Grandfathers in the war

[Jimbuna]

Fantastic thread....how about we include fathers as well ?(for us older folk to talk about) :hmm:

[Sailor Steve]

I already mentioned mine. I'm sure there's no problem with it; the OP is just younger is all.

[lesrae]

Like Sailor Steve, my dad was too young to fight in WWII (born in 1930) but did National Service in the RAF.

My mum's dad worked at a cipher/signal intercept establishment somewhere near Edinburgh. In the lead-up to D-Day he disappeared for a week when they weren't allowed to go home - when he eventually got home my granny nearly brained him, she thought he was having an affair!

My mum's grandfather was killed in the trenches at Loos: http://www.cwgc.org/search/certificate.aspx?casualty=1768050

My dad's dad was a WWI dispatch rider at the front line, until he was invalided home after being gassed. He was never fully fit again and died before I was born, from a related illness.

[Camaero]

Never got to meet either grandfather. On my dads side, he served in the Seabees and was possibly in Africa, and for sure Normandy, and pushed into Germany in 1944. My dad says that he never talked much about it, so details are sketchy.

"Can do!"

My great grandfather was at Pearl when it was bombed and was drafted to help out on the spot. Don't know what happened from there.

My family didn't really seem to keep records very well so I am not sure about the rest. I know one or two related family members fought in the civil war for the confederates and one was even highly decorated for a battle, but like I said, the details are not there. It is unfortunate, as I would like to see more of where my family came from. On my mothers side the information is almost zero.

[Kipparikalle]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Fantastic thread....how about we include fathers as well ?(for us older folk to talk about) :hmm:

Request Granted, carry on.

[ReallyDedPoet]

My great grandfather fought and died in WWI. I do not know much about him, but I am trying hard to change that.


RDP

[Tchocky]

A possible distant relative of mine, serving in the RNVR went down on the SS Normandy, torpedoed in January 1918.
Simply put, our names are identical, and his parents lived a few miles from where my paternal grandfather was born. My surname is rather unusual in this part of the country, so it looks likely that we're related.

SS Normandy, 618grt, defensively-armed, 25 January 1918, 8 miles E by N from Cape La Hague, torpedoed without warning and sunk by submarine, 14 lives lost

My maternal grandfather spent the Second World War in the Irish Army, first as a sentry and air-raid warden, then a Vickers gun instructor.

[Janus]

Unfortunately I have never talked much about this topic with my grandfather, and I think he did not want to.
All I know is that he was in Stalingrad in WW2 and was flown out of there after he got injured. He then was at the western front and sometime got POWed by US forces. He was already on the way to Great Britain when the ship he was on had to return because of some (german) offensive going on in France (probably Ardennes offensive).

Very little information I have, I wish I had more but now it is too late

[NiclDoe]

My grandfather was in Poland. He was a young Kid when Germany invaded Poland. When he was young he tried to help Jews get to safety and hide them from the SS. He also help take care of them if they are trying to run away on his family farm. It was a very hard time and was happy after Russia came to Poland.

[DeepIron]

My grandfather on my Mom's side served as a Radioman aboard a Destroyer Escort. He was with the carrier task force that arrived at Pearl the day after the Japanese attacked...

He served on various Destroyers and DE's throughout the entire Pacific War and was present at a number of battles and confrontations with the Japanese. He was present at Tokyo Harbor when the Japanese surrendered. At the end of his Naval career of 30 years, he was a Chief Warrent Officer WO-1, the highest rank attainable (at the time) for an enlisted man.

My grandfather will be 95 this year and is still in excellent physical and mental health.

My maternal grand father served in the wehrmacht, heer,for three months before he skipped off to Switzerland and sat the war out in that country. My mothers brother (my uncle) also served in the wehrmacht, heer, and was held in a French POW camp for nine months. He was half dead when released and spent a year in hospital recuperating.

My paternal side is more interesting and some would say imfamous.
My grand father born in 1905 in Springfield , Ill, did not serve in the armed forces, too old I guess. Another paternal relative was the imfamous one.

Part of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) this fellow was in charge of the bureau that was set up to eliminate Jewish influence from German life. He brought Adolf Eichmann into the SD and worked directly for Heidricht Reinhardt. Later he worked with Himmler in the Schutzstaffel (SS).

After the war there is some evidence that he worked for the CIA (OSS), but hard to say for sure. He became a spokesman for the german FDP in early 1949 and later for the Coca-Cola Company in west germany (non-official cover for the CIA perhaps). At or about May 1960 all references to him stop. Interestingly Eichmann was captured by the Mossad on May 11, 1960.

