On this date in 1945

#3
#3
GreveHaller said:
has he told you stories? if he's still here ask him again and tape the conversation. that generation will be gone soon and that's first hand account of what happened
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This goes for everyone honestly with family members of that era. I had to tape a conversation with my grandpa about his experience in WWII with the Coast Guard for a History project…too young to appreciate it at the time and deleted the recording at some point…
 
#5
#5
Ive told this story before but its a lesson for those who still have relatives from that era.

My wife's grandfather fought in WWII. He was a german and yes he was a Nazi. Reason was that when the war broke out and recruiting began, his options were join the party and he as well as his family would be taken care of or he was on his own. No brainer when you dont know the atrocities going on. I met him once and then passed away in 98. His wife, my wife's step grandmother, was much younger than Opa by about 20+ years so she lived until 2021.

On one of our trips to see her, my father asked if I could ask her some questions about the war. Dad was a huge european war buff. So one night we're in Oma's dining room and I said I wanted to ask about Opa and the war. Mind you this was me asking in english then translated thru my wife. Oma opened up and told us about what Opa went thru. Sent to France to fight, injured and sent back to Germany, after recovery sent to Russia to fight, being caught, sent to POW camp above the Artic Circle, being released and having to walk all the way back to Berlin. Then she starte telling us of her young life during the war. Being sent to the country out of war's way, learning to milk cows and make butter, etc.. Once the war was over the Russians terrorized the children and she ran away. Got on a train to Berlin but the Russians captured it and they had to walk to the remainder. She arrived to a Berlin ravaged by war and was taken in by a family. Every day she went to the train station asking if anyone was going to Berlin and if so she gave them a letter addressed to her mom and where she was. Eventually there was a knock on the door and mom found her.

That's a quick synopsis of the conversation. I started out writing everything she said then remembered I had my iPod and started recording. This was a history I've never heard as was amazed. In the end I thanked her for telling me but more than anything telling the story in front of my then teenaged son. He was able to hear first hand accounts of things we are never taught in school.

The recordings are some of my most prized possessions
 
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#6
#6
GreveHaller said:
has he told you stories? if he's still here ask him again and tape the conversation. that generation will be gone soon and that's first hand account of what happened
Click to expand...
He died in 2012. He never spoke about it until my son had a HS project to interview someone who was at a historic event.
He said the navy lined up in a circle and sailed arounf firing broadsides at the island, thousands of rounds. He didn't think they killed a single Jap. The mountain was honeycombed with caves, and that's where the Japs were. They had to fight up the mountain. They had to fire teargas into each cave then fire flamethrowers and machine guns into the cave.
This went on for weeks along with Kamakazi attacks from the Japs. There were so many bodies that everytime a naval round hit, millions of blow flies would come up off the bodies and literally darken the sky.

We suffered 14,000 casualties there, Japs 32,000. It was a blood bath.
 
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#7
#7
GreveHaller said:
Ive told this story before but its a lesson for those who still have relatives from that era.

My wife's grandfather fought in WWII. He was a german and yes he was a Nazi. Reason was that when the war broke out and recruiting began, his options were join the party and he as well as his family would be taken care of or he was on his own. No brainer when you dont know the atrocities going on. I met him once and then passed away in 98. His wife, my wife's step grandmother, was much younger than Opa by about 20+ years so she lived until 2021.

On one of our trips to see her, my father asked if I could ask her some questions about the war. Dad was a huge european war buff. So one night we're in Oma's dining room and I said I wanted to ask about Opa and the war. Mind you this was me asking in english then translated thru my wife. Oma opened up and told us about what Opa went thru. Sent to France to fight, injured and sent back to Germany, after recovery sent to Russia to fight, being caught, sent to POW camp above the Artic Circle, being released and having to walk all the way back to Berlin. Then she starte telling us of her young life during the war. Being sent to the country out of war's way, learning to milk cows and make butter, etc.. Once the war was over the Russians terrorized the children and she ran away. Got on a train to Berlin but the Russians captured it and they had to walk to the remainder. She arrived to a Berlin ravaged by war and was taken in by a family. Every day she went to the train station asking if anyone was going to Berlin and if so she gave them a letter addressed to her mom and where she was. Eventually there was a knock on the door and mom found her.

