(I don't know who much truth is in the following stories, but this is how they were told to me.)
The founder of my Finnish family line was actually an English political refugee who fled from Cromwell. He changed his name after marrying so his name is lost to time. Whoever he was, he must have been well scared to run all the way to Finland.
Maybe he was royalty, and I could make a claim for the throne of England.
During the Winter War, my Finnish grand father served on the Karelia front and returned decorated with half a dozen of medals and a gut shot. Surprisingly, he recovered, and when the Continuation War errupted in June 1941, he was called in to serve again. He didn't feel like getting shot again, so he went to the local police station with a crate of vodka, and consequently was assigned to home front duty manufacturing wood charcoal.
My German grand father wasn't as lucky. His tour of duty started with Poland, continued in France and led to Leningrad. He was wounded seven times and suffered from his war wounds for the rest of his life. When he, in 1945, was wounded for the seventh time he miraculously ended in the same hospital where my grand mother worked as a nurse. Which was good, because grandmom was caught giving Russian POWs food (which was strictly forbidden), and was sentenced to death by an overzealous little nazi. Luckily, my grand father was a senior officer and also wore an Iron Cross, so he bullied my grand mother free. After that encounter grand dad lost what little loyalty he still had for his uniform and they fled all the way to Bavaria.
Once the war ended, my grandfather sold American G.I.s his most priced possession he had managed to save from their home in Breslau - a dachshund. Since it was a very loyal little doggie it always returned, so grandfather could sell it to another American soldier.
Eventually he sold it to a provisioning officer who fed meat to the dog, so surprisingly the dog didn't return anymore. I hope it found a good home in the States because it saved my family from starvation.
Besides my grand parents, few family members made it through WWII. My Finnish grand parents lost all seven brothers during the Winter War. From my German side, two brothers (out of 12 siblings) made it through 11 years of forced labour in Siberia. One was a SS-Hauptsturmführer and such a despicable person that grand father never talked to him after the war. The other was a 14-year-old Hitler Jugend kid who never managed to fire a single round before getting captured by the Red Army.