WWII veterans thread

What did your ancestors do in the greatest war of the century?

Pic related is my great grandfather. I said in another thread he fought in Russia but I had my story messed up. I thought he had been injured in Russia and sent to Greece, but he was actually in Greece his entire time of service. He was shot in the back, and when he recovered was told he could go home, but there was no transportation so he had to walk. My mom thinks he got picked up by U.S soldiers at some point had seen so much fucked up shit that when he returned home he literally couldn't function without alcohol.

My other great grandfather DID fight in Russia. Eventually got sent home after losing his toes to frostbite. He continued to work to provide for his fmaily despite this, though complications led him to having both legs up to his knees removed. His daughters (my grandmother not included as she as busy running my grandfather's restaurant) became his "caretakers" which was really them just confining him to a room with 1 window that saw only the backyard and had no access outside. When my mom went to visit for coffee and cake all they did was talk about what they were going to do with the room when he was dead, with him right there. My mom yelled at them, gave her granddad a hug and never spoke to them again.

I posted these stories in a WWII thread the other day and said I'd get pictures of some old stuff I've obtained from my grandparent's home that they don't care about.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léo_Major
amazon.com/Last-Mission-Laurel-Leaf-Historical-Fiction/dp/0440947979
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

great grandfather bayoneted a couple of japs

Badass.

Here's some pics of his copy of Mein Kampf. It's in fantastic shape too. It was given to him by the mayor for his wedding (which I was told was tradition then? Can a Germanbro back that up?)

But he didn't really give a shit about politics. If he's anything like his son, he didn't like or dislike the Nazis. All he wanted to do was run his guesthouse and farm in peace. So he just kinda tossed the book into a closet where it sat on a shelf until I got it. It's even still in it's original wrapping paper which my mom almost flipped when I wanted to take it off. Apparently it's made of some sort of "butter paper" or something that they don't make anymore.

...

...

My grandma was sole survivor from her family.

Her parents and eight brothers and sister died in the war.
I still amazed how she keep sanity after this.

My grandpa served in the Navy on the Black sea, his ship was surprisingly luck and never was seriously damaged.

...

What type of ship? You know it's name? I play World of Warships a lot and that stuff interests me.

Yes it was cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz, sister ship of Svetlana, but modified.

It's probably worth money, bro. People pay big bucks for stuff like that.

You should store it in a dry, dark place.

USS Manila Bay

Also my great uncle was a pilot with Alabama air national guard and flew for the CIA during the bay of pigs invasion.
AMA

It's apice of family history, I'm not selling it. Right now it's on a bookshelf in my room where the sun doesn't hit at any time of the day

a piece*

That is a good looking ship.

They were second generation Japanese immigrants who didn't do shit besides be persecuted for being Japanese

>He was shot in the back,

By his own troops?

My grandfather was a in "bastard unit," a howitzer battalion. He in the Battle of the Bulge and saw a lot of his friends die. He had major PTSD but he was a badass. I salute your grandfather, user.

Glad to hear you're taking good care of it, bro.

He didn't talk about it much, but the way he talked about it insinuates it was the enemy. They may have been falling back after a failed attack or something.

My great-grandfather killed "about 10" Germans.

Unfortunately he did this in 1973 during a business trip to Berlin, but he was making up for lost time.

No, seriously, he was an officer in the British Army in the desert. Fought at El Alamein, met Churchill, met the King, etc. What's really weird is that the army forced him to serve in 1946 as well -- clearing up the harbour in Naples.

Glad to hear he wasn't hurt too bad.

>Fought at El Alamein

Fuck that. I get pissed if the temperature gets to 24 C, let alone being in the fucking desert. Sounds like a tough sonofabitch.

Physically it wasn't bad. The war just fucked him up mentally.

Grandfather came to America in 1920 from Germany, and my other Grandfather came to America in 1919 from Portugal. Portuguese grandfather served on the Eastern Front, and my German grandfather served in Japan. Hard motherfuckers.

