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OP I'd love to read that story.
I don't know what he did to earn them, but they must have been special. He doesn't like to talk about his experience unfortunately.
He does have a hole in his leg, like a dent you could poke your finger into.
I haven't seen or spoken to him in years.
I consider the division of this planet in nation states a weird and ad hoc construction and I do not identify with my country unless there's a football match.
Most wars humanity has fought weren't over idealism either, WW1 was a political clusterfuck between countries whose populations were convinced by decades of propaganda that there was more at stake than a quarrel between equally wrong leaders.
WW2 started out the same way, we didn't even know Hitler was this morally corrupt until years into the war. Hell, the letters written by Jews being deported sent to their families didn't even hint at the idea that they might be murdered. Hitler was mostly considered an aggressive leader with some slightly racist ideas (but no that racist by the standards of that time that Chamberlain or other leaders went "that's racist! stop it!") who had his ideas of Lebensraum.
A new war will be the same, it will be fought over fresh water and the ideological realm will only consist of "does a human being have the right to get his own fresh water no matter what?" Chances are no one will even be interested in taking over another country for as far as I am concerned.
/tangent
Free MMO Überlist
I do know one of my grandfathers was captured by the Nazis and escaped en route to a Nazi prison camp, then spent three days walking through the woods before he managed to find a village.
My grandfather seems like a awesome and very intelligent guy, he died of cancer when I was a few months old, and my grandmother never stops talking about him
My maternal grandfather, still a minor when the war started, was involved in spreading around the resistance newspapers. Because he has a very jewish name, and "jewish" features (large nose / ears), he was arrested twice pretty much on suspicions of being a jew, and once more for breaking curfew after housesitting. He too was slated to work in Germany, but he got a friend to give him a (superfluous) job at the railway maintenance, something that was apparently quite common.
My maternal grandmother was born and lived in the Dutch Indies, the daughter of a banker. (so they were colonials, not natives). She was the oldest of 6 siblings. They were interned in the japanese starvation camps for 2.5 years, and both their parents perished in the spring of 1945. All but one of the siblings suffered serious physical and/or mental problems due to the camps. After the war, the Indonesian revolutionaries claimed their property (which had housed japanese during the war), and my grandmother, 17 at the time, was playing mother over her 5 brother, and were all sent to live with family in the Netherlands, with nothing but a few pieces of jewelry and about 5 photographs.
My paternal grandfather died of a brain tumor when my dad was 12 so I never met him, but he served in the war. My grandmother is a British war bride. She's told me a few stories about the air raids on London. She's probably the most amazing person I know.
I've heard this before actually - it was an interview of a WWII sniper that was published and essentially the guy was discussing how much the whole thing still gave him nightmares - like, the one night he just kept shooting guys sent to replace this one guard post, and during the day they took the position and found something like 17 helmets where that position was.
My grandpa was a guard for prison camps and it got to a point where when the train doors would open, POWs would bolt out and escape. He said they were getting pretty tired of this and they were ordered to make examples of the next guys that tried it. They issued anyone doing train duty thompsons and one day the doors opened and a couple of guys bolted out the doors and and everyone just lit them up. He said they were dead before they hit the ground and that they just kept firing until there wasn't anything left to shoot. He always adds that there were far less escapees after that.
When I was 13, I was like..that's freakin cool! Now, it's like...man..that is freakin horrifying.
A couple of the remants of this insane project was a giant U-boat bunker Called Dora 1 built with Russian Slave labour that is to massive to demolish. Seriously a MOAB wouldn't dent the place. Another was a housing project for NCO called Sjoveien today. I used to live there for about 10 years. My room was in the basement wich the Germans built as an air raid shelter. Half a meter thick reinforced concrete walls. I could play music at max volume and the person in the next room wouldn't hear a thing. Whole house built to high standards insane even by today's reckoning.
