"You are about to embark upon the great crusade..."

Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, but neither would talk about it much.

My grandfather on my dad's side was in the Navy. I don't know the whole story, but the boat he was on was sunk, leaving him and many of his crewmates floating for hours before they were rescued. Sharks got some of them. I am told he was never the same. He died when I was six.

My mother's father was about the last person on Earth I could imagine ever fighting anybody. I have never met a gentler human being. All I know of his time in WWII is how it ended. Somebody tossed a grenade in the foxhole he was in. He scrambled out in time to survive it, but his foot was torn up badly. All he would ever say is at least he got through it better than his buddy, whose legs were torn up by schrapnel.

Unfortunately, he's gone, too. I know he was home before D-Day, but still.

 

Was your grandfather on the Indianapolis?

 

My father in law is mostly deaf because he was a gunner on a battleship during WWII. He's 84. In my family, four of my father's five brothers fought in WWII. My dad did not, because he had only one eye. One uncle did not because he had only one arm.

 

My grandfather was a tank mechanic with the 10th Armored Division and Third Army when they went through France like, their commander said, "crap through a goose." I never knew the specifics until after the movie Patton came out when I was 14, and had to drag some stories out of him. He said the scene in Patton where the old man walks through the snow with the troops was true, to a certain extent. He said Patton would mingle for about five minutes for the newsreel guys to get their footage, then speed off in his staff car to some heated villa, while they slept in trenches in the show.

However, he said this much was true: they were more afraid of Patton (and his junior officers, who were all little Pattons) than they were of the Germans.

 

Your grandfather and my dad were in the same division, Hondo. My dad was a company clerk of a MASH unit attached to the 10th Armored.

The romp through France was one of the great feats of arms in military history. It would have been better, had Bradley allowed Patton to close the Falaise Gap. Instead, many of those escaped to fight again at the Battle of the Bulge and the Rhineland campaign.

 

Neither of my grandfathers were in WWII. Both died when my folks were kids.

However, I do know a gentleman who served in the OSS. He absolutely refuses to talk about what he did during the war.

 

My grandfather served and did try to talk to me, but I was a kid. He gave me books on the Battle of the Bulge and some other major campaigns he was involved in (as well as some Nazi medals he apparently took). As I grew older, I appreciated what he did more, but sadly he suffered through the last years of his life with Alzheimer's Disease.

 

The one thing my dad won't talk about -- and he'll turn 95 in September, so his memory isn't what it was -- is when he and his unit went into Dachau.

It was just like the scene from "Band of Brothers." That's what I'll have to go on, because it's the one thing about his European adventure he refuses to discuss in any way, shape or form.

Understandably.

 

No shit!!! Awesome.
Makes you wonder how the world would be different if they had let Patton keep going to Berlin (then to Moscow) and let MacArthur have his way in Korea.
My grandfather died 12 years ago. Worked in the coal mines of Western Pa. before he went in the Army, went right back in the mines after. Never bitched (that I heard of) a day in his life.

 

I think I posted this last year or the year before, but I have been thinking a lot about it lately.

My Dad, 92, was in the Army troops that followed Patton through France on the way to Germany. Like others, he doesn't talk about it much, but over the past few years, if we got enough wine in him he would open up a bit.

Both his superiors and his fellow troops considered him a hero -- the officers because he found a storage facility with a bunch of gasoline, the troops because he found a bombed-out basement full of cognac.

He remembers coming home on the Queen Mary and he got teary-eyed when we visited it once in Long Beach.

Another story is that over the years, we tried to get him to go to Hawaii with us. He always refused. We tried to get him to take his big sister on a cruise -- dining and gambling are two of his favorite things. He always refused.

Found out a couple of years ago that when he was overseas he prayed to God that if He allowed him to make it back home, he would never leave again. And I can't remember him ever leaving the mainland U.S., not to Mexico, not to Canada.

Last significant remembrance: My Mom wouldn't let us watch "Hogan's Heroes" because "World War II wasn't funny."

 

I, too, was a young teenager when my grandfather would tell us stories, so sadly I wasn't as interested as I should have been. Only one I remember about him concerning war was when he was a teenager in Italy, some of his older friends were being sent off to World War I (he was born in 1903). Some took cyanide and killed themselves because they did not want to go.

My sixth grade teacher fought in the Pacific theater during World War II. A couple of times, he would bring in a Rising Sun flag that he took from Japan, as well as a samaurai (sp?) sword and hari-kari knife. He probably would have gotten in trouble for doing that today.

 

In college I interviewed a 103-year-old man who was in the Army in World War I. He didn't make it overseas, but the way he told the story of being drafted was great.
"I graduated, and the next day President Wilson sent me a letter telling me he had a job for me," he said.