My grandfather was pilot of a B24 bomber in Europe towards the end of the war in Europe. He never lost a crew member, had a few close calls (mostly blind luck), had to turn back on one mission due to a fuel transfer pump spraying fuel inside the plane.

Bomber runs were shit tier. Basically fly in formation and can't take any evasive action or anything in order to drop on target. Just fly into clouds of anti-aircraft fire and pray. He is nearly deaf from the roar of the engines and .50 cals.

His brother was a pilot also and was at the battle of Guadalcanal. They handed him a rifle when the Japs cam. EVERYONE there fought in that one. He drank excessively.

I used to know a guy who was in the "Band of Brothers" (they had the miniseries about them). He was a mean motherfucker. Late 80's and weighing 90 pounds I'd see him to tell big bikers to sit down and shut the fuck up... they did.

Guys that did a lot of killing in war have something about them. They don't talk about it, but you just know.

Saved three of his mates from a bomb and died 12 years later from his wounds.

Did he still have a German accent when the war began? I could imagine he might get some shit for that.

There's a great book about the life of a bomber called "The Last Mission". I've probably read it like 8 times. It pretty much describes what you said.

Handsome guy no homo. Was it some shrapnel stuck in him somewhere?

My granddad fought in '44 on the eastern front, got drafted late because he was kinda old and had a family with 4 kids to take care off. He was a Combat Engineers with a flamwthrower and used to joke about how Russians would be burned to the size of a loaf of bread after he cleaned out a building or bunker.

Got captured in early '45 and spend 7 years in a POW camp on the black sea...working in a bread factory irionically enough. According to him it wasn't a bad time because it was warm and his fellow prisoners were cool people.

Worked as a train engineer until the mid-70s when he died of lung cancer.

It's so weird that the soldiers in that war were basically the same age most of us are now (probably). They were doing all this brave, heroic stuff, and I just jerk off and sleep on my couch. (Like most of you, I assume.)

I'm sure he did because when I was little he would always knock on my head and say "Vhat is the skull of va German! Ha, vhou rascal." But he said it smoothly. It didn't sound awkward.
Now that I think about it I really wonder what his piers thought of him.

I wonder if my great grandfather fought side by side with your Opa in Russia.

I know this is a WW2 thread but my great great uncle fought in WW1 as a doughboy and came back with a bunch of cool stuff like lots of German helmets, 2 mausers, and other stuff. He gave it to my dad when he was a kid and eventually I will inherit the stuff.

My great-grandfather fought the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese conflict in the late 1930s, and saw pretty much most of the war. Didn't make it to Berlin though due to being seriously ill. My dad still has his medals though.

Not related in any way. I know /pol likes to make fun of us leafs being cucks, but all bantz aside read up on Leo Major. Dude was basically the French Canadian Rambo. Even helped out the burgers in Korea after WW2. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léo_Major

Can you check if he has my great great grandfather's helmet? His body was never found so it's assumed he was blown apart by artillery. Maybe his helmet flew over to the American trench lol

Grandfather was demolitions stationed in Berlin. Got a purple heart for getting machine gun shrapnel in his legs, killed several Germans at night in a bombed out building. They put tin cans on fishing wire around the perimeter and when they came on them he killed several. He's dead now, came back and had a drinking problem, never got to meet him.

The other story I know of is of my great uncle who was the local NSDAP leader of a smallish town near Magdeburg.

Joined the party early on traveling all over Germany before the war and later on in the war led the Volkssturm in the Magdeburg area. One story my aunt would tell me about him is that he once beat a black pilot, who had crash landed in the field behind his house, to death with his bare hands and made her and my uncle watch the corps.

He fled from the Russians to Bavaria after Germany had capitulated and changed his name, though he contacted his family in the mid-50s and would send them packages from west Germany until his death.

Not all leafs are bad. Some I assume are good people. But someone is doing the shitposting.

