The Continuing Ripples of World War II...

[MistWolf]

As the years pass rapidly by, more and more Americans forget what happened and the impact World War II had on those who lived it, our families and our nation. When I was a child in the sixties and even as a young adult in the eighties, the affect of the war had on America was keenly felt. Although we had fought in two major conflicts since, World War II still washed over us in continuous waves. Now, it seems to be a just ripple of a forgotten past, growing fainter with each passing generation. Yet, those ripples are still felt, even when we're not consciously aware of them.

For me, the war was two generations ago. My father was a small boy and my mother just a toddler when the Japanese bomber Pearl Harbor. My grandfather was in his early thirties with three young children. His youngest, my uncle, was born in December 1941. Grandpa was born in Minnesota and remembered being a young boy traveling with his family in a horse drawn wagon to homestead in North Dakota. He rode the rails during the Great Depression to find work. He ended up in the Finn Settlement area in western Washington, working as a lumberjack, where he met my grandmother. Grandpa and Grandma were both first generation Americans, their families having come to America from Finland, fleeing Russian tyranny.

Around 1940, Grandpa moved to from Washington to California to attend a trade school to learn aircraft sheetmetal and take advantage of new opportunities opening up in the fast growing aviation industries Los Angles and the surrounding areas. LAter, he sent for his wife and infant child. My mother and my uncle were born in California. When Grandpa graduated, he had a job waiting for him at the Douglas Santa Monica plant. When the US declared war, he was building C-47s for service in the United States Army Air Corp. Grandpa hated US government for giving Finland a raw deal after the war. When I asked him if he ever tried to join the US military to fight in World War II, he said "Why should I die for those traitorous bastards?" Years after his death, I told this to Grandma and she chuckled. I was shocked when she told me he did try to sign up. "But of course, they turned him down because he worked at a critical job."

Mr. Olsen, who lived with his family across the street from my grandparents, was a taxi cab driver for longer than I'd been alive. During the war years, he worked at the same plant as my grandfather. He worked to get the cranky hydraulics system for the landing gear of the Dauntless dive bomber to work long enough for the Navy to take delivery. The landing gear system was a complicated affair that had to twist the wheels as the gear folded back on retraction.

My Great-Uncle Urho, my grandmother's brother, joined the Army and was there for D-Day and helped liberate Paris. He dropped a grenade down the hatch of a German tank, killing the entire crew. He took a Broomhandle Mauser off the dead tank commander and brought it home as a war trophy. We think it was a commercial variant the the tank commander's personal sidearm brought from home. Uncle Urho died before I was born. I'm not certain, but I think he had some kind of stomach problem and died of slow starvation under the care of a VA hospital.

My father's Uncle John fought at the Battle of the Bulge as a "cannon cocker". It was hard for me to imagine that affable, five foot nothing, bandy legged bachelor raining death and destruction on anyone, fighting for his life against countless Nazis on a frozen battleground. I didn't get a chance to know him very well. We didn't stay in touch and was saddened to hear he'd passed away. I didn't find out about his death until some years after he died.

These influences had a profound effect on my family and myself personally. I realized that great sacrifices were made that I could enjoy the rights and freedoms I was blessed with. I grew up loving America and chose to serve in the US Air Force. Not to fight for my freedoms. My freedoms were fought for by my father's generation and my father's freedoms by my grandfather's generation. I joined to defend the freedoms of my children and they in their turn, serve to defend the freedoms of the next generation to follow.

I asked the same questions of my co-workers and got some interesting answers. One friend had five uncles serve in World War II, all in the Army. His father, too young to serve in WWII, served in Korea as gunner on a bomber. He became one of the first boom operators for air-to-air refueling. His grandfather had served in the British Army during World War I. He was twice a prisoner of war at the hands of the Germans. He joined at the tender age of 14! My friend is in his sixties and is retired from the US Air Force. Many that could point directly to someone who lived during the war years who supported the war effort back home or in the service all had one thing in common- They have a deep appreciation of our freedoms.

