Grandfathers in the war

[Bubblehead1980]

Paternal great-grandfather was an infantry officer.After graduating college just a few months after Pearl Harbor in 1942. he joined the Army and was eventually commissioned before being sent to England.Like so many others, he went ashore on D-Day at Normandy(believe it was Omaha Beach) Never has talked about it too much but heard a few stories over the years.Fortunately, he is still alive and in his 90's but like so many, he is fading.

Maternal great grandfather was in the Coast Guard and spent his war in California.Unfortunately, I never knew him as he passed away in the late 70's and I was not born yet.

[krashkart]

I have an uncle who flew a light observation helo in Vietnam, and that's about it for war veterans in my family. I did learn over the weekend, however, that my great-grandmother's brother was in a concentration camp -- which is certainly something I'll be investigating.

[CaptainMattJ.]

To the best of my knowledge, my grandfather both flew and served as a flight engineer (first engy, then pilot) aboard C-47 Across Africa and Europe.

Very, very, very fortunate for me AND my dad, he was able to dodge reassignment to the 8th, although i have no idea what unit he served in.

After WW2, one uncle was a pilot in the air national gaurd during vietnam., and today is flying UAVs in Arizona's desert. My other uncle, who is 61 now, was a grunt in vietnam. Before my grandfather, my great grandfather served in the Great White fleet. Thats about as much as i know unfortunately.

[eddie]

My Grandfather served in the US Army in WW1. Don't recall the division he served in, but he was assigned to a artillery unit. His unit was on the receiving end of a mustard gas attack which ended his days in combat. He survived the war, and passed away in 1956,

My Father was in the 4th Marine Division during WW2. After the attack at Pearl Harbor, he wanted to enlist in the Marines, but couldn't, he was just 17, still in High School. He talked my Grandmother into signng the papers to allow him to enlist. He was a B.A.R men. Was invovled with 3 landings,first was at Roi-Namur, then Saipan, during the landings on Tinian, he was wounded by a Japanese machine gun. Spent the rest of the war recovering statside.

I look after him now, he's 88 years old. Gets around pretty good yet. Would rather have him spend his golden years with us, then live in a retirement home.

[Falkirion]

My maternal great grandpa was a POW during WW2. I believe he was driving trucks for the AIF during the Fall of Singapore. Was a POW till the end of the war, during his captivity he was forced to work on the Burma railway. I never got the chance to meet him unfortunately. He died before I was born.

[HunterICX]

My Grandfather wanted to join cross the Channel and join the RAF but his father needed help to keep the shop running as hiswife recently passed away while giving birth. He loved airplanes and something he has regretted till the end of his live that he never picked up flying an aircraft.

So instead he joined the group that went out to search & rescue after bombing raids and living near the German Military Airport of Gilze-Rijen (Netherlands) you could imagine there where more then enough raids.
When it was apparent that the War was over for the Germans he sabotaged some fuel lines of German trucks and nearly got put against the wall for that.

but unfortunately he died before I was born, would've loved to have talked to him.

HunterICX

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

My maternal grandfather served as tank crewman but I don't know anything else about him. He died in "accident" in 1975 (police suspected homicide because of strange circumstances around his death, they were unable to find suspect nor any clear evidence to back suspicion). His brother served as fighter pilot during war. He continued in Air Force after war and retired as Colonel.

His wife's two brothers served as pilots (no details from either except that another one was Major during war) third brother was radioman/gunner in Bristol Blenheim Mk. I bomber shot down over Gulf of Finland during war. All onboard were killed and only his body was recovered, it washed up into shore in northern coast of Estonia. He was buried there by Wehrmacht.

My paternal grandfather was army engineer during early parts of Continuation War and later as sissi (Finnish light infantry) during Continuation War and in Lapland War. He is only one to who I have been able to talk about war experiences although he didn't talk anything about them until early 2000s.

[sharkbit]

Nice necro of a thread. Don't think I ever saw this one.

Only knew one of my grandfathers and I don't think he served in the military. I think he worked in the coal mines of Virginia his whole life.

My dad was a waist gunner on a B-17 with the 94th Bomb Group out of Bury St. Edmunds, England. Unfortuneately, he passed away when I was 7 and before I really took an interest in WWII. I know he was wounded in the back by flak. I remember him showing me the scar. My mom has his Purple Heart and the silk American flag with Russian words on the back. I think he flew some shuttle missions to Russia an/or was on missions near Russian lines. The flag has a shrapnel hole in it.

My step dad was a B-17 mechanic in England (can't remember the bomb group).