>One story my aunt would tell me about him is that he once beat a black pilot, who had crash landed in the field behind his house, to death with his bare hands

It's a small world, who knows. My grandfather would talk about all the people he met in the war and recall it as a good time in his life, aside from being worried about his family at home.

My great grand father on my fathers side was in the Soviet Army part of a reconnaissance unit.

Heard he went up all the way to Berlin until a mortar team engaged his unit and he fell into a concussion as result of a shell exploding nearby.

He made a recovery though several months after the war ended.

No, he has the new German ones, not the ones the Germans came with. Most of them are regulars but a few are camo.

Maternal Grandfather walked across Europe with USArmy infantry 1944-1945.
Paternal Grandfather worked in steel mill.
Uncle was waist AAC gunner in B17 that flew from Britain to Germany and back every night until shot down and POW
Other uncle USMC took Guadacanal
Other uncle USMC got blown up in a Sherman tank on an forgotten pile of coral in the south Pacific.

My great grandfather drove a tank in France killing Wehrmacht soldiers. Came back all fucked up.

Planning on going to shit holes in Africa and hunting for loot and raids for fun. Get in by being a missionary, any tips.

Never read the book, but I'm sure he has, I'll ask him.

I did go to the Mighty 8th Airforce museum in Savannah, GA, they have a little theater you sit in that sort of shows you what a mission was like. He said that was also quite a good reenactment.

I'm quite a bit older, but yeah, all the WWII guys I know/knew were 20 years old or younger. My grandfather said that at least one of the guys in his crew lied about his age to enlist so plenty of guys 16 and 17 in that shit. Honestly it's probably harder to convince older men to go throw themselves into a meat grinder. at 16-20 years old you really do feel immortal.

>the eastern front

Damn. It's really a shame things turned out the way they did. Had our ancestors fought together against the international Jew and the red menace, the west would be white and we would probably be colonizing the stars by now.

Next time, bruder, we fight with each other.

Yup he died to heart problems

Is that actually autographed?

Worst thing is that he ended up living in the GDR for the rest of his life although he tried his best to shield my dad and his siblings from the soviet shilling and even payed of a local official so my dad could skip the commie youth organisation.

feels bad man.

No it's just printed. If it was autographed, it would be worth enough money that it being a piece of family history might not be enough incentive to keep it anymore lol

Uncle was killed after his B-24 Liberator was shot down flying over Italy.

Great-grandfather was a high ranking member of SHAEF and used to go fishing with General Eisenhower. Took part in the planning for the naval bombardment on D-Day. Was later promoted to Brigadier General at Eisenhower's request during the Korean War.

Stepfather's grandfather was a Soviet CEV (combat engineering vehicle) crewman. His job was to recover damaged T-34s, often while under fire himself. Drove from Kursk to Berlin, served on an NKVD penal battalion where he forced prisoners to run into minefields to clear the way, shot up the Kroll Opera House (where the Reichstag met after the 1933 fire), killed a pair of 10 year old Volksstrum fighters after they tried to fire a Panzerfaust at his tank. His first wife and children were killed in the Holocaust (shot by Einatzgruppen in Ukraine), later remarried and adopted his late wife's religion to immigrate to Israel and became a Judge.

Grandfater was a gunner in a SPG, Stug III G variant. Karelian front.

Said that destroyed tanks always smelled of cooked pork that you could smell kilometers away. Lost tank when the driver reversed down the hill and got stuck ontop of a big rock, they ran across a huge fucking field faster than a kenyan chased by a lion. There was lots of soviet infantry on the hill too and they didn't shoot at them for some reason.

Since they didn't have tank available, they made him a motorcycle messenger. Was ordered to deliver message to some unit at the frontline.

He drove too far on the road, so when he saw a column in the distance he mistook it for friendlies. It was actually a soviet column composed of tanks, trucks and infantry. He was driving fast and didn't get a good look at his uniform so they thought he was one of them (also finnish uniforms back then resembled some of their uniforms such as the military police and staff officers), the column just kept going and going and there were no gaps in it for him to turn around. He even drove through a soviet checkpoint and he just waved at them and they let him pass. He eventually found a gap to turn around and sped through that same checkpoint, past the head of column and all the way to his starting point. Needless to say that he refused any further messenger duties.

