Since people are telling war stories, here's one from the other side:

Back in 1998 I was working for a foreign-language satelite TV company. One Sunday morning I took a call from a gentleman asking about getting German TV. For some reason he started talking about his wartime experiences. He said his name was Fred Schmid (he was very particular about the spelling, no "Shcmidt"). He said he joined the German army at age 16 after his older brother was killed in a train wreck on the way to boot camp. He was put into the tank corps, and ended up on the Russian front. At age 17 he was his tank's driver, and his poor commander died in a funny way: he was outside in the woods "taking a dump" (as he put it) when a Russian bomber attacked them. The tank wasn't hit, but the commander bought it. Herr Shcmid said the rest of the crew elected him to be their new commander as he was the only one who could read and write.

He was 72 then; if he's still around he's now 80.

That's a good story. Do you have any family stories too? But I love that other side of the line stuff. We always get the evil German thing whenever WW2 gets brought up. My grandpa said he never hated the other soldiers, that they were just lik him caught up in a war. Though they didn't spare any sympathies for any SS they encountered. And I can't blame him considering what a few SS regiments did to the Canadians. I believe it was the 12th SS Hitlerjugen (sp?) that executed a number of Canadian prisoners after D-Day. If they were Hitler Youth I guess they were already crazy.

No, no family stories. Two of my six uncles were at Pearl Harbor, but they both died long before I ever thought of asking them. My dad turned 17 just after The War ended. He was in the navy for a couple of years, but my stories are probably better than his, as I at least got to a combat zone.

I like the one my Uncle used to tell how they'd get plastered on torpedo juice and the nagging headache that followed, and then go out on a night mission with heaving seas, and no radar, no lights or points of reference. PT duty could be rough.

My cousin, now in his 80's I'd guess, who I've known most of my adult life told me a story about his war experiences just a few years ago. He and two others had been captured by a like number of Germans. Somehow, he and these other two managed to overpower their captors and escape in a stolen Mercedes, nice one too he says, and proceeded to drive in a westerlerly direction until they ran into friendly forces. We were in a bar at the time and that's about all I recall of the story.

Someday, at say an earlier time of the evening, I'm going to get him to tell me the story again and see if I can get him to elaborate a bit more. He's a bit closed mouth about the whole thing.