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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: 70 years ago today (23 February, 1945)
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
The American flag was raised over Iwo Jima
My uncle Owen was in the fifth wave that landed on the beach on Iwo Jima. He was a runner between the command posts during the battle. They had to use runners because other forms of communication were compromised. The messages were written on rice paper. He had orders to eat the messages should he be wounded or about to be captured. Fortunately he did not even get a scratch. He said he grew up playing cowboys and indiians enough to know not to take the same route twice. During the battle he obtained some personal items from a dead Japanese soldier. Throughout the years he had always wanted to return them to the family of the soldier. A few years ago working with the Japanese government he was able to find the family of the soldier, and two years ago he and his son flew to Iwo Jima to return the items to the family.
At the same time, my father arrived off Iwo Jima on a transport the day before the island was declared secured. Dad was actually a construction engineer in the Army. He was stationed in the Philippines and had rotated back to the United States. When he was to return to the Philippines his transport was diverted to Iwo Jima. Even though he never went on shore at Iwo Jima he was able to get a battle stripe and 10 extra points towards eventual discharge. He was the envy of his battalion when he finally returned to it in the Philippines.
Do any of you have any family history of WWII you would like to share?
[ 24. February 2015, 03:10: Message edited by: Gramps49 ]
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
While war is not very Heavenly, family recollections are, so I'm moving this thread over there.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
My grandfather was at Kohima, one of the two battles that turned the Japanese back from India. This battle was fought on the district commissioner's estate, famously with the Battle of the Tennis Court. I used to think this had the Japs and the Brits at either end of the court, taking pot shots at each other for a couple of days. Wrong: they were on either side, taking pot shots at each other for a couple of days. That's how close it was.
No anecdotes to relate, just a bit of family history I'm very proud of.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
My dad didn't talk about the war much but later in life he asked me to have the photo of my mum [that he carried throughout the North African, Sicilian and Italian campaigns] scanned and renovated - I got this done and gave copies to my siblings. I am now the proud owner of the original and have my scanned and renovated and mounted copy on the shelf opposite where I am now sitting amongst my collection of important photos.
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I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
My dad, the late Harry Masser Jr, was gunnery officer on the USS New Mexico. It was the flagship of the class. He had gone through Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) and was called to active duty when he was an engineering student in southern California. I do not remember, if I ever knew, whether he was at USC or UCLA.
He served from 1942-1945. In 1945, his ship caught a kamikaze in its stack. Dad told me how grisly was the scene when bits of sailors who had died in the attack rained down on the ship. Today, I still think people who buy Mitsubishi cars or Kawasaki motorcycles dishonor the war dead. I have a B&W photo of the attack. My brother gave it to me at Dad's wake before he was buried at sea. He was a war hero.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
Neither of my grandfathers saw active service - one was in a reserved occupation (farmer) while the other was invalided out of the army as soon as he turned up (dodgy ankles, I believe).
My grandmothers probably did more to further the war effort - they both worked at the local car factory building Lancaster bombers for the RAF.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
In the predictive way of dreams I had one last night about my mother in the Blitz. She was in Belfast for the raids in 1941. They were in April and May, and all that summer she and others would go and sleep out in the hills above the city - 'and going into work and the leaves in your hair' (plus 50% of the housing stock was damaged in the raids).
After that she moved, with her brother and sister in law, to the south of England and worked in a munitions factory - and got bombed some more.
My father was in the police, his brother in the RAF, a couple of aunts were in Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps and most other rellies lived in the Free State and smuggled stuff. As everyone did. Another regular thread of maternal reminiscence was about the various stratagems for getting tea, sugar, butter and nylons through Customs.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
One grandfather was a farmer so didn't go - he did serve as a rough equivalent of Private Pike in the local Home Guard (sample of enemy engagement, patrolling one one night in 1940 and seeing a chap up a telegraph pole in the middle of a field and deciding he must be a German spy, so taking away his ladder. When they came back the next morning they discovered a very cold, and quite angry, employee of the GPO still clinging to the top of the pole 60 feet up).
My grandmother, his later wife, spent the war dashing about with other members of the county set as a member of the FANY - which was what "naice" girls did instead of just joining the ATS.... Having said that, they were a brave lot the FANY, providing many of the notable female members of SOE.
