The Continuing Ripples of World War II...

[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.