His adventure was even included in this book

amazon.com/Last-Mission-Laurel-Leaf-Historical-Fiction/dp/0440947979

This is it if he hasn't. Though the main character is a Jew so I know that gets Sup Forums's knickers in a twist. But still good.

My grandfather was on the uss vestel which was tied to the Arizona during Pearl Harbor

They all got blown off the boat and climbed back on and purposely crashed it into an oyster reef to keep it from sinking

My moms dad was a sheriff and worked as a roughneck part time at the startup of Halliburton during that time

I assume there's no English version of said book?

Grandfather was Infantry in Europe- one of his favorite stories was about how him and a few buddies cooked up an SS Panzer while the crew was still inside and machinegunned them as they tried to come out the hatches. He said the Commander and someone else came out of the turret hatch and the rest cooked inside the tank.

He wasn't a fan of the Nazis.

My great great grandfather was a Lieutenant Commander.

This is a photo of him, and his ship being sunk by Japanese during WWII ein the Indian Ocean.

Daily Reminder the fact the USS Vestal wasn't destroy despite being anchored less than 50 feet from the Arizona is proof that the ship's destruction was a controlled demolition.

your great granddad was a great man.
i thank him for his service

Fought the nazis.

Damn, you'll never see an American today looking as good as that.

Autists Ahoy

FFS

>forced prisoners to run into minefields to clear the way

Was going to ask if he was a Jew... how did I guess?

Finns are pretty ballsy when it comes to killing Russians. A friend of mine's father was about 14 when he joined up and they handed him a heavy machine gun. He was at her wedding wearing his old uniform with all the medals. He didn't speak much English but he told me "they from killing a LOT of Russians". Mean motherfucker, drank vodka like a pig but lived into his mid 80s.

Did he foretell the utter failure of his family ?

My grandfather was in Greece too, in the RAF. He was captured by ELAS when they withdrew from Athens and all were put into a forced march, quite a few died but it's not part of the war that gets mentioned much these days.

just a reminder that the good guys lost wwII

If anyone cares my grandpa survived the Malmedy Massacre. He was one of the POWs captured and when the Nazis started firing on them he fell and cut his forehead. While laying on another body he played dead and eventually escaped back to Allied Forces.

He looks about 15.

>ship's destruction was a controlled demolition.

Never heard that one before, but I know you can read about the "10 point plan" to goad Japan into attacking our base there to sell the war on the American people.

Moms side:
1) Great Great Uncle Hans, Luetnant in SS Fought in Russia
2)Great Great Uncle Mike Luetnant in Wermacht. Fought in Russia, captured, walked back from Siberia at the end of the war
3) Great Uncle Hans Sgt SS, Fought in the Battle of the Bulge, Normandy, Russia
4)Great Grandfather, Czech army, waffled between german/soviet units based on their capture

Dads side
1)Great uncle: Flight engineer in a B24 Liberator in the 449th bomber group based in Italy

>great grandfather
jesus, Sup Forums is new

you do realize he is 15 you pedo

My grandfather joined the navy toward the end of the war. he was too young to serve but managed to get in anyway.

served on a troop transport in the pacific. after the war he was on a mission in china, went up the yangtze river. not too many details.

its amazing how even he was young, and he has been dead for close to a decade. he was in his 80s.

wow the ww2 generation is dwindling.

My grandfather's uncle was with the 442nd as a medic, came back and moved to hawaii

Great-Grandfather and his brothers were in the swabish SS, herding jews in 44', 2 of them died in the siege of Budapest.
Great-Grandfather made it out, during the breakout
Later ruskies took him around 47', forced him to do 5 years of work in siberia, that's all i know.
Oh of his brother Máté was really good with panzerfausts and molotovs, he took our 4 T-34s

out'

Greatgrandfather fought in winter war and continuation war. Didnt talk about it much but once he was drinking with my father and told him how he killed russians.