Nothing *quite* so glam for Grandmother though, she worked on the telephone exchange for the Royal family (another quality FANY gig), and went on a few dates with Richard Todd (linking nicely to the new "classic Hollywood" thread), along with the usual run of American pilots. She's in some of the photos of Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square on VE day.
Other grandmother, like Marvin's, was in the factories, making parts for Lancasters - and occasionally dancing on the workbench wearing them for the amusement of her colleagues, but down in Croydon (I've sort of assumed here for some reason that Marvin's were in Castle Bromwich or similar, no idea why).
Then she got pregnant with my uncle, so was off work. One night, 8 months pregnant, in January 1944, she went off to the cinema. She was knackered - understandably - so went to the local fleapit instead of the much posher Davis Cinema (one of the largest in the country and quite famous).
That night, the Davis got bombed. Her mother (spending the night in a communal air raid shelter) assumed she had been in it as the news spread, until she saw her back in their own kitchen the next morning.
Her husband, my other grandfather, was in the RAOC, in the Western Desert with the 8th Army. He once told me about doing a radio maintenance exam under fire in the hills above Tunis one Christmas day, before eating his Christmas dinner from a mess tin.
He fought all the way up Italy, and spent a period as a guard at a POW camp for captured Italians. his reflection was that none of the Italians wanted to fight at all, it was the Germans you had to be wary of.
As things hotted up at Monte Cassino, there were what you might call "developments."
First, they came for the POW camp's machine guns.
Then they came for their rifles - "oh, you can guard the POWs with this pick handles."
Then, they ran short of men, so they came for the guards... According to granddad they put the senior Italian officer on his honour that no one would escape (in fairness, and retrospect, a completely reasonable assumption!) and left him in charge. Then bundled into trucks and drove off.
They never quite got to Monte Cassino as it fell - luckily, as it was bloody awful and my Great Uncle Bill was there anyway as a stretcher bearer and that could have been a tough meeting - and when they got back the Italian prisoners made them an enormous "welcome home" dinner...
He only went abroad once after the war - and then just so my grandma could say she'd been.
Stock response to anywhere my mum and dad went:
"What do you want to go there for? I was there in the war - horrible place"
Mum: "I think it might have changed a bit, Dad....."
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
My father also avoided buying Japanese or German vehicles while he was alive for the same reason about dishonoring the war dead.
My attitude is that we need to be able to reconcile with our former enemies. What happened has happened. Pray it never gets to that point again.
Now all vehicles have international components. Your car likely has chips in it that were made in Japan. Are you going to stop driving it because doing so dishonors the dead? Hardly.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
The Washington National Cathedral has a stained glass window depicting the landing at Iwo Jima, in its War Memorial Chapel. Here is an image. (It's on the Cathedral's FB timeline, which I believe is a public site.)
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
In February 1945 my Dad was in Iraq with the RAF. The Rashid Ali revolt (backed by Germany) was well in the past and it was pretty quiet for wartime, but they had been warned that they would be moving soon, which everyone took to mean the Far East, to support the invasion of Japan, which no-one fancied.
Father-in-law was in Egypt: on V-E night they hijacked the last train frain from Cairo to Heliopolis!
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
One grandfather served most of the war as ground crew on a Halifax squadron in the North of England- probably safer than my grandmother who was bringing up two kids in suburban South London. Other one was called up into the Royal Engineers at Woolwich (not too far from home in Bermondsey) in 1940, got a discharge on grounds of poor eyesight within 100 days, and spent the rest of the war doing minor black market things.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
My father worked at a local colliery and wsa in the home giard. He remembered seeing German bombers come up our valley from bombing Cardiff. The biggest coal tip in Wales was the other side of the valley - apparently the bombers used it as a landmark to know when to change direction.
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
One of the things I find interesting is that WWII is slowly becoming history. When I was young, it had some urgency to me. WWI didn't, that was history. But now, WWII is longer ago than WWI was when I was born.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
When I was born the only people who didn't remember the war were children. It was very much part of the national consciousness and a living thing. I grew up with the stories and anecdotes, loved hearing about it and absorbed it as part of life.
