Both of my parents served in WWII. My mother graduated from nursing school in early 1943 and immediately joined the US Army nurse corp. She told me her father, my grand dad, was furious. He was a doughboy in WWI and wanted nothing to do with his daughter going to war.

Mom was commissioned a 2nd Lt. and shipped off to England. She didn't talk much about her experiences but would answer my questions. She served through 1946 I believe. I remember her telling me she took care of the wounded from D-day onward. The wounded were stabilized and shipped to her hospital/unit for care. Most were seriously wounded and sent home, if they made it.

After the war, she was on a hospital ship taking our wounded home and taking German wounded back to Europe. She said most of the German soldiers were decent and appreciative of the care they received. On one trip, she had a German Sgt. as an interpreter who talked a lot about his experiences Apparently, he was a nice guy who just wanted to go home. She told me he had no use for the SS and made sure he was with her when she treated any of them. Mom said the SS were nasty.

My father was in the US Navy and was a flight mechanic in a unit stationed in England. Their unit flew B-24's on sub-patrol. The were loaded with depth charges. He said their flights were long and boring. His plane never spotted a U-Boat. One of the planes in his unit did get credit for sinking one. Like most of the WWII vets, he had little to say and never really brought his service up. He did mention getting into a fight one night with some British sailors. As I recall, he did not seem to care much for the Brits.

My FIL's first landing(6th Marines) was in the Marianas as they retook Guam. That went pretty well for him and his squad surprised some Japanese. He brought back one of the Rising Sun flags with the family well wishes painted on it. He also had an officer's ID card and family photos and his Nambu. This was the battle that gave him his lifelong nightmares.

His second landing in that group was Guam proper. They were aboard an AmTrac on the way in. As they peered over the side to see their target, the bushes started to move.
Pretty soon some Japs appeared towing out a small anti-tank gun and aimed it right at them. Moments later the AmTrac was hit and every swinging dick was wounded and the vehicle swamped.

There wasn't any small arms fire and they all helped each other make the beach and waited on a corpsman. He was finally evacuated to New Orleans with shrapnel to his legs and abdomen. Pretty lucky as his unit made it to Iwo Jima before he was healed.

The doc saved him some shrapnel and we still have a piece of bent steel in a clear plastic ring box.

Not much of a "story," but a fellow field artillery officer friend in the VA National Guard invited me to his family's home in Winchester, VA for a fancy party in Spring 1993. That's where I met his great uncle, briefly, who flew ME-262s for Germany in WWII. He did say it was a miracle he lived because late in the war, when he became a pilot, there were 10-15 American planes for every German fighter.

My Great Uncle serverd in the PTO with the 6th Ranger Batallion. I only remember a couple of details that he shared over the years. Apparently he developed a nose for the Japanese and could smell them when they were nearby. I know that he was in charge of the mule teams around the islands. I also know he served in New Guinea, possibly the Phillipines, and was part of the occupation force after VJ Day.
The only real war story I recall is a visit he and a buddy paid to some local "ladies". When they finished their business they promptly set fire to the thatched roof of their hut. Not sure why, but he laughed his ass off sharing that story.

Father-in-Law was in Europe (never heard him say where). His platoon were in front and moving towards a town under orders. They topped a ridge and immediately on the other side moving at a rapid pace was an immense (to him anyway) German force - coming straight at him.

He said everyone (including himself) turned around and began to run as fast as humanly possible. Some of the guys were dropping all their gear, including guns, in an effort to run faster than the rest. They made it to rejoin a larger component and I don't know what the end result was.

His only other story (he NEVER talked about the war) was puking his guts out for the entire trip overseas on a transport ship.

Another story from my wife's Uncle Dick who led an armored reconnaissance unit in Europe. His unit was at the tip of the spear and was understrength because they couldn't get enough replacements. They encountered a number of French citizens who were angry and wanted to fight the Germans so Uncle Dick incorporated them into his command. On the hood of his lead vehicle he placed a rifleman who's job was to first spot and then fire on Germans before they could take his unit under fire. The qualification for this position was to be both an excellent and quick shot. His best person for this task was a French woman who had a grudge against the Germans and was "very effective". Unfortunately, senior officers in the rear got wind of Uncle Dick's arrangements and made him get rid of the civilians.

Uncle Dick was in a rear area at one point when he spotted a slovenly soldier sitting outside; the guy was unshaven, his tie was askew and his uniform was rumpled. Uncle Dick was on his way over to admonish the soldier when he noticed a Congressional Medal of Honor ribbon on the man's uniform. He promptly changed direction and left the man alone.

