Korea in the 50s, but has never talked about it to his family. I only found out he was there a couple of months ago. #2's grandfather and his brother served together in WWII and fought at Monte Cassino. Although we know they fought there and know about everyday things that happened, they never to my knowledge spoke in detail about the actual conflicts they fought in. Their letters home were delberately vague and mostly to reassure their mother that each brother was okay. They both survived and led pretty normal lives until they died in the early 80s.
• I'm Colombian. And here are some facts: * Colombia is the 3rd country in which the US invests most money on (after Israel and Iraq) * There are approx. 42mill. Colombians in the world. * there are approx. 27,000 homicides every year. Making violent death the leading cause of death, after cancer. * Colombia produces 80% of the worlds Cocaine. I've been in the U.S for quite sometime now, but I have memories. I have good ones and bad ones. I remember kidnappings. Several. Including my friend. She was coming off the bus from school and her mother, who was waiting for her, had to see her get taken away by these ppl. She was never seen again. I've seen people getting stabbed by common street rats (which are abundant there). I've seen dead bodies of store owners in the middle of the street because they refused to pay the local militia their "vacuna" ("vaccine" term used to describe the illegal collection of money from business owners by these groups, so that they may fuel their operations). When traveling from city to city, my father had to drive upwards of 150kph non stop for hours on windy and capricious roads, just so that guerillas didn't have a chance to stop us and extort, kidnap or kill us. The last straw, i think, was when my very family came under threat from a group. My father owned a business and it was our turn to put out. We didn't have the money they required so they threatened us with death. We paid up. We left. and we've never gone back. The part that hurts the most, is that Colombia, in all it's violence, is one of the most naturally amazing countries in the world. And it's nice people only punctuate that, along with a feeling of despair because we all know that we don't deserve this. That we're good people, that we want to forge ahead, and mostly, that we want peace. PEACE FOR COLOMBIA.
• mid: thanks for sharing that. your dad sounds like quite a man.
• SideDish: He is. No boy has ever been prouder of his father. Warrior: I honestly have no words. Sounds like a hell of a childhood to have, to put it far too lightly. This might make a good FPP.
• My dad was at Guadalcanal during WWII. He caught tuberculosis within a month and spent the next THREE YEARS in an Army hospital. At one point the doctors, in their infinite wisdoms, decided the best treatment for my father was to take out his left shoulderblade and remove his left lung. He doesn't talk about it but he watched a lot of war casualties go in and out of that tropical hospital. I don't think he's ever forgiven himself for riding the war out in a hospital bed. He's in his 80's now and still has the left shoulder of his suits specially padded so people won't notice the concavity.
• My father served in WWII. He never talked much about his war experience. He had a couple of medals he kept put away. The only story I recall him telling me was, he was with the supply line about 10-12 miles behind the frontline. He said he lived with not knowing when the enemy planes would fly over and fire on the supply lines or drop bombs. He says the only time he fired on the enemy was when him and his fellow soldiers fired on the enemy planes overhead. MCT yes, thanks for sharing your fathers story. He sounds like an exceptional man.
• I don't have any war stories to relate, first or second-hand, but a few years ago when I was obsessed with the topic, I spent a lot of time here.
• Warrior: Your story puts me in mind of the time my wife came home from work via a taxi. Her driver was a Somalian refugee. He described wht he loved best about New Zealand: "I know where my wife is. I know where my children are. They will not be kidnapped to fight for warlords." The simple pleasures of living in a boring country.
• Both of my grandfathers were in WWII, one fought in the Pacific as a fighter pilot, and the other fought on a Coast Guard cutter in the N. Atlantic. Neither talked too much about it, but my grandfather in the Atlantic was proud that his ship helped gather weather information for D-Day. The only story this grandfather told regularly about the war was about how he "won" my grandmother in a craps game. Unexpectedly, my grandfather received a week's leave while he was in Boston. He had no money for a train ticket home, but he did find a floating craps game in the Boston train station. He put his last two bucks in the game and won enough for a ticket home to TX. Once there, he asked my grandmother to marry him, and she accepted! I also know he was in a hospital in Greenland for a month during the war, but he refused to talk about it. I think having a funny story to tell deflects attention away from the awful stuff.