How many generations back is World War II for you and your family? Who was alive and what did they do? How has it affected you and your family? Are they alive today? Have you ever met them? How has it shaped you and your family in the years since?

[Wondering Beard]

One generation. My father's family lived under Nazi occupation and my mother's family lived in the Caribbean and had little to do with the war. I have one aunt on my father's side left alive and two aunts on my mother's side. They were all kids during the war. I know my aunts well and so does my wife though they live in different countries.

My wife is also one generation from WWII. Her mother was three and a refugee from essentially both the Nazis and the Soviets before coming to the US; her own mother had studied in the US before the war. My wife's father was also a kid at the time but American and became a West Point grad (I don't know what his parents did during WWII). None of them remain but we knew all them well (the grandmother worked for the CIA after the war as an analyst).

Their effect, and their experience with the war, on us is too complex to even begin discussing but one important part of it is that I came here to make my home.

[Cory]

I recently posted this on instagram.

p/BzliHcoAvha


I recently got my grandfather's basic training, and pre-deployment unit photos. These were in an uncapped cardboard tube since 1943.

My study isnt painted yet, and I'm sure they arent level... but I had to get them hung the moment I got home with them from being framed.

My grandfather, Calvin, was long since passed when I was born. Never met him, but really proud to have a piece of family history like this to display.

My maternal Grandfather served in WW2. He joined along with his father and older brother. His younger brother joined shortly after when he came of age. He passed long before I was born, and spoke little of his wartime service. I was told he drove a truck, and carried a 12guage trench gun. I haven't been told much else. After he died they found that he had been awarded the Purple Heart (I think I remember it being twice) but nobody could be sure how. He didn't talk about it.

I know that when he left the Army he felt the bureaucracy of the military hadn't done him any favors. I don't know if he disliked the Army, or the VA, or whatever system was in place at that time but I know he kept his thoughts on the topic mostly to himself.

I later joined the Army (NG) and served my contract and a little deployment. Not really because of him, but for my own reasons. None the less I'm proud to have that heritage in my history. He is pretty much the only member of my family that served. My paternal Grandfather couldn't serve due to injuries from a previous car wreck, and his siblings were considered vital working their family farm.

-Cory

[gtae07]

My paternal grandfather was a machine gunner in the 30th Infantry. I don't have complete records for him but over the years he told me and my brother many stories from his time in the Army during and after the war. We compared notes later since by the time we were old enough for him to tell us the stories we usually weren't both there at the same time. I'd have to say my favorite, just from the way he told it, was the story behind the majority of his hearing loss. As he related it, he was walking/moving across in front of a tank "when the gunner thought he saw a German on a hill and fired".

Anyway, he was taking cover under a tank within a couple hundred yards of Gen. McNair when the general was killed, was later wounded by shrapnel at St. Lo, and was involved in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he got out, spent a week in civilian life, and re-enlisted. He retired after 26 years, most of which was in intelligence (he was the son of Hungarian immigrants and after some work at Monterey spoke fluent Hungarian). His wife, my grandmother, was also full Hungarian and also in the army, somewhere on Eisenhower's staff in England during the war. They met at Monterey (outranking him by a few months at the time), and she later got out and became a teacher.

Interestingly, I was talking to my dad a couple months ago and told him that we'd heard a lot of war stories from him. My dad was shocked--"he never told me anything like that!" I don't know if it was just he wasn't ready to share them yet when my dad was younger, or if it was that grandparent-grandchild bond, or what.

My mom's father enlisted during the war (unsure of branch/unit), but he was a little younger and his unit didn't deploy before the end of the war. He later attended college via ROTC and did a few years more in the Air Force. At some point along the way he served as a navigator on bombers, which I still find utterly hilarious because the man couldn't read a map on road trips to save his life.