In another life, I worked in the North Sea oil fields where I knew a number of people with interesting life experiences. One of them had been on a Dutch gunboat stationed in the Zuiderzee at the start of WW2 when the Germans invaded the Netherlands. There is a causeway across the mouth of the Zuiderzee that the Germans tried to use as an invasion route. Dirk was smiling when he said,"yes, we shot their armor and artillery units off the causeway one by one and that was it for them." Then quieter, "And then the stukas came and that was it for us."

My mom had four brothers in the South Pacific in WWI. Here is what I recall from three of them and from a guy named old Glenn.

Uncle Fred was a cabin steward (not sure of the right title) for Admiral Halsey. Uncle Fred died when I was young but I remember him telling my dad that "Halsey was pain in the ass and always stealing his cigarettes".

Uncle George was a Coxwain on the USS Atlanta during the first naval battle of Guadalcanal. They were sunk by enemy torpedos and friendly fire from USS San Francisco. Most of the crew were able to be off loaded to Guadalcanal before she went down. George said that when he landed the Marines said "Welcome to the Marines sailor, they gave him a bucket of grenades and a rifle and sent him to the front line." My grandmother had no news of George after the sinking for two months. She found out he was OK by seeing a news reel of George staggering drunk leading a parade of other drunken sailors down a street in Australia. Till his dying day George had a profound hatred for any Asian.

Uncle Red was a dive bomber pilot on the USS Enterprise. I traced back his record all the way to and on October 24, 1944 he flew with his squadron and dive bombed the IJN Musashi, the sister ship of IJN Yamato and flag ship of Admiral Kurita's center force. They put the Musashi on the bottom of the ocean. My uncle bombed the damn Musashi, unreal.

Old Glenn was a guy who lived in solitude in a shack at the end of the road. My former wife and I made it a point to look after him when we could although he did pretty well on his own. Glenn was an Army foot soldier and fought his way across Europe. He never talked much about the war except for saying he absolutely hated German land mines and that they killed all his friends. He used to also brag about stealing watches off dead Germans and ended up in trouble for it. We though nothing of it until after Glenn died and we were cleaning out his shack and my wife found a shoe box stuffed full of old wrist watches. She screamed at the top of her lungs running up the road and never came back.

My Father was a Medic in the Fifth Army during WWII. I discovered that he enlisted in March 1942 and went to basic at Fort Sheridan Army Base (Illinois). He was then under Gen. Mark Clark. They landed at Salerno via the USS Ancon (AGC-4) on Sept. 9 1943.

That's all I know. He would never speak about it.

When I was a kid, I used to deliver papers after school. Over time I learned that a lot of houses on my route had WWII vets. Back then we had to collect money every week from the customers, and a lot of the older folks liked to talk my ear off, I guess they didn't have a lot of people to talk to every day.

One guy in particular sticks in my memory. He was a Seabee on Saipan, and one night the airfield they were building got overran by a really big Japanese banzai attack. He used a knife to kill one enemy soldier who came in his tent. Then he showed me the knife that he had kept. That was a rather intense story to say the least.

There have been a couple threads that involved PT Boats in the Forum, and I have mentioned before that my Uncle John manned one of the twin-50s on either side of the con on a boat in the Mediterranean. His squadron was based at several different locations in the Med as the War progressed. If I recall correctly, first Algeria; Bizerte, Tripoli; Madallena, Sardinia; Palermo, Sicily; and Bastia, Corsica.

He told the story of a patrol on a dark, dark night. Their boat was just idling along the Corsican coast with all lights out. Suddenly, they struck something. They flipped on the boat’s searchlight at the same time that the German I-Boat flipped on theirs. The Germans were doing the same thing from the other direction, idling along with all lights out. The boats each lit up the other. Apparently, both skippers ordered reverse engines as they accelerated away from each other. As soon as everyone caught their breath, they began hunting for the I-boat. They never saw it again.

He complained on numerous occasions about the torpedoes the carried, which I believe to be the infamous Mk14. He said they would deep dive under an enemy ship and not detonate. He said they often circled back on them. Probably not a huge threat to a plywood boat with shallow draft, but still horribly frustrating to risk your life for a good shot at a German ship, only to see the torpedo turn and circle back.

This aunt and uncle were childless, so us nieces and nephews were important to them. I was especially close to my uncle and have quite a few things that were given to me, including his war diary.

