Your Family's Military History

[B-Ball-fan]

@Colonels_Wear_Blue

 

Found your grandpa, and also the PM that you sent to me 4 years ago. :thumb:

[Run To State]

Should have said "share relations".

[Run To State]

My grandfather served in WW1 and was injured in the Battle of Argonne Forest. He was hit in the leg and never regained use of it. He nearly died on a ship from the infection. He received the Purple Heart.

My dad served in the Navy in the tail end of WW2, he was 15 when he joined. He served in the Korean War in the Marines.

[75center]

It's really cool to hear about all this history, keep them coming.

[gold sunrise]

My dad was a Major with the air force in WW2.he flew a C 47. He was a transporter that took supplies to the troupes.After he got out he finished college and was assistant supperintendent of Morgan Co schools.

 

His brother was a Captain and flew a B 29 bommer. He was shot down over Japan.

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I have a great-uncle who was in Navy intelligence. Started as a cryptographer during WW2, trying to break Japanese radio signals, and made a career in Navy intelligence. He's actually buried in Arlington. His son - my 1st cousin once removed - was a Navy diver, and dove with/under Carl Brashear, the Navy diver who the movie

is about.

 

One of my uncles was also a Navy cryptographer. He started off serving on a submarine during the Cold War. He has a good story about a time when they had secretly worked their way to a a Russian submarine base. They sat their sub on the ocean floor several hundred feet below the underwater entrance to the base. Their primary task was listening to prop sounds and trying to record them as signatures for the different subs - they were suspect that the Russians had developed a new sub. After 2 days of silence on the ocean floor, recording every Russian sub that came and went, a new sub came out of the base on the morning of the 3rd day, confirming suspicions. My uncle was writing down his translations of what conversations he heard coming from the sub, and one of the various comments he was able to hear, translate and write down was, "The Americans will never know what's coming once we're out there." Then the submarine commander who was standing over my uncle's shoulder leaned down, took my uncle's pen, and wrote, "Never know what's coming? I can tell that son of a gun what he ate for breakfast this morning."

[oldgrappler]

WWII - My Dad was a farm boy who grew up during the Great Depression. He could have taken a deferment during the war but did not. Dec. 7 never went by without my Dad talking about how his family sat around the radio listening with disbelief to the accounts of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the "Day of Infamy" speech the next day. My Uncle recalls him being happy to go to report and get his assignment. My Uncle also said that is the only time ever saw his Dad (my Grandpa) with tears in his eyes watching my Dad leave. This was 1943. Fortunately, my Dad knew the guy typing up assignments and the man asked my Dad what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to be a radio man so he was sent off to Wisconsin for radio school (years later we took a vacation to that area--Wisconsin Dells). Too bad I was too young to be able to dialogue with him about his experiences there. My Mom recently was cleaning out er stuff and had a box that belonged to my Dad with his WWII memorabilia. Letters he had written her, birthday cards and letters his family had written him, discharge papers, and notebooks filled with notes from his radio classes.

 

After radio school he was assigned to Muroc Army Air Core base in the desert of California where he was a radio man for the test flights, etc. that occurred there. Muroc is now known as Edwards Air Force base. When Chuck Yeager was also stationed there, he (Yeager) would get a group of guys to go into the desert and hunt jack rabbits, my father, being a farm boy from Ohio liked to hunt and went on several of those expeditions. My father was no longer at Muroc when Yeager broke the sound barrier. He spent his whole WWII experience in the states.

 

WWI - My wife's grandfather was a veteran of WWI. He was a German machine gunner. He went all over Europe in the German infantry. He said the Ukraine had some of the best crops he ever saw. He felt sorry for the Romanians because they were so poor. He was at the Battle of Verdun and always commented on how tragic it was that the German commander wouldn't just go around Verdun but continued to engage and many men were lost unnecessarily. He briefly mentioned that he had been in battles where they resorted to sticking each other (meaning with bayonets). He talked about having a liquid cooled machine gun. He said you learned quickly to shove the hose down into the ground, otherwise the steam would rise and draw enemy fire in your direction. I don't know all the experiences he had but he was a short-tempered man and one wonders if some of that anger was as a result of his war experiences.