My father had been called up as a teenager, and opted for the Navy (breaking the Army tradition of joining the Royal Artillery, but my grandfather said that while you might go hungry and without shelter in the Army, the Navy always looked after its own). He was a radio/telegraph operator, got seconded to the Indian Navy and had a great time exploring India and Ceylon. I don't know how he made it to Darjeeling and Simla but he did and there is an album of photos of him clearly enjoying the sights of India. Meanwhile the rest of the family carried on living through the Blitz in London.
At some stage Dad was then posted back to Europe and was involved in the Dunkirk rescue. He also had commando training (and acquired an undeservedly fearsome reputation amongst his little brother's schoolfriends).
He had a far better war than my uncle (who married Dad's sister) who was captured by the Japanese and made to work on the Burma Railway. He was shot by them resulting in a wound that never healed properly and needed dressing to the day he died.
I used to pester Dad for stories about his experiences during the war, and I think it says something that he always managed to come up with something interesting and enjoyable to keep a child entertained, when war is generally a grim, very adult business interspersed with long periods of tedium. As a result of his stories I longed to join the Navy myself.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
Our family's war record is not particularly glorious: my father was drafted into the US Navy on VJ day when everyone else was celebrating in the streets. He spent a year or so at a base in San Francisco Bay before being discharged. My great-uncle walked a few miles into town to enlist for WWI, but when he was almost there he heard them celebrating the armistice so he turned around and walked back home. My grandmother was the one who actually was on the front - she served as a nurse in France during WWI.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I sense this too LeRoc. It was central to my understanding of the world given the involvement of my family on both sides. Perhaps my story will bring a different take given where and with what countries my family members served.
About 71 years ago, my cousin was captured at Monte Cassino in Italy by Americans and shipped to Grand Rapids, Michigan as a POW. He was with the German 94th Infantry Division. He was killed on October 1945 while a POW. We've located his grave. This completed the obliteration of the generation of German cousins I have. All who served with the Wehrmacht (Germany Army) were killed, and of 5 families of relatives, 4 were also completely destroyed by carpet bombing of the Rhineland where they had fled to avoid being in the Russian occupied areas.
My father's family had fled Berlin in 1937. My grandfather's financial dealings were under scrutiny. They got to Amsterdam where he got a job with a Dutch company and relocated to the Dutch East Indies where my aunt was born, presciently applying and being given British citizenship in Singapore, which they escaped from via Hong Kong just after Pearl Habour. They ended up in Toronto where my father joined the Canadian Army and was being trained to invade Norway as ski troops, which never happened.
My father in law served with the Regina Rifles which participated in the liberation of Netherlands and particularly recalled the Hunger Winter. He and my mother in law revisited Appeldoorn in 1994 and stayed with a lovely Dutch family who visited us in Canada 2 years later.
Of my mother's side of the family, all my uncles served in the Canadian army or navy and all survived; I met them all. The Cdn army and navy were the third largest at the time of the allies.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
About 71 years ago, my cousin was captured at Monte Cassino in Italy by Americans and shipped to Grand Rapids, Michigan as a POW. He was with the German 94th Infantry Division. He was killed on October 1945 while a POW.
I'm sorry to hear that no prophet - do you know how he died, while a prisoner?
My uncle, dead these 5 or 6 years, was an RASC lorry driver at Monte Cassino. He was a racist, and in other ways too a pretty unpleasant man. But in the year before his death, when he had forgotten his own name let alone mine, he would sometimes ask me in tears whether he could have "done anything for that little yank darkie we left crying in the shell-hole with his legs blown orf".
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
[QUOTE]About 71 years ago, my cousin was captured at Monte Cassino in Italy by Americans and shipped to Grand Rapids, Michigan as a POW. He was with the German 94th Infantry Division. He was killed on October 1945 while a POW.
The basic story is actually in wikipedia for Blissfield, Michigan; Link. The date is actually Oct 31, 1945. My sister managed to obtain a picture of the grave. I have thought to go there to see in person, though haven't figured out precisely why I would want to.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
no prophet's flag is set so...: He and my mother in law revisited Appeldoorn in 1994 and stayed with a lovely Dutch family who visited us in Canada 2 years later.
Apeldoorn, one p. I know this town well.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
Dad was in a glider at Pegasus Bridge. He never spoke about the war (except for one or two funny stories, as per Ariel above).