I just remembered a couple of other stories.

One of my English teachers in junior high was a Ranger during WW2. He didn’t say much about the war except during class one day he said he was in the first wave to hit the beach on D-Day. His last name was Hess which I thought was ironic then and even today.

The second, was a funny story my junior principal told us one day in class. He was training to be a Navy dive bomber pilot shortly after Pearl Harbor. The first time he went up in a dive bomber, to see what a dive was like, he started to get sick. The pilot ordered him to take his leather helmet off and puke in that so as not to get his plane dirty. That worked, until the plane pulled up from the dive, and then the contents went all over my principal and the plane. We all had a good laugh about that.

Not a battle story, but WW2 related.
During the war my father was in charge of all the food service at the Small Arms Munitions Plant in St. Louis, Mo. He was totally responsible for supervising the preparation of 32 - 35 K meals every 24 hrs there. The Small Arms Plant worked three shifts seven days a wk producing many calibers of munitions needed for the war. I have seen pictures there of kitchen people standing on ladders stirring large pots with canoe paddles.

My maternal grandfather, Paul, was an U.S. Army radiologist during WWIi with the rank of Lt. Colonel. He was relegated to stateside duty owing to the fact he lost a leg above the knee in a train hopping accident when he was 11 (he hopped trains to get to work).

Assigned to some Naval hospital in San Francisco in late 1942, one sunny day he was sitting in the courtyard talking with the wife of another officer, while she breastfed her newborn.

As they sit there amicably chatting, a grizzled Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant comes up. The Gunny, clearly an old China hand, had enough service stripes to make a tiger envious. He was Atabrine yellow and on limited duty because of wounds suffered on Guadalcanal. He is tasked with delivering some inconsequential message to my grandfather.

He comes up to Lt. Colonel Paul, sees this woman breastfeeding a child, and suddenly and mysteriously becomes a completely tongue-tied, stammering wreck.
Paul looks up at him, removes the pipe from his mouth, and says “Gunny, that is what breasts are for. They are not just stuffing for sweaters.”

The Gunny, as the Manual says to do when you don’t know what else to do, comes smartly to attention, salutes, turns about face, and marches off,
without delivering the message.

Mine aren't very detailed, sadly. Though I knew them all and did speak with them all about these stories, I was so much younger and didn't pay as close attention as I should've. Regardless, here's what I've got:

* An uncle of mine was a grunt who survived Bastogne. He also once had to hide in a French basement for a few days while surrounded and separated from his unit. A kind French family risked their own lives and hid and fed him. He lived to see a few of his own grandchildren. We spoke exactly once after my Desert Storm service had ended and I'd been discharged (from my absurdly safe experience), before he died. It was clear he enjoyed hearing my funny stories and reminiscing a little bimself. Was lovely man.

* Another uncle, though not on the planes, had some role in Doolittle's Raid. I'll have to ask my dad what else he remembers, as I've forgotten the details. No hero story or anything, but some role that mattered. I was maybe 12 when I heard him speak of it, so it's all fuzzy. I'll see what I can dig up.

* a third uncle was on a ship (deck I think) that was struck by a Kamikaze plane, and spent a year in a hospital on Guam (I think), blind, convalescing, but eventually his sight came back and he went on to live a normal life, saw a few his grandchildren, retired from a job, but remained a sort of nervous chain smoker his whole life. Died of a heart attack one day, but he survived that damn plane crash and explosion. He was great, too. All lovely men, two brothers and one from the other side of the fam.

* the grandfather of an old friend was also a grunt who survived Bastogne. He didn't have much feeling in his feet anymore, from the cold, just useful enough to keep, but barely. He was clearly, visibly, more affected than my uncles were, persistent injuries and all, but he lived a long life, saw two great grandchildren, spent half the year in Mexkco in an RV for years with his wife. Lovely people.

My father was a corpsman (then called pharmacists mates) on subs in the Pacfic. They were on the surface when a Japanese plane strafed them and wounded a sailor on deck. My father was on the conning tower and, under fire, ran down, retrieved the wounded man, and got him below as they were submerging. He received the Silver Star for his actions. Later they sank the new carrier Unryu. If you’re interested, you can google it and see a periscope picture taken by the XO of the carrier sinking. Unfortunately, while the XO was busy playing photog, he missed the two destroyers bearing down on them. The captain was most unhappy. Stuck on the bottom for over 24 hours with jammed bow planes and a cracked pressure hull, they survived a very long depth charge attack and made it back to Pearl.

