I figured this would be the most viewed thread among adults. If the topic needs to be moved them moderators feel free to do so. I saw a documentary on Netflix today about the Vietnam war and got me thinking about the greatest generation. My Grandpa on my moms side was a chief petty officer in the pacific during WWII, my grandpa on my dads side was denied bc he had "serious sinus issues" (quote from my late grandma). My fathers dad had 3 brothers who served in combat and one who did not return. He served the whole war without a scratch and then they overloaded the plane that was taking them home and the plane went down.

 

My grandpa on my moms side only told funny stories; many un-PC which could be blocked on this sight. I cut his grass for 6 years, always being fed Miller Hi-Life and he only told me one "war story". He was on the flight deck and a crew memebr got to close to a propeller and his arm was cut off at the shoulder and he had bled out before he hit the ground. I was like OMG!!!

 

Thought it'd be cool to hear other people's stories of what there parents/grandparents, or even their own, went through. War sucks but it happens.

Edited February 26, 201610 yr by Jackie Ed
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I do not have one, but I would absolutely recommend reading some Tim OBrien books if you haven't already. He's got some great, great writing.

I don't know if anyone will believe it or not but a Snickers bar, can be a major morale booster on the battle field.

I can't read enough about WWII, especially in Europe. I find it all fascinating.

About this time last year, I went to visit my brother-in-law Bob in the hospital, who proceeded to tell me a story about the dream he had the night before reckoning back to his WWII days in the South Pacific.

 

Okay, I'm thinking he's finally gonna tell me some of the unbelievable things that he saw. You see, Bob rarely spoke of his tours overseas as a Marine & no one among the family ever pushed for them, knowing it was an uneasy topic.

 

He proceeds by telling me he had been captured by the Japanese (dream) & was held on one of their ships. He somehow knew the ship was planning a massive attack on Americans & that he had to do something. His thought was to sink the ship & while he would perish, it could save many of his fellow Americans. His thought was get to the hull & damage it. He ran through hall after hall & fought / avoided Japanese soldiers to get to the bows of the ship. Finally, he locates the room he knew was his destination; he was going to save his buddies lives. As he heard the enemy coming nearer, he enters to find what was his bathroom tub at home & he quickly pulled the plug, just as the Japanese entered the room with their guns. Needless to say, he then woke up.

 

All of us in the hospital room that day were in tears of laughter for quite a bit.

 

While I'm sure he had seen/experienced many horrific things during those days, it was not his way be bitter or sullen. Bob, very regimented & strict in his ways, went through life aiming to please his loved ones & serving those that were less fortunate.

 

Bob passed away at the age of 80 this past November as he was overcome by his 7th battle with cancer. While he was 30 years my elder, Bob was always young at heart and very active. He loved the outdoors & preserving what nature had to offer. He was a true gentleman & a God-fearing Christian. He had been married to my wife's sister for 55+ years & you rarely saw them apart. He spent much of his later years volunteering for the VA hospital & driving fellow veterans to & from their medical appointments.

 

I told my sons at the funeral, if we could be half the man Bob was, we'd be doing alright.

Had the great fortune three years ago to interview a man who was among the first wave to land on Normandy. He was a medic, and carried a lot of supplies on his back when they were to disembark. When they got as close to the beach as they were going on the LCVP, everybody jumped off, as the water was only 4 feet deep or so. Said the "life jackets" they were given were actually inflatable belts. And when he hit the water, the life jacket worked as a pivot point, and since he was top heavy with the pack and couldn't stand up, he instantly went face first down in the water. Said he paddled like a crazy man until he could get in close enough to where he could use his arms to push himself back upright.

 

Then, when he finally made it to shore, he ended up diving between two men who were already on the beach. Said he turned to both of them and made some wise-crack about it being some kind of day. Didn't get a reply from either one of them, as he found out both were already dead.

My Dad and his next oldest brother served in the Marines in the South Pacific during WW2. I have my Dad's "four island" belt buckle BTW. Neither of them ever told war stories, but after my uncle passed away (shortly after my Dad) many of their old friends were at the wake and told plenty of stories. One I found most interesting was my Dad took leave to find my uncle who was suffering from malaria in a forward post and stayed with him until he was better.

My Dad and his next oldest brother served in the Marines in the South Pacific during WW2. I have my Dad's "four island" belt buckle BTW. Neither of them ever told war stories, but after my uncle passed away (shortly after my Dad) many of their old friends were at the wake and told plenty of stories. One I found most interesting was my Dad took leave to find my uncle who was suffering from malaria in a forward post and stayed with him until he was better.