A few years before he died, we found a story about him in a book about D Day. He denied it was him: for us, it was a story, for him, it was when he shot 5 men. My dad was the sweetest, gentlest man out*, I can't begin to imagine how he felt.
*One story he did tell was that he volunteered for the SAS but was rejected out of hand, because he didn't have 'the killer instinct'. Absurdly, I was always quite proud of him for that.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Wow. M's father.
I send my heartfelt gratitude for what these brave, lost people went through so that I've only ever known peacetime.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
quote:
About 71 years ago, my cousin was captured at Monte Cassino in Italy by Americans and shipped to Grand Rapids, Michigan as a POW. He was with the German 94th Infantry Division. He was killed on October 1945 while a POW.
The basic story is actually in wikipedia for Blissfield, Michigan; Link. The date is actually Oct 31, 1945. My sister managed to obtain a picture of the grave. I have thought to go there to see in person, though haven't figured out precisely why I would want to.
Perhaps of limited interest, but I located more complete info just now:
the POWs who died on 31 Oct 1945 are the ones of interest to me. The second is of newspaper cuttings of the 04 Nov 1945 funerals and details.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
My father was 14 when the war ended so too young to serve, and avoided conscription at 18 by getting a job on a farm (as a farm boy anyway, this wasn't such a big step), but Essex was right under substantial parts of the Battle of Britain, in fact one day his cousin captured two German airmen who'd baled out over his farm. Later on Essex was heaving with airfields so he remembers aircraft galore - counting over 80 Flying Fortresses going over one morning, for example.
In a strange twist, he remembers watching Jeeps being parachuted onto the local airfield, and I've met one of the pilots who was dropping them. Similarly he remembers Lancasters thundering overhead at zero feet, not long before the Dams raid was announced (Essex not being far off a line between Scampton and Reculver... could be!), and I've met two of the last three Dambusters.
His great uncle fought at Delhi in 1857. Given that, if the International Criminal Court had existed then, they'd still be sorting out the atrocities committed by both sides today, you have to wonder what he saw and did...
Not something often said round here, but I think Yorick has hit the nail on the head. Amen to that.
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
Posts: 3574 | From: The wardrobe of my soul | Registered: Jul 2007
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
My father was in a reserved occupation - he was an engineer working on submarine design in one of the Clyde ship-yards. He was, however, in the Home Guard, so I can legitimately refer to it as "Dad's Army". ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
To quote him: "I was the young chap - I was Private Pike".
Stupid boy. ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
My grandfather was also in a reserved occupation, something to do with making planes? But got drafted in the last couple months or so anyway, only too late to go anywhere.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Nicolemr
Shipmate
# 28
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Posted
My father was the gunner in an armored car first in North Africa and then in Italy. He was wounded outside Salerno, just before the fall of Rome. He was left permanetly disabled with a partially paralyzed arm. Oddly enough, although his parents knew he was alive, he was reported dead in some places... he had the uncanny experience of reading newspaper reports of his own death, and his parents were offered condolences by people who were baffled by their responses that "oh it could have been worse."
My uncle (by marriage) kept being rejected by the armed forces for medical reasons (something to do with the bones in his leg) so finally in desperation to join he went to Canada and ultimately ended up an ambulance driver, also in Italy. Once, just like a scene from a movie, the medic in his crew delivered the baby of an Italian peasant girl.
My great uncle (my grandfather's brother) was a weatherman somewhere in the Pacific. He was wounded by a Japanese sniper but not badly enough to be sent home.
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On pilgrimage in the endless realms of Cyberia, currently traveling by ship. Now with live journal!
Posts: 11803 | From: New York City "The City Carries On" | Registered: May 2001
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
My Grandad nearly got shipped of to the Boer war. He was a carpenter and was building stalls for the horses in the hold of the ship and didn't realise it had sailed. Fortunately he was discovered before the ship was through the head of the harbour and hitched a ride back to the nearest wharf with the Pilot boat.
He was 3 hours late for his tea and Grandma was not pleased.
Huia
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
My Mum was a teenager growing up in Baltimore, MD
My Dad saw action throughout WW2 in the desert, Italy and the Normandy landings where he became the youngest Major in the history of the British army at that time and received the MC. He never really talked about the war until the last ten or so years of his life. He used to go into local schools around Remembrance day and tell the children about the war and urge them to do all they could to prevent such a thing ever happening again.He also did some recordings for the Imperial War museum which he eventually let me hear- they were deeply moving. How they coped with all they did is beyond me.
