Is anyone related to a WWII Veteran?

[Reece]

My farther served on a minesweeper stationed in Darwin during WW2.

[Blacklight]

My grandfather, Raymond Purcell, flew reconnaissance over Gemany for the US in a small plane that looked like a little private plane. He would fly over enemy targets and take pictures with his camera.
He said that he often would encounter the German reconnaissance pilots going the other way to do the same thing. They actually were friendly with each other and would wave as they went past.
Another interesting thing is that he nammed his plane "Diane" after his daughter (My mother).
His plane once experienced an engine problem and he crash landed it. There's a picture we have of him smileing, posing with his crashed plane in a field somewhere (I assume in France or Russia).

[Stealth Hunter]

My dad went to Egypt and fought the Afrika Corps as a small-time local resistance member.

Otherwise, not another soul in my family ever fought during World War II. My grandfather, however, did fight for the Ottomans during World War I.

[Fincuan]

My grandfather from my father's side was too young to join when the Winter war between Russia and Finland broke out in November 1939, but when the hostilies resumed after a year and a half in 1941 he was in. He served as an engineer in various places around the front, most notably in the battle of Tali-Ihantala, where the Finns finally stopped the Russian offensive of 1944. There he practically lost his hearing from one ear when some kind of grenade hit the rock he was sheltering behind, but otherwise he came out unscathed. The war stories he has told us have always been about the "happy times", like when they were fishing lobsters, when everyone got sick and was ****ting all over the place because there was a dead reindeer just upstream from their camp, when they found a cellar full of vodka and got so drunk they had to pull back momentarily etc. On new year's eves he used to build some nice devices(that went BANG) from the stuff he brought back from the front, but I guess he's already run out of it because it hasn't happened for a couple of years now. He's still alive and well and living on a farm in southern Finland.

[mrbeast]

Neither of my Grandfahers fought in WWII.

On my father's side of the family my grandfather was declaired unfit for service, he didn't have a very healthy heart probably due to a very poor childhood (he almost died of malnutrition when he was 4 and had been pretty ill too). Anyway he worked in forestry as a foreman during the war; was in charge of some Italian POW's. He told them on the first day that if they wanted to try escape he wouldn't try to stop them, none of them did; they were all sick of the war and were just happy that they weren't being shelled or bombed anymore!

My mother's father was too old to fight so he served in the Home Guard instead. He was mostly involved in 'Fire Watching' i.e. keeping watch over important sites like factories incase they caught fire during air raids.

My Great Uncle (my dads mother's brother) was involved in the Norwegen campaign. The transport he was on was bombed and sunk and he spent a while freezing in a lifeboat which was washed up on a beach with many other survivors. He was then straffed and bombed by the Luftwaffe pretty heavily until finally another transport came to pick them up; which was then sunk by a U Boat; so back in the water he went. When he got back to Britain he was very traumatised (he was always highly strung and later suffered from manic depression) so he was transfered to light duties on base in the UK. Later he was discharged for medical reasons after he was involved in an accident.

Both my Great Grandfathers on my dads side fought in WWI one on the Western front and the Balkans and the other in Mesopotamia and the middle east. Both survived.

[Polak]

Great grandfather, mothers side- Colonel in the Army, fought in WW1, fought against the bolsheviks in 1920 in the Polish-Soviet war, and finally WW2.
His brother a master chief served in the Navy.

Grand mother, mothers side- Fought in the Home Army during the Warsaw uprising.

Great grandfather, fathers side- Fought in the 27th Home Army Infantry Division against the nationalist ukrainian insurgent army in southeastern occupied Poland.

My father was in the Canadian Army and then the RCAF, doing thirteen "trips" over Germany as a Lancaster navigator. He was wounded over Stettin in early 1944 and then sent to a 1 Group (Bomber Command) OTU as an instructor. He passed away in 1999, I still have his log book and honourable discharge certificate.

My uncle (Dad's youngest brother) was in the RCN mostly on corvettes from 1943 but finishing the war as an Oerlikon gunner on the armed merchant cruiser HMCS Prince Robert. He had lied about his age and enlisted shortly before his seventeenth birthday.

Good Hunting

[Sailor Steve]

My dad was #6 of seven brothers, and turned 13 on December 11, 1941 - the day Germany declared war on the US. He joined up at 19 in 1947, so obviously missed the war. Of his five older brothers, I'm not sure about two of them, but I'm told that three served in the navy during the war, and one of them was at Pearl Harbor. All of them survived the war.