• This is a little different - My grandfather was a card-carrying communist in the 30s and 40s, and because of that and a few other reasons he was a Conscietious Objector during WWII. As a jew of Polish descent, however, he came to strongly regret that decision later in life. He carried a lot of guilt because of it, and I think that's probably one of the reasons that, by the time he died, his politics were to the right of Atilla the Hun. I'm no fan of what's going on in the world right now, but sometimes war is necessary - that may have been one of those times.
• Mid: Jesus Christ! I don't know what else to say. My own grandfather saw service in WWI from 15 to 18: Ypres, Somme (not the July massacre but subsequent fighting), Arras, Vimy, and Paschendale. He was variously a cavalry soldier, machine gunner, trench digger, munitions transporter, and so on. When the war ended he was in England training to be a fighter pilot. He died when I was little, and my mom tells me he didn't talk about it much but he did have very bad war-related nightmares all his life. I do have about 200 of his letters, his diary, his service record, plus some fairly interesting war memorabilia including a German "helmet" made from some sort of felt complete with a metal spike on the top and a bullet hole in the forehead. I know from his letters his worst experience came after a remarkably stupid attempt at a cavlary charge at the Somme in September 1916. They got bogged down on the German side of the trenches, and were essentially surrounded and pretty badly shot up. He survived by hiding behind/under his dead horse. How he got back across no man's land I'm not sure.
• Both of my grandfathers flew in the RAF during WWII. Unfortunately, I don't know a whole bunch about either of them, as they have since passed-on, but I do know that one was the rear-gunner in Lancasters, and the other was the navigator in (another bomber I can't recall). That second grandfather flew over 30 missions, including participating in D-Day and the annihilation of Dresden. He told the story of how after a particularly "hot" flight, they landed their plane as normal, climbed out, and watched it fall apart on the tarmac from the flack holes. Not once were they sent home, or given a break from flying, in a bomber squadron where the mortality rate was over 70%. It completely blows my mind to think he was my age (and younger!) when they were doing this.
• I remember a number of years ago I volunteered at a VA Hospital for a fair they were having for the residents. I had the privilege escortin Bob around, he was a pilot from WW I who was missing both legs from the knee down. I also had a grandfather who flew bombers in europe, and a great^3 grandfather who fought with the Union. My great^3 grandfather wrote a book about his experiences in the war, which i found to be prett amusing. From stopping to talk to a farmer and losing his regiment, to going into a farm house to buy a piece of pie and some bread for the butter he'd been isued while a battle was going on around him. To being captured by one man with five guns on his shoulder and escorting their former owners.
• My Dad was in the Canadian Navy during WWII, serving on a frigate escorting convoys across the North Atlantic, mainly from Halifax to Liverpool. Like many others mentioned here, he doesn't talk much about the hardships. My generation, in Canada at least, can thank his generation for the relative peace and security in which we grew up. Today, however, it seems that we are again a world at war.
• My grandfather was part of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force, or Back Every Friday, as they were known after Dunkirk) - the original British Army. He fought all through WWII - was at Dunkirk, where twice strangers saved his life, fought at Tubrook (sp?) and El Alemain, and up through Italy. He was in the Royal Artillery, anti-tank. Again, never talked about it much, except jokingly, and my eternal regret is that I was only about 10 when he died, so never got the chance to talk to him about it. One of the life-savings at Dunkirk involved him trying to get into a small boat, after standing chest-deep in the sea for hours. One man was frightened the boat would overturn, and didn't want to let my grand-dad on - remember they were being straffed, had been there for days, people were a little freaked. However, another man in the boat uttered the immortal line - "Let the bugger on..." and so he got away. That's a bit of a family catch phrase now.
• all your stories make me wanna cry. It's so hard to think that life is so unimportant to some people when compared to money or power. I think that those of us who have the opportunity to live in peace (within the context of today's world) have to enjoy at MAX. and just spread the word. And the LOVE.
• MCT, Warrior, you both have brought tears to my eyes. Thanks for sharing. I feel better now. I'm sorry for the suffering your loved ones/you went through....remarkable people.
• Thanks for sharing all these stories, everyone. I wonder what stories soldiers and the children and grandchildren of the soldiers currently fighting in Iraq will have to tell. And thank you Furiousdork for that link. I will be reading there for a while.
• My paternal grandfather served in the Pacific theatre (WWII) as an officer and he is in a picture in Time's Life books. My maternal grandpa also served in WWII as an enlisted and stayed in long enough to be part of the detatchment that went with Nixon to China. Both were under fire. Neither has ever talked about it,except to say that they were there. My uncle had most most of his hand blown off in Vietnam.