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
On the Private Pike theme, I was talking to a member of the House of Lords (thought I'd get that in ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ) a few years back who joined the Home Guard as a teenager. So at 16, he was given a shotgun, dropped off at the local beach by himself and told to guard it against the invasion...
(it was a Scottish beach, where I don't think they were expecting the invasion to come)
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Ferijen
Shipmate
# 4719
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
He also did some recordings for the Imperial War museum which he eventually let me hear- they were deeply moving. How they coped with all they did is beyond me.
My grandad did an interview for the Imperial War Museum too. You can
hear his online, its possible you can hear your father's too.
I've not listened to my Grandad's yet, although came across it as there's a snippet of them on a website elsewhere. It was odd enough hearing his voice on quite a friendly topic (tidying up his uniform with needle and thread skills).
His best friend lies in Italy, and I don't think he ever got over that. However, in a small world thing, my sister now lives about 25 minutes drive from that cemetery and when I got married in Italy, I left my bouquet on his grave.
Posts: 3259 | From: UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
My Grandad was also Private Pike. He couldn’t be called up on account of being a coalminer. Actually I think most of his unit was made up of fairly young men, because at the time pretty much all the men in the village worked down the Pit. He always seemed to have enjoyed it to me. His favourite Home Guard story involves an exercise where you had to throw your helmet forward across the field and then crawl after it. Inevitably someone’s helmet ended up in the middle of a cowpat . He had Liverpudlian evacuees staying with his family (rural North Wales). IIRC the family already had five or six children so I imagine the house must have been rather crowded.
My Gran worked in the Co-op doling out everyone’s rations. Sixty years later, she could still tell you exactly how many ounces of everything you were allowed.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
Speaking of the Home Guard, Sir Robin Day was in the Essex Home Guard, though a different battalion to my grandfather, and always claimed that he viewed Dad's Army as a documentary!
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
Posts: 3574 | From: The wardrobe of my soul | Registered: Jul 2007
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
My Gran worked in the Co-op doling out everyone’s rations. Sixty years later, she could still tell you exactly how many ounces of everything you were allowed.
I think the role of rationing in the courtship process has been overlooked - my granddad, on leave in Croydon at the height of the blitz, hooked his future wife with the line:
"Would you like a bar of chocolate?"
"Yes"
[wistfully] "So would I."
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Lord Jestocost
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# 12909
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Posted
My great aunt (sister of my Kohima granddad) was registered blind so relied on audiobooks for entertainment. As a birthday present I once recorded a book for her myself. When she heard of this she asked if I could put it on CD, and I thought, "for an old bird you're pretty cool."
Then at her funeral I learned she had been a Wren in charge of one of the Bletchley satellite stations. Technology held no terrors for her.
Towards the end of the war she met her husband, a former Captain RN. In the mid 70s, I think, when Bletchley was declassified, she apparently breathed a sigh of relief, said "finally!" and began to tell him a few home truths about his naval career that he had never known she knew.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
My grandfather was already in the regulars when war broke out, I think he was in the Royal Artillery. I assume he was in Europe at the beginning of the war but I never heard him discuss it as his favourite stories where about being in Burma. By far the best one in my child eyes was the one after he received a head injury in an explosion. He was in a field hospital in the jungle (not sure if this was in Burma or India) and there was a Ghurka in the bed next door. A strange smell came from his cupboard so one day while the man was out performing his ablutions they had a look in it. There they found a box containing a number of human ears!
My Dad's Dad never spoke of the war. He was in the medical corps (I have his St John's home nursing book) and presumably a pacifist for religious reasons. I do know he was in India though as he bought my father a pretty marble model of the Taj Mahal.
I'm doing at 1915 re-enactment at a manor this summer and I am playing a Red Cross trained nurse home on leave from France. I'm reading lots of fascinating nurse and VAD diaries at the moment.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ferijen:
My grandad did an interview for the Imperial War Museum too. You can
hear his online, its possible you can hear your father's too.
Thanks, I just found my Dad's interview- feeling a bit odd now!