My mom's mother was too young to be directly involved, but her brother Ray was a crytpanalyst. I didn't see him very much and he passed away a couple years ago.


My paternal grandmother passed when I was 9, and multiple strokes (presenting like Alzheimer's) meant I never heard stories from her. But I was very fortunate to know my grandfathers well and for almost 30 years; they passed away within a month of each other in 2014.

I can't point to any direct, obvious "ripples", but at this point I'm probably on the younger end of people to have ever met in person, and heard the stories from, those who were there. My son (3) probably never will.

[ACP230]

One generation. My mother was an Army nurse in the Pacific. She was in
the Philippines when Manila was taken back from the Japanese. She took care
of some of the rescued men from the Capbanatuan POW camp. Her hospital ship
was in Japan right after the war.

Dad was in Italy in the Army Air Corps as grounds crew for the bombers attacking
Germany. He and our neighbor were on the same base but on different sides of
the airstrip. They didn't find out till long after the war.

Had an uncle who was a company clerk in New Guinea. and a cousin who served in North Africa.
My father in law was kept stateside as he was pretty old when he went in. He was on a base outside
San Francisco and told me whenever they went into the city they took the
wrecker. "Nobody got in our way then," he said.

One distant relative was on a Japanese ship our planes sank. The crew rowed
around in lifeboats and beat the prisoners in the water on the head with
oars. He was the only relative I know of who was lost in the war.

[Gray01]

I have posted much of this before. My father, all of my uncles and virtually (when the word was non-electronic) all of their friends, co-workers and associates were WWII veterans. My wife's father also, and her Uncle was a posthumous recipient of the Silver Star, which when reading the citation, one wonders why not the MoH. The Bulge, Market-Garden, Arnhem, Iwo, Okinawa, Jerry's, Krauts, Nazi's, Japs and Nips were common invocations. I did my small part when it came my turn. My great-grandfather and several of his brothers fought in the U.S. Civil War. My great-uncle earned the MoH at a place that is now known as Ft. Benning. My wife's family goes back to Robert the Bruce, and eventually settled on land in New England awarded to her ancestors for serving in the War for Independence.

My father, brother, daughters and sons have or still work in public safety.

Its a family affair, (with a nod to Mr. Stewart).

[Yung]

The first piece of tactical equipment I ever owned was a surplus web belt, canteen pouch, and metal canteen with cup.

My father was in the Taiwanese MPs. Before we threw away his uniforms not long after his death, I noted that most of his equipment appeared to be olive-drab hand-me-downs from the US. I still have his field jacket somewhere, which is still in good condition for everyday wear.

My grandfather fled from China to Taiwan during a time when it was physically unsafe to be identified as a member of the Kuomintang.

Only one of my blood relatives served in the US military to the best of my knowledge. Of my entire extended family, only her, myself and an uncle married to my youngest aunt were in the Army. Everyone else has been in the Air Force, I speculate mainly due to the influence of that uncle as he served in the Air Force for the majority of his career and was only in the Army briefly during the Vietnam war.

As heavy as the costs of the current campaigns have been, I believe we will not be able to thrive as a nation unless we have enough people in it who understand violence, and I believe that understanding impossible to maintain without also understanding fighting in war.

[Joe in PNG]

Two generations for me. My dad's father was an "old man" of 32 when he was recalled to active duty, and wound up in Papua New Guinea. After the war, he never wanted to step foot on a beach again.

His brother, my great uncle, was classified 4F- but insisted he could lick anyone there who was a sergeant or lower, and so wound up in the Army Air Corps as a gunnery trainer.

On mom's side, Grandpop worked his way up the ranks and was commissioned into the Army Air Corps, and later retired a major in the USAF in the 60's. I don't have his service details, sadly.

[theJanitor]

My Grandmother, who's 99 this year, got a job, with the help of an Army General in Honolulu. Her brother, two years younger, was an assistant, to that General. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, I believe he was on base. They were nisei, Japanese born in America to Japanese immigrants. Of course the times were terrifying to them, but my Great Uncle joined the 442, and earned a Silver Star for his actions in France. They never talked about the war, and things like discrimination, or injustices to Japanese-Americans. They just got on with life, working hard, and trying to raise good families.