But back to grandad. He and one of his brothers decided to make a run for the border and try to join the goverment in exile army. They made it and spent the rest of the war doing what I think was scut work for the allies instead. What was awfull is that one of their friends was going to join them, but backed out at the last moment. He stayed behind to take care of his mother. He was Jewish. 300 jews lived in Trondheim, only 3 returned. He wasn't one of them.
Awesome.
Did he ever meet Simo Heyha?
While not impossible, I would doubt it. There were a lot of people fighting there, and from what I gather my grandfather had a relatively calm time during his time in the war. They might've been kept as reserves most of the time. I think the worst part for his unit was the weather and lack of supplies, I'm guessing he wasn't the only one of them to get tbc.
What's unfortunate is that I don't know a lot more than I've said here now, they're both deceased since years ago, and my mother was the first to tell me about this. She doesn't know a lot about it either, so I don't think they talked much about it.
My grandfather on one side got a deferment because he worked for the astatic company that worked on improving sonar and such. The other served in the south pacific on a yaught, after lieing about knowing how to use an adding machine, spoting mines and checking supplies for smaller posts. He has medals for participating in a couple navel battles but he says all they did was spot targets and run. He did have one intersting story about everyone stopping at a strangely completely flat island and starting an impromtu football game, then later learning it was a nuclear test site.
I don't know much about my maternal grandfather, but my grandmother's first boyfriend, who she would've married after he got back, died at the Battle of the Bulge. He was assigned to a lieutenant who panicked and got everyone killed.
I don't know if my family had anyone involved in WWII though.
I have a few of his old things from back then, which is rather cool. The most amusing is a Russian officer's parade saber, which a german soldier had somehow gotten his hands on. He decided that it was too cumbersome to carry back to Germany after they surrendered, so he left it by the side of the road where my granddad picked it up.
'Get your fucking finger on the wookie'
My maternal grandfather was on an aircraft carrier during the Suez Canal crisis. Apparently he almost died when a pilot accidently fired a torpedo whilst taxiing on the deck, luckily it flew of the end, but could have hit an obstruction a few metres away.
The bomber to the right of them (their right wing) gets shot down.
"Our right wing is on fire..."
"I know. Sad, isn't it?"
"No, I mean, our right wing is on fire."
He spent the rest of the war as a POW in Italy.
Later, he became Attorney General of the United States and beat the crap out of segregationists and whatnot.
Hahaha that is fucking awesome
What a story to tell.
That Attorney General thing is pretty cool too
Following this he was drummed out for a medical problem and went back to cutting trees for the war effort.
For other wars, my grandfather was a Green Beret and fought in Korea. He didn't like to talk about it though and it's too late to ask him. He only really told me one story from there. One time when he was camped somewhere, he and some of his fellow soldiers had started a fire in a spot they apparently weren't supposed to. One of his superiors comes up and starts yelling at them to "Put that fucking fire out!". The illfated superior starts kicking the dirt next to it to try and put it out. He managed to kick one of the logs instead, catapulting still burning embers right onto his leg and getting some nasty burns in the process. I really have no idea as to the veracity of this story, but that's how it was told to me.
Steam: Drokmir
My other grandpa was a sailor in the Navy and was on board a submarine. The only story I heard is that he would write my grandma's name on the torpedoes that were launched at Japanese ships.
He died when I was 14, and my grandmother died 3 years ago. I should have asked more questions.
My paternal grandfather, however, was one of those weird lucky ones that you hear about every now and then. Too young for WWII, and too Old for Korea/Vietnam.
But he died before my parents were even married and my grandmother never talked about him.
Ok yeah, I contributed nothing, but the rest of you guys, your stories and your familes sound fantastic.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
There was a website out there I found that mentioned his name and the attack, but like a moron I forgot to save it. Going back through old emails, I just found out that it was a Geocities site. D:
Father's Side: Banking family, helped finance Italy's army, grandfather fought for Mussolini. Don't know much about him other than he looked like a pretty scary dude to me. I don't have any real contact with that side of my family anymore.