I had a couple of uncles that served in WWII as well.

[Osmium Steele]

My paternal grandad was in his late 20's with 3 young kids at home, so he stayed in the steel mill.

My maternal grandad was also in his late 20's and an engineer at Lockheed. He stayed there as well.

My father missed Korea by a few years, but made up for it doing 2 tours in Vietnam, as a DoD employee, in '69 and '71.

The closest I came to anything like that while in service was defending the women in Ft. Lauderdale during Desert Storm.

My brother, however had his boots on the ground in both Iraq wars and everything in between except Somalia. He even rode the first trucks into Bosnia with the UN mission.

[Dan D]

Originally Posted by Dan D

My paternal grandfather is buried in the region of Vladimirovka in Moldova, between Romania and the Ukraine that is.
My father was 6 weeks old when my grandmother received message that her husband was KIA. She then wrote a letter to my grandfather’s military unit because she wanted to know whether her last letter had reached him before his death, where she told him about the birth of my father.
A comrade “Fritz” wrote back that if my grandfather “Franz” had knowledge about the birth of his son, he had not told it to anybody.
“Fritz” then told her what he knew about what had happened to “Franz”:
At 6 am, April 5th 1944 the Soviet Army launched a massive tank attack. The Germans could not hold the line and so the order was given to pull-out fast. My grandfather was part of the medical service and so he had to stay back to get the evacuation of the wounded from a field hospital done or to go into captivity with them. He did not show up at the new line of defence and so he was declared MIA.
About 2 weeks later the Germans launched a counter-attack and were able to retake the old positions for a while. Search deployments then found my grandfather’s body lying by a house, where he had been looking for cover when a tank shell killed him, so it seemed.
He was then buried on a provisional military cemetery in Agronomovka, today: Agronomul.

Part of the letter was a very precise drawing which gave valuable information that helped me to locate the about position of the cemetery on a modern road map of Moldova. I then contacted the German war graves commission to find out, whether the cemetery is already known to them.
They have now written back that they are already in negotiations with the owner of the land where the cemetery once was. If they get his permission for digging, which in many cases, I was told, is basically a matter of paying compensation for the loss of crops, the remains, probably some old pairs of leather boots and some uniform buttons, if they find something, would then be moved to the Central German military cemetery in Moldova in Chisinau.
I also had email contact with a guy who is searching for his father's grave in Moldova for 35 years now and so far he has exhumed the remains of 600 German soldiers but none of them was his father. He keeps on digging.

It is just an idea so far, but my father and I will probably fly to Chisinau and from there we would take a car to explore the area for one or two days.

Oh, did I write this?
It is the other way round. Place was called "Agronomul" when occupied by the Romanians and called "Agronomovka" after occupation by the Soviet Army.
Here is the full research:http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...light=moldavia

That was a hell of a trip.

This year my father and I will travel to Moldavia one more time to visit the final resting place to work on my fathers' war trauma. Grandmother died in February this year.

[AngusJS]

One of my grandfathers originally trained to be a B-17 pilot in the US Army Air Force, but was busted down to tail gunner due to some training camp hijinks.

In 1944 He flew combat missions from England for all of 2 weeks before being shot down by flak over Germany. All his crew bailed out successfully. He ended up in Stalag Luft III, where the Great Escape occurred. He waited out the rest of the war as a POW.

He said that he fired his gun only once (and that was into the English Channel), because you had to clean it if you fired it. He also said that one time a Messerschmitt flew up right behind his plane, but he didn't open fire because "I wasn't going to shoot at him if he wasn't going to shoot at me."

My other grandfather was a JAG officer in the Navy. He remained stateside during the war, but IIRC was transferred to Italy after hostilities ceased.

[Eisenwurst]

My paternal Great Grandad was a conscript in the Tsarist army. My Dad's dad and his wife both "disappeared" during Stalin's purges. My Dad was rounded up and sent to Germany as a "guestworker" when the Germans occupied the Ukraine. Towards the end of the war he was conscripted into the German army and sent as part of occupation force to Denmark.

First chance he got he ran away, buried his uniform and gun, and was sheltered by a farmer who was grateful for the extra help around the farm.
My dad was just a teenager, he said he didn't want to shoot anyone.

My dad died a few years ago after a sad slow decline, and didn't talk much about the war. But did remember the retreating Russian army as it passed through his village during early Barbarossa. A lot of badly wounded guys, confused and frightened.

There's good and bad guys on both sides in every war, and as Gen. Sherman said "War is hell".

Thank God for Gorbachov and Yeltsin and the end of the Coldwar.