I think there were lots of great lessons for us. Put your head down, and work hard. Do what's right, even if it's frightening. Do what's right, even if it doesn't benefit you. Fight hard for America, even if lots of Americans hate you. And fight for for those who can't fight for themselves. Believe in America. Be brave.

https://i.imgur.com/XBpoovC.jpg?1

[Jeep]

My father commanded a landing craft at Okinawa and Ie Shima. He was going to be part of Operation Olympic if the war continued, and after visiting those landing beaches post war he thought it was unlikely he would have lived. He thought that he, and all his friends on Okinawa, owed their lives to President Truman's decision to use the bomb. He also had no doubt that Truman had saved millions of Japanese lives as well. My dad lived for another 72 years.

My father later wrote a short piece about the kids his age in his neighborhood and his fraternity brothers in college. A huge percentage of them died in the war. The list is amazing--and sobering. Boy after boy on his block; house after house. Almost all houses had stars in the windows showing a son overseas, and by the end of the war the gold stars overwhelmed the blue ones.

My father's father and uncles had served in the 30th Infantry Division in WWI (the division broke the Hindenburg Line while under British command, losing half their men doing so). Their grandfathers had fought for the Union in the Civil War; and those men's great and great-great grandfathers had fought in the Revolution and in the Colonial wars before then.

I served in the Army, my younger brother served in the Navy, and every family member going back to the Revolution of whom we are aware served as a volunteer (well, except for one great, great uncle, whose mother refused to let him to join the Union forces with my great great grandfather and other brothers because he was only 15 and because surely the Confederates wouldn't draft a 15 year old when they came through. They did, and he was the family's very, very unwilling Confederate).

[TC215]

My grandfather flew in the Air Corps in WW2. He met my grandmother when he was sent from Alabama to my hometown to attend local college classes as part of officer training. So I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him and his service.

He flew P-40’s for a little while, but got moved to B-17’s when there was a need for bomber pilots. His first flight in a multi-engine airplane (as co-pilot) was ferrying a B-17 across the Atlantic to Europe.

When the war ended, he ferried troops in stripped down B-17’s as part of “Homebound Airlines”.

He continued to fly for fun after the war, and ended up building two airplanes. My dad, a private pilot, grew up going to the airport with my granddad, just like I did with my dad.

http://i.imgur.com/vmjbKaA.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/K8i2uf4.jpg


The P-40’s my granddad flew had parrot heads painted on them. I think they called the parrot “Scruffy”.

https://warhawkairmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Parrot-Head-5.jpg

My 3-year old daughter already loves to fly. 4th generation aviator.

http://i.imgur.com/D9ukizm.jpg

[NH Shooter]

In WWII, my father was a staff sergeant in the Army Air Force stationed in India (China-Burma-India (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hump)). He didn't speak much of it during his life, but toward the end described his life-long emotional pain of assigning air crews, some of whom never made it back. My father suffered a knee injury during a runway crash of a transport plane that didn't made it off the ground, from which he never fully recovered.

His best friend was a naval aviator in the Pacific stationed on the U.S.S. Essex (CV-9) as a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver tail gunner. My "Uncle Jim" would become my Godfather and life-long friends of our family.

My maternal grandparents and my aunt (at a very young age) immigrated from Germany in the late 1920s through Ellis Island. My mother and her younger sister and brother were born in the U.S. My uncle suffered regular beatings from other youth during the war, labelling him as a Nazi (which of course neither he or my grandparents were). As a youth I'd see my grandparents regularly, listening them transition from German to English and then back to German in a single sentence. They would argue with each other in German, so we had no idea what they were saying. My aunt who was born in Germany outlived all of her siblings and we remained close to her right up to her passing.