 

Reportedly, malaria took the lives of as many as 8x the number of soldiers in the S.Pacific during WWII compared to combat deaths. Unbelievable.

It seems most folks I know that saw combat action didn't care to elaborate.

 

I had one hunting buddy who did.

He explained in great detail what a 50 cal will do to someone who would not identify himself when asked repeatedly. He used the term "melted"

Reading the obituary of a guy that passed away last week. He was awarded two Purple Hearts and also a Bronze Star for Bravery in WWII for his time in Europe in some key battles.

 

He was probably less than 20 at the time.

I suppose part of me wanting to start this thread is the on on obvious, most men who saw actual combat would rather not elaborate. Thus we have a extremely large group of individuals like me who want to know what happened and what it was like. My grandpa only talked about WWII after a couple high life's and then it was only stories of the various islands they visited, and funny stories. Ive been told his brother was in the invasion of Italy and when his brother came home be was certainly not the same as when he left. My grandpa never brought it up either. He did tell me one of the better days tbrey had was one of his crew mates had received a care package with whiskey in it. He said with the fact they weren't keeping there tolerance up, low water intake and the heat of the south pacific it didn't take long to pass out and they "missed chow that night".

My Dad has a hunting buddy who was a POW during Vietnam. The stories he tell make a chill go down your spine.

One of my best friends is an Airborne Ranger. He's been in about 15 years now. I've had several short conversations with him over the years about his service. I don't ever ask him for details about anything, but sometimes he offers them to me all the same...sometimes he talks a little more than others, but he's never gotten too in depth about things. I posted a thread a while ago about about finding out some additional details about his service:

 

[h=2]New Respect For An Old Friend[/h]

I met one of my oldest friends, Rob, literally before I can remember. He grew up down the street from me, and our moms were good friends, so my friendship with Rob literally began when we were both in diapers. I could go on and on about my friendship with the guy, but to make a long story short, he remains one of my oldest and best friends – even though he is now a Captain in the US Army Rangers, and is stationed overseas in Italy.

 

Rob has been deployed three times now: once in Iraq’s Anbar Province, and twice in Afghanistan’s infamous Korengal Valley. His first deployment began around 7 years ago, when his unit was stationed on active duty somewhere between Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq. Their general purpose there was to patrol the vicinity and protect road traffic in the wake of the Battle of Ramadi, which had torn apart much of the area during the second half of 2006.

 

Rob was able to keep in occasional contact with me via email throughout much of his first deployment, but he spoke little of the goings on in Iraq. He was able to say even less when his work took him to Afghanistan. Regardless, there was a noticeable change in the tone of our email correspondence (on his part at least) sometime in late summer. To my surprise, Rob’s deployment to Iraq was followed essentially immediately by a deployment to Afghanistan, wherein our conversation became much more sparse.

 

Roughly a year later, I came to learn through his family that Rob had been awarded the Bronze Star with “V” Device, and that they knew the events surrounding the citation had taken place in late July 2007, but that Rob wouldn’t tell them anything further about the circumstances. They asked if I had talked to him about it at all, and whether I had any details, and I informed them that we hadn’t spoken about any of it. Again, to my surprise, Rob was then awarded the Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters about 8 months after that, signifying that he had earned the Bronze Star with “V” Device for a second time (the second time took place in Afghanistan; see Sergeant Salvatore Giunta - Medal of Honor Recipient; see also Restrepo).

 

I’ve still never directly asked Rob about either of those experiences. However, I have told him that his family would sincerely like to know, and that when he was comfortable with it, I thought it would be a good idea for him to share with them some version of what had taken place.

 

Today I received an email from Rob’s mom. She told me that she had received an email from him about two weeks ago, and that she thought she should share part of it with me. The email had included a link to an article published in Stars and Stripes, and although it did not mention my friend Rob by name, it gives a good (good enough for me, anyway) explanation of what earned my friend his first Bronze Star. I was very moved today when I read it, and I thought I would like to share it with everyone here:

 

Hot, Bloody Fight Proves Soldiers' Mettle - News - Stars & Stripes

 

" 'Our water truck got hit on the hottest day in Iraq in seven years. People were engaged in enemy fire with I.V.’s in their arms and bags strapped to their Kevlar. We didn’t expect that.' "

 

 

 

 

" Water was scarce. Men started dropping like flies, shedding their body armor in the oppressive heat. ... 'There were 20 to 40 guys all lying on the grass without their body armor on,' Marek said. 'Usually taking off your gear is a big ‘no’ but we had to do it. It was just too hot.'