[Hatz]

Reading #OldGrappler report reminded me of a find not too many years ago.

 

My cousin shared with me letters my Grandmother wrote my Grandfather on the USS Bunker Hill.

 

Some of those letters were of the "R" rated variety of what she wanted to do to him when he got home. :eek:

 

When my son read one of them he handed it back and said, "Dad, you can have these." :lol2:

[coldweatherfan]

My grandfather on my father's side was a ship's mechanic on the USS Badger in WWII.

 

My grandfather on my mother's side was a panzer mechanic under Generaloberst Heinz Wilhelm Guderian in WWII.

[oldgrappler]

Reading #OldGrappler report reminded me of a find not too many years ago.

 

My cousin shared with me letters my Grandmother wrote my Grandfather on the USS Bunker Hill.

 

Some of those letters were of the "R" rated variety of what she wanted to do to him when he got home. :eek:

 

When my son read one of them he handed it back and said, "Dad, you can have these." :lol2:

 

That's funny in an embarrassing sort of way. :eek: That is why I haven't delved too deeply into the letters because I don't want to find out too much.

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

Another of my cousins is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. He is the active commander of the 43d Electronic Combat Squadron, which flies out of a base in Tuscon Arizona. Their modified C-130s are actively involved in intercepting and/or scrambling the electronic and radio communications of hostiles in Iraq, Syria, Afganistan, and several other vicinities throughout the world including Mexico, South America, and Asia/Indo-China. He graduated from the Air Force Academy and spent time as a co-pilot and then a pilot serving in the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and was nearly shot down on more than one occasion. He has since spent time as an officer on a base in South Dakota, as a liaison at the Pentagon, and now as a base commander for the 43d ECS in Arizona.

[Jim Schue]

I have not had a chance to post in this thread or read it, as I've done a poop-ton of stressful driving the past two days. St. Louis traffic is horrid!

 

Anyway, my dad was a recon medic (LRRP) in Vietnam. Grandpa (Dad's dad) was a combat engineer with Patton in Africa, Italy and Belgium. Uncle John was Navy in Tonkin during Vietnam. His son is a career MP, posting in Germany and Korea, among others. My brother was in Afghanistan and Iraq with the 101st.

 

And in the interest of full disclosure, sadly, and apparently, one of my maternal grandfather's brothers was a card-carrying Nazi officer. Fortunately Grandpa Pete didn't buy it and got out of Germany in 1933 just before it got weird, and became a successful grocer then pig farmer. Mom's first-cousin Hans was sponsored by Grandpa Pete and got out just in time as well a few years later — to end up drafted as a US Army engineer in WWII and serve his new country proudly. Possibly the smartest man I ever met.

[TAC]

Mrs. TAC just received letters from her father to her mom’s sister who was about 8 at the time. He sent them from Yakahoma (sp?) in late 1946 and early 1947.

He never spoke much about his time n the service.

[Nathaniel Bryan]

I've had family members who have served in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Civil War, World War II, & Vietnam War.

 

We also share relation to a member of the Lewis & Clark expedition. I am a direct descendant of George Rogers Clark.

 

 

The Clark of Lewis & Clark was William, NOT George Rogers.

 

William and George Rogers were brothers, though.

 

George Rogers had plenty of siblings, but no children. Still, being a descendant of William Clark of Lewis & Clark would be a heck of a family tree.

[Nathaniel Bryan]

My family's military history isn't as checkered as other's.

 

My maternal grandfather (my mom's father) was a driver for General Patton, although I'm sure Patton had more than one driver.

 

My oldest paternal cousin (son of my dad's sister) works at the Pentagon. Before that, he was in Hawaii, Japan and Germany (not in that order).

 

And technically NOT related, the brother of my godmother (I'm Catholic and my godmother is my mom's best friend) is a sniper. He's been in Pakistan, Iraq and Kuwait among others.

 

My mom's great grandmother was Native American. I've been told I have ties to Pocahontas' tribe, but never checked it how close or the truth of it.