More recently, I discovered that our son in-law's paternal grandparents both survived Nazi concentration camps, his grandmother still alive today living in NYC.

Needless to say, WWII has had a lasting impact on my family's lives too.

[Trooper224]

My father enlisted in the USMC in 1943, at sixteen years of age. The country was still up against it in those days and too many questions weren't asked. He served throughout the Pacific campaign and into Korea, then two tours in Vietnam. Everyone in the family who could enlisted, both men and women.

How did it influence me? Some of my earliest memories are of men in uniform, so I suppose it's no surprise that I spent my life wearing one or another. My father came out of the war a violent alcoholic, who married and divorced at least nine times and a classic example of PTSD. You could say, the war saved my country and vicariously destroyed my family.

[RevolverRob]

Two, but just barely.

My grandfather turned 18 in early 1944. By the time he got through basic training, U.S. Army, in Field Artillery it was post D-Day but he went to Europe and was there during VE day, he basically saw no action. He spent just about 8-months in Europe during the war and rotated home to prepare to go to the Pacific Theater when VJ Day happened. My dad as a little over six months old at that point, having been born in Jan of ‘45.

He was recalled to service during Korea. Where he definitely saw action fighting with the 1st Cavalry Brigade during the Chinese Spring Offensive in 1951. Fortunately, for him, during ‘51 when deployed, his third child was born. So he was discharged based on familial needs.

At the end of the day, my family largely avoided the horrors of WW2. Though they didn’t avoid Korea, Vietnam, or the GWOT.

[Rex G]

My grandparents were a bit old for WW2. My maternal grandfather could have volunteered, but he was an important employee at a strategically vital facility, the Humble Oil refinery in Baytown, Texas. My father was drafted late enough to miss the Korean War.

My father-in-law, however, was in the thick of WW2, though he was in the AK, the Polish underground, who resisted the Nazi occupation. To make a long story short, he used his genius-level intelligence and musical ability to make himself useful and popular with the Germans, while he forged work permits, which enabled the underground folks to travel. He entertained the Germans with his violin, and raised silkworms for German parachutes, a useful slave. He also played some part in keeping at least some few Jews hidden.

After the war, he had to escape to the West, as the communists knew that anyone who resisted the Germans, and was not a communist, would probably resist communism.

A modest, man, he spoke little of what he did. He would admit, if asked, to having been in the army. With his thick accent, a frequent follow-up question would be “which army?” He would reply, “the Salvation Army,” and grin.

[Stephanie B]

One generation.

Dad initially was Army infantry.

40118

Somebody put in his service record that he was qualified on tank destroyers. He hadn't seen one. They transferred him to a TD unit. He told his sergeant in his infantry outfit that he didn't know anything about TDs. The sergeant said not to worry about it, they'd teach him. His old unit went to Europe and saw a lot of fighting. Dad's TD unit was slated to go to the Pacific. Along the way, he got a demining course in Japanese land mines. His unit never made it into combat. His unit was training for the invasion of Japan.

His brother in law was in a national guard unit as a motorcycle messenger. From across the basement, he could hit a thumb-tack with a pellet pistol. He never said what he did.

My mom had two brothers of age. One enlisted in the Marines in '37. He was on North Atlantic convoy duty for a spell. Then he asked for shore duty. The Marines, in their twisted sense of humor, sent him to the Pacific, where he participated in Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The Corps offered him a battlefield commission. Knowing that they took all of them back after WW1, he turned it down. (He accepted one in Korea.) The other brother was a physical wreck. He originally was 4F, but was reclassified and drafted in 1944. Grandma told my mom that if the Army was so desperate as to take him, it was time to start learning German (they quickly discharged him). Mom wanted to go into the Marines, but they wouldn't take women under 21 without parental (or spousal) permission. The end of the war was in sight when she turned 21, so she didn't go.