After the war, he left the Navy and joined the Army. Was at the Chosen Resevoir and said he’d never been colder before or since. Now a medic, he treated lots of frostbite including his own.

He retired from the Army and became a history teacher. We lost him last September six weeks shy of 100. We miss him. He told many great stories. They were entertaining but there wasn’t a spark of truth in any of them. He rarely talked about actual events especially the “frozen Chosin”.

quote:

Originally posted by Tn226:
My father was a corpsman (then called pharmacists mates) on subs in the Pacific. ....

A neighbor was a pharmacist mate on the USS Northhampton (I was an Army medic 25 years later, we had some things in common). I asked him what he remembered most from his service. "Swimming". I then asked why, as a medic, do you remember swimming? "Well, the Japs came down, attacked, blew us out of the water. One minute I was onboard ship, the next minute I was in the ocean swimming".

I had an uncle who was with the 4th Marines on Iwo Jima. Wounded on the 6th day exchanging grenades with the Japanese at night. I have his purple heart and ribbons in a shadow box.

Had a different uncle in the Army AAA Battery met up with his brother (in the Marines) on an island I can't remember the name of.

I'm a funeral director and made arrangements for the wife of a retired veteran to be buried in Arlington Cemetery. He had climbed the cliffs of Pointe-du-Hoc. Buried him a few years later.

I have two stories though not from my family. I'll do separate posts because one is long.

The father of the neighbor family that "adopted" me when I was a kid (they had 5 girls and 4 boys, so I evened things out for football and other games) was a destroyerman in the South Pacific. He didn't talk a lot, but he did tell me this story.

His ship was tasked with knocking down a Japanese radio tower on one of the islands. So, they cruised in just outside of Japanese gun range and started lobbing shells at the tower. He said they had shells landing all around it, but "that darn tower would NOT fall". Eventually the Captain got fed up with wasting his ammunition and had a bright idea. He sent a message to the battleship that was cruising a good long ways offshore. Mr. Kelly said they heard exactly one round go whooshing overhead and then the tower ceased to exist. The spotters were able to eventually spot the crater and apparently the round wasn't that close, but it was sure close enough.

He eventually went to Europe as part of the occupation where he met a beautiful young German girl who, after surviving the war, became an interpreter for the Allies. Mr. Kelly looked remarkable like a young Frank Sinatra, and the rest as they say was history.

The second story is that of a man I knew at the church I grew up in. I knew he had been a fighter pilot and thought he flew in Vietnam, but wasn't sure of the details. After he passed, I read an article published about him in the 50's regarding how he earned the Purple Heart.

He was in the 9th Air Force in Europe flying P-38s. On a mission to Cologne, he was hit by AAA which injured his leg and blew out his radio. As he and his wingman were headed back, he noticed his wingman drifting further and further away, but had no way to talk to him. This was as the sun was setting, and as it got darker he noticed a flickering light coming from the outboard of his engine. He was on fire. His wingman had noticed this, and as burning P-38s had a tendency to explode the wingman was clearing away.

Rufus realized he had to get out, but the P-38 was tricky to get out of since you ran the risk of getting hit by the tail. The two preferred options were to stall it and drop out or roll inverted. Not wanting to hang out in a burning plane, he just got out as well as his injured leg would allow, and WHACK. He said he came to under his parachute just in time to see his plane explode in the distance in the twilight.

He then lands in a field not too far from a retreating German army column. After seeing each other, the Germans decided they didn't have time for him, so Rufus hobbled into the brush and the Germans kept going. The next day, he flagged down a boy from a local village who took Rufus to a field hospital area. They patched up his leg and stabilized his back, but when the front moved, he was given a choice. Stay with them, or get sent in a jeep to Paris and drop you off. He chose Paris. They dropped him off on a supply run with some "liberated" wine and directions to find Americans. In one of those wartime coincidences, one of the first people he ran across was a squadron buddy who thought Rufus was dead since the wingman didn't see him bail out.

After he recovered, he came back and finished the war in P-47s. He got recalled to fight in Korea and flew F-51s there. For his third war, he flew 100 missions in F-105s over N Vietnam. His only injury was in that P-38, even though an air to air missile flew just far enough up his F-105's tailpipe to make it look like Elmer Fudd's gun after Bugs stuck his finger in it. He landed that plane and kept on flying to the end of his tour.

Nicest, most unassuming man I ever met, and always was curious and supportive as I worked along my career. I was stunned when I learned he was a three war veteran.