[The WosMan]

Wow, my guess is he wasn't really working for Coca-Cola.

My dads grandfather served in the pacific in the US Army. He was the youngest guy in his group when he signed up in 1942 (he will be 84 years old in December). I still haven't gotten the whole story from him on everything he did over there but he specialized in radio and communications and had been in New Guinea, Austrialia, and at the end in '45 he ended up at the University of Manilla in the Phillippines where he ran a Japanese prison camp and was directly attached under Gen MacArthur. He has some pretty entertaining stories including when they were in New Guinea and they couldn't get a drink so he and a group of friends learned to make booze from oldest guy in their group who happened to be 38 and had been a prohibition era bootlegger. They found some old steel wash bins and they turned them into stills to make something to drink.

He only reminisces about the good times, I think there is other stuff he either did or saw that he doesn't like to talk about.

[AVGWarhawk]

I must be getting old..........everyone here talking about their grandfathers in WW2. I had two Uncles and one Aunt in WW2. Two in the PTO and one in the ETO. Heck I have pictures of WW1 aircraft in Fla from my Great Uncle who was in the airforce there. Funny to see the biplanes.

Anyway, my Uncle in the ETO was shot down over Kiel Germany June 13th, 1943. He as a B-17 pilot. The target was the uboat pens. My aunt in the PTO was a WAVE and overseen 30 nurses. She was a tough bird after that experience. She passes away about 8 years ago. My other uncle the PTO worked on the aircraft carriers although he never talks about it. He was an aircraft mechanic and also worked on the torpedoes. One day he went flying with a hot dog pilot. Loops and rolls, etc. He never went flying again, EVER, since that day. He lives in Minehill NJ and had worked for Mars/MM after the war. Although his mind fails him every now and then, he is doing well.

[The WosMan]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

I must be getting old..........everyone here talking about their grandfathers in WW2. I had two Uncles and one Aunt in WW2. Two in the PTO and one in the ETO. Heck I have pictures of WW1 aircraft in Fla from my Great Uncle who was in the airforce there. Funny to see the biplanes.

Anyway, my Uncle in the ETO was shot down over Kiel Germany June 13th, 1943. He as a B-17 pilot. The target was the uboat pens. My aunt in the PTO was a WAVE and overseen 30 nurses. She was a tough bird after that experience. She passes away about 8 years ago. My other uncle the PTO worked on the aircraft carriers although he never talks about it. He was an aircraft mechanic and also worked on the torpedoes. One day he went flying with a hot dog pilot. Loops and rolls, etc. He never went flying again, EVER, since that day. He lives in Minehill NJ and had worked for Mars/MM after the war. Although his mind fails him every now and then, he is doing well.

You're only as old as you feel. Your talk of your uncle reminded me of my great uncle (who is still around at 86). He was in the PTO and used to be inserted in special missions via sub or paradrop and would perform recon on an area. His specialty was drawing and sketching the layout and the enemy emplacements which would be used for war planning later down the line. He is an excellent artist who used the GI Bill to go to art school after the war. He had a studio in San Diego and in his life has done some sculptures of famous people including meeting Ronald Reagan when he was the Gov of California (also one of his heroes) and doing a bust of him and also meeting Pope John Paul II and creating a bust of him for the Vatican.

[CCIP]

I'm from Russia, so...

Neither of my grandfathers served, although my paternal grandparents both survived the Siege of Leningrad as children, and maternal grandfather was seriously injured and lost his best friend when they opened a barn door shortly after the germans retreated from their village (it turned out to be boobytrapped).

All my great-grandfathers served in various Red Army posts in WWII. One, a doctor by profession, was a field surgeon with the rank of senior lieutenant. He received a shrapnel wound in the head (the shrapnel could not be removed), but recovered and continued serving. Another grandfather was shot in the leg by a Finnish sniper on the Karelian front. He lost his leg and became a severely depressed alcoholic, receiving little reward from the government for his service and not living long after the war ended.

Of my great-grandfathers, one started WWII as a regiment commander and worked his way up to command an infantry division. Another did not serve in WWII, but fought for the Red Army against foreign intervention in the civil war. Some of the others were active revolutionaries. Many other family members were predominantly on the White side and left the country during the civil war.

Ironically many of my ancestors were from the German nobility, while a branch of my family is ethnically Finnish, which is why to me the world wars always seemed like a tragic joke (on my family).