Neighbor on one side was a B-24 navigator. Neighbor on the other side was a WASP. Lady down the street was a teenager in Denmark who had health problems from the wartime famine.

The first adult job that I had (cleaning machines in a plastics plant), the foreman was a tanker in the ETO.

My instructor when I earned by private pilot's certificate was a B-17 pilot.

[revchuck38]

My father was 4F due to epilepsy but was still in the Home Guard. My uncles both served during WW2, one in the Navy and the other in the USAAF. I was born in '51, and just about all my friends' fathers had served. My middle brother went to Ohio State, graduated in '69 and was commissioned via ROTC and branched Quartermaster and sent to Germany; the entire rest of his class was branched Infantry and sent to Vietnam. I enlisted in the Army in '74 to get the GI Bill to finish college, found it agreed with me and stayed in one component or another until I retired in '11. My son enlisted in August 2001 - talk about timing! - and was assigned to 4ID in Ft. Hood as a Cavalry Scout and deployed from there to Iraq. I beat him to it, met him in Camp Udari where we were both staged to go forward, he had to wait for the rest of 4ID to assemble while I was in the first wave of folks who went in after we had defeated the Iraqi Army. Hopefully, one of my grandsons will maintain the tradition.

[Joe in PNG]

Some personal WWII experience. The mission base I worked at in Madang is situated on an old WWII Japanese outpost guarding the old Japanese airfield.

When we first started, we had to fill in a couple of trenches and one bomb crater. Later, we would frequently find various odds and ends- old stripper clips, Japanese beer bottles, a very rusted out Arasaka rifle, fired slugs from a .50, and so on.

Go offshore a mile or so, there was a B-25 in about 60 feet of water- one of the better known diving sites.

We also had an old PNGian gent who was a labor conscript during the war, and not a fan of the Japanese at all.

[gringop]

My Father, joined the USMC when WWII broke out, made it to Staff Sargent, and participated in the Saipan and Okinawa landings, if my memory is correct.

Came home, married my mom, started cranking out kids, did his reserve work in San Diego during Korea, continued cranking out kids until I came along as number 6. Was ordained a Lutheran minister.

I can confirm that he put me on my ass on the kitchen floor, in a kindly but Lutheran USMC way, when I was attempting to demonstrate some kind of uber cool karate move that I had learned. He continued to do it in 5 or 6 repetitions until I understood that what I had thought was some cool ninja trick was just stupid kid stuff against basic USMC hand to hand training.

At that point I started understanding that my dad, who, until that time I had known only for delivering skillfully expressed weddings, funerals and Sunday sermons, was someone who had witnessed and participated in wholesale death and destruction in a war that I had no real concept of.

Only once did I hear he and another church member discuss the smell of Japanese soldiers who had been burnt with flame throwers and how that smell was something that could not be forgotten. They just didn't talk about that stuff in their community in those days.

His youngest daughter's oldest daughter, joined the USMC, was posted to Okinawa, married a Marine, and their first son is named after my father.

Not sure if he will become a preacher or a Marine or both...

Gringop

[Jeep]

My Father, joined the USMC when WWII broke out, made it to Staff Sargent, and participated in the Saipan and Okinawa landings, if my memory is correct.


I mentioned previously that my father commanded a landing craft at Okinawa. One thing I should have repeated was what he said about the Marines--many of whom he took ashore and many of whom he later took to the fleet of hospital ships offshore (we took 45,000 casualties at Okinawa--the hospital ships filled up almost daily and went to Guam and then came back for the next load).

Anyway, my father said that not only were those Marines the finest troops he ever saw in his life, but he could not imagine that there ever had been any troops better than they were. To the end of his days he was angry at the high command for wasting them on frontal attacks on Shuri castle and other ridge lines south of there when we had already taken 80% of the island and all the air fields we needed. His view was that it would have been easy to build our own line on high ground north of Shuri, and used the Japanese positions to the south for artillery and bombing practice since there was no real need to do anything more. If the Japanese had then tried attacking us it would have been shooting fish in the barrel.

