Your grandpa's war stories

[Haig]

I'm always interested in hearing/reading war stories, especially because the only stories here in Finland I get are Winter war stuff.

It would be cool to hear stories from different countries and sides, from your relatives no matter how distant..

You can tell your own traumatic Vietnam experiences too if you want..

***

Here's my contribution:

During the winter war Finnish struggled against Stalin's soviet hordes.
One time at the front my grandpa's regiment had encamped and my grandpa was sleeping in his tent during the night, during a freezing cold winter.

Suddenly his mate rushed in, and yelled that Soviets have broken the defensive line and everyone must retreat immediatly, leave tents behind and move at haste.
Panic spread and people were getting their weapons and leaving, but my grandpa couldn't move; his hair had frozen onto the tent mattress and he was stuck, no matter how hard he tried to pull himself free.. luckily another soldier saw it and violently cut his hair free with his bayonet. Better a friend's bayonet than Ivan's for sure!


Another short story, during the finnish Civil war (around WW1) my grandmother's kitchen was made into a maxim machinegun outpost by "Red" forces, they broke the windows and erected the gun there onlooking street.


Also my greatgreat grandfather fought in Russian army agaist the Turkish as a very young man and became an alcoholic from the traumas. Maybe he met too many janissaries?

Haig

 

[Lord of Elves]

My granddad worked for NASA. I don't know if he has any stories about arguing with someone with the specs for the rocket, though. I substitute my great uncle who was a pilot in the Second World War.

 

[Leonel]

My grandpa was a conscientious objector during WW2 but the draft department allowed him to do his service by working on the railroads, which he did with the Burlington Northern Railroad.

 

[amadeus]

My grandfather was a middle-school dropout that got conscripted. He was a machine-gunner and fought somewhere in Europe. He also saw Patton speak once. Outside of that, I never asked him because I heard he didn't like talking about it. My uncle was conscripted in the early 1970s and worked as an electrician on a U.S. nuclear missile station in West Germany.

 

[Luckymoose]

Korea, joined at 16 in 1951 to fight some commies. Stayed in the army until 1995. Served in Vietnam and Gulf War. He was at or near Heartbreak Ridge in Korea and has told me how weird it is to kill a man. Most of his combat experience isn't close quarters but he was stabbed by a Vietcong kid because he didn't want to shoot a child. By the time the Gulf War came around he just sat in a tent in Saudi Arabia ordering around the noobs.

One great grandpa was an American fighter pilot, was shot in the leg by AA guns in the morning of D-Day.

The other greatgrand was a German soldier in France and he managed to become a POW during July of 44. Moved here after the war.

 

[Patroklos]

Both of my grandparents were win the Navy in WWII, one was a tug boat operater and the other an aviation ordinancemen on a carrier. One of my great uncles was killed on the beach at Normandy.

Both my grandparents left the service before Korea and my parents were too young to be involved in Vietnam, so the next war was my father who was the XO of a frigate during the invasion of Iraq in 91. An Iraqi launched missile went through their rigging but did not explode until it had passed through causing little damage. He was latter involved in the Kosovo campaign.

 

[civ_king]

One Grandfather was a radio operator working with the Navajo tail end of WWII in Japan other was born in Mangalore province of what is now India in May 1918 (forgot the date).

 

[Perfection]

My gramps blew up a command tent in Korea, unfortunately, it was an American one.

 

[classical_hero]

I know that my grandfather on my fathers side was part of the D-Day invasion and served time France and Germany. I am not too sure what my other grandfather did.

 

[spryllino]

My grandfather was an engineer in the RAF (but he made a career out of it, and stayed there after the war was over); the other one was excused on the grounds of ill health and spent the war making propaganda films.

 

[Haseri]

My grandparents were too young for WWII, but my great-great-grandad was on the ship that sunk the first German Ship of WWI.

 

[holy king]

one grandfather is unknown, the other was a kid.

my great grandfather, though, roamed the balkans with his jolly ss comrades.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

My grandfather was in the army during WWII and apparently somehow ended up in England. My grandmother was born in England and during the war had to hide under tables from bombs and then she became a war bride and moved here.

 

[Quackers]

One was in the Canadian Army.
One was in the Hitler Youth.

I have never met them so i don't know what they got up too..

 

[Verbose]

Grandfather on the paternal side was fairly high up in the chain of command of the Swedish police operating along the Norwegian border in WWII. The thing was, just after 1940 refugees wanted to cross, and the Norwegian resistance would want to slip back and forth along the border. What they didn't want, was to get picked up by the segement of the Swedish police with German sympathies, who tended to just unceremoniously hand them over to the Germans across the border. What they did want, was to get in contact with my gran'dad's pro-Allied part of the force, who would spirit them to safety. He was a raving Germanophobe generally, considering Nazism to be merely the logical conclusion of Germanness. Partly a French thing. Did French citizenship refugees a good turn apparently, and was rewarded with some minor French decoration post-war, when the Free French made sure they remembered everyone who kind of stuck by them after the defeat in 1940.

There was a lot of talk of what was to be done if the German decided to just roll over the Swedish border. Gran'dad wasn't the most practical of men (my dad says his world view was sort of composed out of stuff out of Zacharis Topelius "Tales of the Barber Surgeon" and Dumas père "The Three Mousquetaries"). His main concern was what would happen to his friends the extended Jewish family owning, and living in the rest, of the house the family rented their flat in. It seems he was resolved, should the Germans come, to in full uniform take up guard in front of the house to protect them, and if needs be force the Germans to shoot him.

His plan to evacuate the family to his native Scanie in the south was good on the face of it, since they certainly would get fed down there, the only flaw being that the region of flat agricultural land had been deemed indefensible against a German attack by the military planners, and would thus be given up without a fight, in favour of establishing defensive lines in the rugged densely forested south Swedish uplands, 300 m or so above sea-level.

Gran'dad was also an official observer for the Swedish government to the Finnish govt. in the Winter War. He just didn't show up one evening, with no word of warning. My grandmother and their three kids (later four) wondered like hell where he'd got to, until three days later they got a telegram from Helsinki, asking grandmother to sew up some winter camo asap. The camo-suit hung in the attic still when I was a kid. Apparently it served its pupose, because observer status or no, he was with troopps that got strafed by Soviet fighter-bombers a couple of times that winter.

 

[Love]

My grandfather, who lives germany has one story, his 15 year old brother was forced by the allies after the war to sweep mines, just because... And he stepped on one and died. Happy story!

My grandmothers parents moved from scania because of the vast amount of nazis there. Her father was stationed in the swedish mountains at the border of norway during the second world war.

 

[really]

Both were farmers here in Galway.

I'm sure they noticed some shortages because of rationing but that was it probably.

 

[storealex]

My granddad was a docter during WWII and somehow connected to the resistance. My mom remembers that years after the war, he still had a pistol and a handgrenade at home, but ended up turning it over to the police.

 

[Hygro]

My grandfather was in the cavalry before ww2 and would ride his horse and bust up domestic communist gatherings, before he transferred to the Navy just in time for the war. He did counter intelligence, and at rank of commander commanded a pacific island amphibious assault. His son my uncle served in the airforce and the army, serving in warzones from vietnam all the way through afghanistan about 2 or 3ish years ago. A man in his 60s in combat zones...

 

[Winston Hughes]

My grandfather served in SE Asia during WW2. He's never talked about it much (to me, at least), but he once mentioned that he was nearly killed when he drove his truck into a Japanese ambush in Burma. I also know that he made some business contacts while stationed in Singapore, of which he took advantage after the war ended.