My oldest brother was in the 69th division and seen some of the concentration camps, and for a while they guarded some SS troops that he said were real A**holes. One day they loaded them up one a train and the whole bunch were shipped off to the Russians. He was in Germany for a year and a half and said enjoyed it because most of the German men were in prison camps and he had two German girlfriends.

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:. . . I think dad was quiet about his time in service because he didn’t go overseas, while my uncles did. Dad wouldn’t fly after the War. Not long before he died he told me why. During pilot training he was told to disable various systems in the aircraft: hydraulics, electrical, mechanical connections, etc. He told me that he made 19 “crash landings” during the War. You’d have liked my dad.

He served his country honorably. And from what you described, the US Army was better able to perform their duties because of his service.

Not much of a story but interesting. While working with a mason at a job the neighbor came out to take a look. While talking i asked him why he was wearing binoculars. He said he was watching us because he couldnt see so well. He said he got them in WW2. I asked him what he did during the war. He stated he was a mortar man and landed on D-day. Heres the interesting part. He carried chemical weapons with him. Why i asked he said if the Germans used them then they were prepared to do the same.

I was assigned to Engine Co 78, as a candidate firefighter with the Chicago Fire Dept in 1978. After some months on the job the Captain of the Company wanted me to learn how to drive the 1974 Mack fire engine. The man who was the Engineer of the rig at the time was given the task of teaching me how to drive the fire engine. It was difficult task for me because of my long legs and how my knees kept hitting the steering wheel on the Mack cab over. We were sitting at a stop light when I asked the Engineer, "Sam, when did you learn how to drive a truck?"

His answer to me was during the Battle of Bulge, he told me he didn't know how to drive a truck at the time. The officer who ordered him to drive told him "Don't worry, you will learn fast enough, just follow the guy in front of you."

God Bless men like him and so many others who fought for our freedoms.

As kids, we kept our small sailboat in the keys at house that had dock space. The older gentleman and his wife became good friends. He would tell us about being a cowboy before the ware, showed us his .22 revolver he carried, etc. Took us fishing, showed us how to catch yellowtail off the Elbow.

As kids, we asked him to tell us about his service in WWII. He would only say where he served - Guadalcanal and “the islands” and would get quiet. As kids we didn’t notice. A few years later, his wife calls us I pick up and she is crying - he hung himself. Turns out he struggled with what we call PTSD even all these years later. We were privileged to know him, I have his .45 from his Guadalcanal and island service in my safe. For some, the war catches up.

We also met another nice couple next to the trailer my parents purchased. He was captain on a big yacht out of Ocean Reef (Scotchie - 3Ms Yacht). It had a 23 mako as a tender and he would take us fishing, diving and show us spots. He was a tough, no nonsense guy that probably scared folks but the two of them were the nicest people, just old Florida Crackers as he called himself. He served on destroyers in WWII and had two shot out from under him - Iron Bottom Sound off Guadacanal and I believe the other was in the Aleutians. We used to kid him about his bad luck - he’d joke he spent more time swimming than standing when in the Navy. He wouldn’t mind talking a bit, but when pressed he was still po’ed at the Japanese, downplayed it as a few years riding boats. He died years later from lung cancer.

Both these men were like a pair of grandparents to my brother and I. They both went to war, both underplayed what they did and came back and built a heck of a life. We learned so much from them both and miss them to this day.

My dad's much older cousin was in the US Coast Guard on a Navy ship in the Pacific. In 1942 the ship was torpedoed as he and other sailors were climbing a ladder to get out of the bowels of the ship. When the torpedo exploded, the man above him was blown through the steel ladder, and dad's cousin was seriously wounded. Dad's cousin had to climb through the gore to get out. He spent several years in a mental hospital after the event. Years later, he became a Pennsylvania state senator. Last time I saw him when I was a kid he was old, shaky, but had the most righteous model train set I ever saw.

quote:

Originally posted by Captain Morgan:
He stated he was a mortar man and landed on D-day. Heres the interesting part. He carried chemical weapons with him. Why i asked he said if the Germans used them then they were prepared to do the same.

Yep. Chemical Mortar battalions, which were independent units attached to divisions as needed. They were armed with larger 4.2 inch rifled mortars, and while they had access to chemical rounds to be used if the Germans initiated chemical warfare, they were used to fire HE and smoke rounds exclusively during the war.

They were considered to be very effective, since with their rifled barrels they were more accurate than traditional mortars, plus their HE shells packed 8 pounds of TNT, giving them greater explosive effect than a 105mm artillery shell while being easier to transport, set up, and conceal than a 105mm artillery piece. (Albeit with a vastly shorter range than a 105mm artillery piece.)

The 81st and 87th Chemical Mortar Battalions both landed in Normandy on D-day, with the 81st at Omaha with its companies split between the 1st and 29th Divisions, and 87th at Utah attached to the 4th Division.

My father was taken off his fathers farm in Poland and worked in a forced labor camp in east Germany for 4 years. Never said much except he was lucky to very occasionally get some milk and remembers seeing bombers flying over head near the end of the war. Never went back to Poland until the mid 70s. Basically said he busted his a@@ from 5am to 1900 everyday and the beatings were severe... In the 80s he went back to the town and met the son and daughter of the guy who ran the place.They welcomed my parents and treated them like they were long lost friends. They still keep in touch...

My dad was in the Army Air Corps, B-17 navigator. Volunteered right after Pearl Harbor.

First gig after training was in Alaska, at a base where the Russians were given a bunch of B-17s.

Then he got based in the UK, and flew in bomb groups, occasionally with Jimmy Stewart's group. Did not like the raids on the ball bearing plants.

He got shot down a bit after D-Day. Plane got hit by flak over the Rhine, couple crew and an engine lost right away. He himself got hit in the leg, but kept navigating while the pilot figured out how much longer they could keep in the air. They couldn't reach England or even get to Paris, but they headed towards Paris and eventually crash-landed a hundred miles or so south.

Lost more crew in that landing but the resistance saw the smoke and helped some of the crew (my dad among them, or I'd not be here) to get out. Before they could get them all out, the Nazis came (they had also seen the smoke) and the resistance and their rescuees had to leave. My dad got to see the Nazis shoot one of the crew on the spot, and a couple got taken away as prisoners, one of whom survived that experience.

The resistance took him to a good hospital near Paris - still within the German-controlled area, as this was before the breakout - where it turned the grandson of Louis Pasteur practied surgery. Dr. Pasteur (the grandson, of course) took the flak fragment out, and sewed my dad up. (Dad kept that bit of German steel the rest of his life.)

He was still in the hospital when the Allies liberated the place. Just before that, the Nazis combed the hospital looking for anyone to sweep back into Germany with them....and the hospital staff hid my dad in the maternity ward, so they never found him!

Liberated, he was sent back to England to recover, and continued his navigating gig to the war's end. Saw ME-262s flying through formations at the end - didn't know what they were first time he saw them. He said he was on a mission just after the war's end to go get some important German scientists that we didn't want to be captured by the Russians...Austria or Czechoslovakia, I believe.

His unit was scheduled to be shipped off to Japan as part of the invasion prep, but thankfully, due to the Manhattan Project, the war ended and that was not needed.

He was in correspondence with his bomb group members and one of the French resistance rescuers till the day he passed.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
My dad was in the Army Air Corps, B-17 navigator. Volunteered right after Pearl Harbor.
...
He was in correspondence with his bomb group members and one of the French resistance rescuers till the day he passed.

God Bless your dad, Joel. Thank you very much for sharing his story.
T