 

Soon, the enemy had arrived and were shooting rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire from houses, reed lines and mosques, Zipperer said.

 

A Marine air unit evacuated the men from the landing zone and started dropping ice in ammunition cans, as well as “lighting up” the enemy, Zipperer said.

 

Seeing the insurgents get thrashed was “the morale booster” of the day, Fink said. And the men fought with IVs in their arms until 7 a.m. the next day.

 

'They’d go get stuck with needles and go back to the job,' Marek said. 'It shows how dedicated we are.'

 

'We were all tired, we were all taking IVs, but we weren’t about to leave our fallen comrades,' Zipperer said. 'We were going to get them home.' "

My grandpa on my mom's side, died back in 2012, was in the Navy, and served on a destroyer that saw action in Pacific, from the south Pacific up to the Aleutians. He saw many battles, the most significant of which was Gudalcanal. His ship, the USS Meade (DD-602) was the only US Destroyer to survive the Guadalcanal.

 

He told me once about his line-crossing ceremony, which took place on his ship's maiden "cruise", and happened not long after their ship left harbor from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and made its way through the Panama Canal. He said the shellbacks (sailors who had already had their first line-crossing) started out by making the pollywogs (sailors who were crossing the equator for the first time) roll around on the deck in seawater and galley-trash, then they promptly all had the snot beaten out of them by the shellbacks, and then things finished off with the pollywogs having to kiss the feet of King Neptune - the fattest shellback on the ship, dressed up as the Roman sea-god, and with filthy feet that had intentionally not been washed for days.

 

My grandpa was a fire-controlman, which meant he was in charge of aiming and firing one of the ship's four 5" guns. He said he wrote a note to Hideki Tojo on the back of his line-crossing certificate and had one of the gunner's mates on his gun load it in with one of the shells as they were approaching their position for the bombardment at Guadalcanal. Makes for a cool story...but it would be even cooler to have had the line-crossing certificate these days.

 

Here are a few pictures of my grandpa from his Navy days. The bottom one is particularly cool. It's him with his three brothers with their mom, all in their Navy uniforms. Grandpa is the one in the front on the left.

 

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He also told me once about the horrors of watching the US Marine invasion on the shores of Guadalcanal through the viewfinder of his cannons in between firing shots during the battle. One of his most guarded stories, however, was regarding the battle of Tarawa. His destroyer, along with the USS Frazier had been hunting a Japanese submarine (this one) on the final day of the battle, and after the crippled submarine surfaced, my grandpa was responsible for firing the final shots that sunk the submarine. There was one single survivor - a man who had been forced up onto the submarine's tower to fire a lone machine gun once the boat had surfaced - who was rescued from the water by my grandpa's ship. The man was very badly injured following the final shelling of the submarine, and once off duty, my grandpa spent the hours between the end of the battle and the point where they offloaded the injured man, sitting with him in sick bay and praying for him, as well as for the souls of the Japanese sailors who had perished on the submarine.

 

Another interesting detail about his experience at Guadalcanal...

 

About 6 or 7 years ago the History Channel put together a documentary called WWII in HD, which consisted of an abundance of original color film footage they were able to come up with after an exhaustive search of the surviving war correspondents from WWII and from their surviving relatives. One of the main featured characters from WWII in HD, journalist Robert Sherrod, was a central in the documentary's coverage of the battles of Tarawa, Attu, and Saipan. These were all battles my grandfather took part in on his destroyer. Because of that, I thought it would be neat to watch the documentary with my grandpa, so I ordered the DVD from the History Channel's website and took it over to his house for a few nights of dinner and tv. When Sherrod's character was first introduced within the documentary, my grandpa sat up in his chair and said, "Holy :poop:, that's Bob Sherrod". It turns out Sherrod was a very good acquaintance of my grandpa's, as Sherrod's brother had been a machinist's mate on the ship, and Sherrod would frequently request to be embedded on that ship in order to see him. With my grandpa's position as a fire controlman, his vantage point was a very good one, and Robert Sherrod had taken advantage of that on several occasions while filming the video footage he took. My grandpa was able to point out shots in the documentary that had actually been shot right over his shoulder! It was amazing getting to literally see what my grandfather saw in the midst of a naval battle in World War II.....