Boomers: Do you remember the WWII stories your fathers and grandfathers used to tell? (emotionally, conversation)
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My relatives, who served, did not want to talk about it.
Neither did my father. I never got the impression it was because of some traumatic memory but I know he resented the disruption to his life and preferred to dismiss it. He didn't get nostalgic about much of anything and camaraderie-related things didn't seem to interest him. I vaguely recall a a couple other relatives mentioning their service years but no one seemed all that focused on them.
Last edited by Parnassia; 01-24-2022 at 12:49 PM..
Generally true. They might talk about the food or the weather, or in proper audience, some of the bawdier stories. But not the grim realities of combat.
My elders who had been in serious combat did not speak of the real nitty-gritty to me until near the ends of their lives...and that was decades after I'd retired from my own military career.
Typically, it went, "Let's go to the VFW." Then, after a couple of beers, they would begin to talk. It seemed as though they needed at that time to unburden themselves in their final years.
One of my uncles had been one of the "Chosin Few." Back in 1965, I had been visiting him and my aunt at Ft Leonard Wood. He had been watching a war movie and drinking a bit. I was startled awake that night to hear him screaming at the top of his lungs. When I rushed into their bedroom, he was straddling my aunt, choking her, still screaming.
What I didn't realize at the time (and wouldn't have understood the significance) was that he'd just gotten orders to Vietnam.
A few months before he died, he told me about that battle. He had been in a hand-to-hand struggle with a Chinese soldier, and had to choke the man to death. He said that it seemed to take forever for the light leave the man's eyes.
Unfortunately my father wasn't much for talking. So I have very little idea what it was like for him to serve overseas during WWII and in the U.S. during the Korean War. He served in the Air Force in the CBI Theatre, later on Tinian, and in the SAC during the Korean War as a B-29 mechanic.
He had a photo album of his time in India and China, and the various stops made by the troop ship on the way there, and a few souvenirs he picked up on Tinian after the Japanese abandoned it. But he took the album apart to do presentations with the VFW for local schools when he was in retirement. I'm not sure where most of the photos ended up, which is too bad.
My uncle on my mother's side served in the Navy in Hawaii after he graduated high school in 1944 but never saw combat. The only story I got from him was when he told my grandmother they went down to the beach in their skivvies, she thought he meant flip-flops.
Dad had a fairly traumatic expirence in the army. He was stationed in Cold Bay Alaska.
No one knew we had an attempted invasion of the Japanese at that time on the Aleutian Islands, it was pretty serious.
Because of the trauma of his experiences he did not want his sons to endure such a thing.
I did alternate service for the draft, fighting fires for the CDF.
My father only told two stories. One was one of the people in his company who kept finding treasures along the way and putting them in his truck. This was one of those kind of trucks that would go through water it was meant to go everywhere. He had it so load it up it got stuck in the middle of a creek, and he had to offload everything to get it unstuck and up the other side of the creek. And he lamented losing all his treasures for weeks.
The other story was he was in the Army Corps of Engineers. He talked about building pontoon bridges over the Rhine. I think it was the Rhine, he’s been dead since 1981. And he’d laughingly tell us they’d get them half done, and then the Navy would come down the river in the middle of the night and knock them apart.
It was very much a ha ha, silly navy.
When I first had access to the History channel, it felt like it was all World War II, all the time. And there was a program on about the Army Corps of Engineers building pontoon bridges. More or less.
Thank God I keep Kleenexes near. After five minutes of watching those guys build those bridges under fire from the German army and me scouring those soldier’s faces to see if I could find someone who slightly resembled Don Knotts, and a lot of them did, I could do nothing but cry. Bless my father, it wasn’t funny at all.
And he volunteered to do that. He was safely ensconced in England, being a mechanic on airplanes at an RAF base… he volunteered to go into the Army Corps of Engineers.
And the genealogist’s lament, I do have a copy of his DD 214 I believe it’s called, but there was a fire, and all his other records are gone. So I don’t really know where he was or how long he was there. I just know what medals he qualified for.
Dad had a fairly traumatic expirence in the army. He was stationed in Cold Bay Alaska.
No one knew we had an attempted invasion of the Japanese at that time on the Aleutian Islands, it was pretty serious.
Because of the trauma of his experiences he did not want his sons to endure such a thing.
I did alternate service for the draft, fighting fires for the CDF.
My father didn't talk about experiences during the fighting. And he didn't want me to go to 'Nam. The draft just barely missed me.
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Solly says — Be nice!