New people are born every day. Shit's crazy yo.

Grandpa was assigned to the Arizona and should have been there for Pearl Harbor but was granted a leave due to my grandma giving birth to my Aunt on the Mainland. Spent the rest of the war regretting not being there with his crew. Never would talk about it with anyone after the war.

Grandpa on Father's side was in the Korean War as radioman and saw some shit. Only remember him talking to me about it once in his den when I was a kid because I was looking at his Army medals. Said something about how you will never know your true self until you take another man's life and that this Bayonet had saved his life several times.

Grandad worked in the meme dept.

propoganda.

Yeah never heard that one before

He never spoke of the war honestly according to my family and died before I could meet him

God bless.

Sadly no
These books are mostly interesting to finnish people anyway, so nobody has bothered to translate them

So my great uncle on my dads side was Pattons Communications officer. He stood side by side with Patton through the whole war from Africa and Italy and the battle of the bulge. He also sent the Casablanca telegraph to Churchill Stalin and Roosevelt. He was an amazing man who went on to teach electrical engineering at Clemson after the war. I would have given anything to meet him but he died a month before I was born. His name was Paul Goodin.

Pretty sure he was busy fucking my grandma

>herding jews

Truly serving their country.


This is really shaping up into a good thread.

grandfather was drafted and since he was a financial student they threw him in the trenches. said it was the first time drinking coffee because that was the only hot item they served, everything else was cold and wet like the battlefield.
doesn't like talking much of it though, so I can only assume he either killed some krauts or saw some friends killed, or both.

My paternal great grandfather farmed but his brother in law fought at the battle of the bulge. My other great grand father was an engineer who got turned away after he tried to get a commission in the navy after pearl harbor. My maternal great grandfathers I never really heard much about. Is it any consolation that both my grandpa's were in Berlin during the 1960 crisis?

Grandfather was in Dutch "resistance".

Weren't we all

Grandpa served in the SS Waffen he was behind lines cleaning the area of saboteurs when he died found his medals and a commendation letter from Himmler..... Never tried to ask why.....

One grandfather was just barely too young to serve and narrowly managed to be spared.
Other grandfather was a bomber pilot along with several other people and served primarily in the bombings of britain.

One of my grandmother's had two brothers, one was on the eastern front and served later in the war (mandatory conscription no choice), he never returned home and was declared m.i.a, never able to find the body. It was in a forest somewhere on the northern eastern front. She also had another brother who was in north africa in a tank group (can't remember the exact name off the top of my head), from what he told me when I was little he said he met Rommel on numerous occasions and would play music for him along with his other officers. She also lost her mother and grandmother due to the American bombings of Pirmasens (Pfälz). The town was important and was bombed because they produced mass amounts of shoes for the wehrmacht.

My other grandmother was polish, I know there were some ties to the warsaw revolts but other than that nothing interesting.

The only reason I'm a burger flag poster is because the pole grandmother and second german grandfather headed to the us after the war, they had a son who is my father. My mother is from the the first grandmother and grandfather and come from the rheinland-pfalz (rheinland palatinate), so I have dual citizenship.

I also had far more family serve in ww1 than two, so have plenty of information on them along with more pics if anyone is interested.
(One on right is great grandfather)

WWI facial hair was top notch

ww1 - gallipoli followed by a desert campaign with the light horse.
ww2 - kokoda
me - afghanistan (just fuck my shit up)

Shopkeep
Factory worker
>im the only warrior in my entire familly

haircuts would agree, facial hair not so much but that's just my personal opinion

this is his certificate for serving

Grandfather was in pacific, the only side America had any business being at war with
(though the shills of the european war for communism might have had a hand in getting tojo to start it)

great grandfather on moms side was in the USS Missouri submarine and killed japs

my grandfather on my fathers sides was the gunner of the belly-turret of a b29