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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The Rogue
Shipmate
# 2275
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Posted
One of my grandfathers worked for a shipping line in London and we reckon he probably had a lot to do during the war but he never spoke about it. We understand that he was particularly involved around organising the Dunkirk evacuation although I don't know how organised the whole thing was.
His son (my dad) was ten when the second world war broke out and he lived in London. One memory he has spoken about is waking up after a bomb fell not too far away and the plaster fell from the ceiling onto his bed. I am perhaps outing myself by linking to this. Dad did post on the ship under the name koheleth and died a few years ago.
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If everyone starts thinking outside the box does outside the box come back inside?
Posts: 2507 | From: Toton | Registered: Feb 2002
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ArachnidinElmet
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# 17346
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Posted
My Gran was a teenager in German-occupied Belgium. She was brought up by her aunt who ran a café (think 'Allo 'Allo with clogs). She'd tell the story of an older German officer who came in to drink. He had served in WWI and, being career military, thought the whole of WWII was a massive mistake. He was the one who saved my Gran from being arrested when she turned down the attentions of a younger soldier by pushing him in the general direction of an open fire.
Her home in Mechelen, a rail hub for forced labour into Germany (which is what happened to my great-uncle), had been consistently bombed by the Allies . Gran, not being best pleased at being bombed swore to 'scratch the eyes out' of whichever English soldier she met first. She ended up marrying him! My Grandad was a Royal Engineer in the liberating force. He was a volunteer and so still in the army and trying to get back from his post in Berlin (he was a guard at the Brandenberg Gates) when my Mum was born in 1946.
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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
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Lord Jestocost
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# 12909
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Posted
This is family only by Lady J's marriage to her first husband, but ...
The Stepson's great-uncle flew in Lancasters. One day their plane was so badly shot up they (a) had to abort the raid, (b) couldn't even open the bomb doors to shed their load or (c) lower the undercarriage ... So they pancaked back home, with a full bomb load, and everyone walked away except the pilot. The pilot suffered a minor injury and took sick leave. Everyone else rotated into another plane which was lost over Munich with all hands.
As of a couple of years ago, when we learnt this, the pilot was still alive and maintaining a website in memory of his old crew.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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St. Gwladys
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# 14504
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Posted
A friend of ours whose Dad was in the Home Guard reckoned that every situation featured in Dad's Army happened in real life.
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
I heard somewhere that it was based on Jimmy Perry and David Croft's experiences in the Home Guard.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I met an old Kenyan man who had been conscripted to fight. All he knew was that he never knew where they were going or why, but they were marching for months on end and it sounded like they had marched all the way to Egypt to fight Italian troops and back.
He was demobbed with little to show for his trouble, and was sought after by the Mau mau as were many veterans of the war with their knowledge of firearms. He resisted getting involved and survived that ordeal as well, fortunately escaping interment as well.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Albertus
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# 13356
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Posted
I met a man who'd been a muleteer in Burma. He spoke wrmly of the African troops he served alongside, and said what good sentries they were: they would appranetly lie hidden and as you passed they would touch your ankle to identify you (gaiters for British troops, pottees for Japanese). He remembered the sense of a sudden touch, then looking down and seeing a black soldier looking up at him, bayonet in hand, and nodding 'OK, Johnny' and letting him pass on.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Loving the anecdotes on this thread! Thanks all for sharing these fascinating stories.
quote:
Originally posted by Heavenly Anarchist:
My grandfather was already in the regulars when war broke out, I think he was in the Royal Artillery. I assume he was in Europe at the beginning of the war but I never heard him discuss it as his favourite stories where about being in Burma.
I wonder if he ever met my uncle! He was also in the Royal Artillery and in Burma.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Gramps49
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# 16378
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Posted
My father in law was actually too young to go into WWI and too old to go into WWII. However, he also was in the American Home Guard and guarded beaches off of Queens NY during WWII.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
ArachnidinElmet: my Mum was born in 1946.
My mother was born exactly 9 months after that part of the Netherlands was liberated. We sometimes joke that my *real* grandfather was a Canadian soldier ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Graven Image
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# 8755
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Posted
My dad who was a farmer and did not go to war. It was decided by the war department that his services as a farmer were needed at home. His sisters worked for the US Treasury and we found out years later her job included paying spies for the allies.
Posts: 2641 | From: Third planet from the sun. USA | Registered: Nov 2004
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