But my real point is not the suspect tactics of the generals, but the sheer quality of the USMC in WWII--not only on Okinawa but on Iwo and Saipan and Peleliu and Tarawa and Guadalcanal and a dozen other places from hell. I am a proud Army vet, but in the history of war, very few units have done what the Marines did in the Pacific war (or what they did in France in 1918 or in Korea in 1950, for that matter). I hope we never lose our memory of their sacrifices, or the sacrifices of all of our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, though I think those memories are fading fast.

[ranger]

My dad is now 95 and a WW2 Army vet in Europe. He was wounded in action and therefore earned a Purple Heart. He never spoke of the war - came home, went to college on GI Bill, married, had me, worked for 30+ years at same job as a Chemist for a research facility for Pulp and Paper, and served as a deacon of our church.

He neither encouraged or discouraged my Army career but I could tell he was proud of my accomplishments. He spoke more about WW2 than I ever had heard before the night I came home from my Iraq deployment.

Mom passed at 92 and we recently brought dad to the best assisted living facility we could find close to us - he now has some memory issues. In cleaning out the family home; I found his military awards including the Purple Heart and a small old box with the bullet they removed from his leg plus his WW2 era class A's with 4ID shoulder patch. He still gets some VA Disability for his wound plus complications from frostbite.

Truly - the Greatest Generation.

[DocGKR]

Paternal Grandfather was a US Army Officer in the ETO--North Africa, Italy, France, Germany. Paternal Great Uncle island-hopped across the Pacific with the Army and then fought again in Korea; interestingly his father had been in the Pacific for the Spanish American War and the PI Insurrection. Maternal Grandfather was not allowed to enlist (despite trying several times), due to working in a critical CONUS infrastructure job, although his father was in France with the US Army in WWI. Based on these family Army experiences, my father went to the Naval Academy...

[AKDoug]

Two generations for me.

My paternal grandfather served in the Canadian Navy in the Aleutians for almost a year when the Japanese invaded those islands. He always said he was glad he was on a boat because the conditions on land were brutal. My father was conceived when Grandpa was on leave after the Aleutian campaign was winding down. Grandma met him in Vancouver for a week. I don't know where he served after that, or if that was the point where he got out. I do know that he began work as a painting contractor on Cheyenne Mountain in CO in the 50's and moved the whole family to California shortly after that. His painting business in SoCal was successful enough to retire and play golf for his last few years in the early 2000's. My dad and my two uncles were all born in Canada.

My maternal grandfather was in Alaska commercial fishing from Washington when he was notified of his draft shortly after his 18th birthday. He was good with numbers and had a background in bookkeeping even at his young age. He ended up working as a paymaster clerk in Europe. He didn't like to talk about WWII at all and I honestly think he didn't like the fact he was a non-combat participant. I do know he worked close to the front lines after D-Day. His biggest haunting of WWII was that he got drunk in NYC after victory in Europe. He missed his flight with his unit back to the west coast. That plane crashed and killed everyone on board. He took a train across the U.S. to get home, and didn't fly again until the 1980's after my uncle got him drunk enough to get aboard a commercial flight. Grandpa spent a lifetime in civil service after that in various jobs, mostly in maintenance and facility inspection of NW Washington Naval and Coast Guard facilities.

My father's generation saw his brother and him serve in the Vietnam years. My uncle was an artillery instructor officer who never deployed to Vietnam. My father served in the U.S. Coast Guard while still a Canadian citizen. A fact that was discovered when he tried to re-enlist. My grandmother had apparently taken care of my two uncles' citizenships as children, but somehow my father's wasn't completed correctly. In the middle of dealing with this my dad was in a huge bus accident that killed a bunch of people. He suffered a broken femur and was bounced out of the Coast Guard. My other two uncles from both sides of the family did not serve in the military. One was too young for Vietnam, the other had severe allergies and asthma.