The Continuing Ripples of World War II...

[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.






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



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

[NH Shooter]

In WWII, my father was a staff sergeant in the Army Air Force stationed in India (China-Burma-India). 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.



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.