That's a quick synopsis of the conversation. I started out writing everything she said then remembered I had my iPod and started recording. This was a history I've never heard as was amazed. In the end I thanked her for telling me but more than anything telling the story in front of my then teenaged son. He was able to hear first hand accounts of things we are never taught in school.

The recordings are some of my most prized possessions
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In my youth I worked for a F-500. Our chief applications engineer had been a Luftwaffe pilot. They were extremely rare. My uncle flew 74 missions in a P-47 Thunderbolt. That was considered extremely high as the life expectancy of a fighter pilot wasn't good. This Luftwaffe pilot flew over 600. They flew until the war ended or they died.
 
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#9
#9
ZippyMorocco said:
In my youth I worked for a F-500. Our chief applications engineer had been a Luftwaffe pilot. They were extremely rare. My uncle flew 74 missions in a P-47 Thunderbolt. That was considered extremely high as the life expectancy of a fighter pilot wasn't good. This Luftwaffe pilot flew over 600. They flew until the war ended or they died.
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Look at a list of top fighter aces of all time. The first non-German on the list is a Finn with 94 victories flying for the Luftwaffe and he's not even in the top 100.
 
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#12
#12
My Papaw served and fought during WW2 as a Corporal. He spent time in New Guinea and other islands throughout the Pacific. Thankfully, he survived many years after the war and passed away when I was in my early 20s. He was one of the most admirable people on the planet. During my childhood and teenage years, he shared many accounts about the war. Surprisingly, he said that while the Japanese were tough, nature and the elements were just as bad in many cases.

He told me of one instance when he and his unit were on some remote island out in the middle of the Pacific and the entire camp was washed away by "a heck of a large wave" as he descried (assuming he meant tsunami). He said that they were given a very short notice from officers on higher ground to literally "run to the hills" and leave camp immediately. All of the soldiers made it out alive except for one. One private was in his tent cleaning a firearm and was slammed against a palm tree by the wave snapping him like a twig.

Before the war, my Grandfather was an avid fisherman and captured frogs & turtles. He said during the depression he along with his other brothers had to learn skills in order to make money. He sold mainly catfish and frog legs to local restaurants to make a living. He posseted more outdoor skills than any other person I have met in my life.
Apparently, just about every island he was stationed during the war had a dangerous poisonous snake population (king cobras in particular). The tents were not snake proof. They were pitched with elevated wooden boards. The snakes were crafty enough to find openings and crawled inside where the troops were sleeping. Papaw stated that many of the soldiers in his unit were from "big city" places like Detroit, Brooklyn, Boston etc. and referred to him as the hick snake killer from Tennessee. This is not a title or job he embraced. Every evening when he heard shrieks from the tents where the GIs slept it most likely meant that a cobra had invaded. He was given a machete and instructed to kill it. The striking distance of these snakes were easily 6 feet according to him. He grabbed a mop along with a bucket and placed the bucket on top of the mop making it appear as a human head. The mop was shoved in the direction of the snake and once it snapped, he would move to the opposite side chopping its head off. This order from his CO happened multiple times. What a set of stones that guy had. I asked later on why in the hell didn't he just shoot the snakes. He called me a DA and said the Japanese in many instances weren't very far away and gunfire would alert them to their position.

Papaw took me on hundreds of camping and fishing trips during my youth. He could start a fire almost instantly and cooked up the best campfire fried catfish you could imagine. I am eternally grateful for everything he taught me. He was most importantly, a man of his word.
 
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#14
#14
ZippyMorocco said:
He was the Luftwaffe pilot
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Cannot find him on any list of aces, including those of countries of men who flew for the Luftwaffe. Perhaps, he did not make ace, although flying 600 missions, I find that hard to believe with the thought he would have been pulled out of a fighter squadron with that low a ratio of kills to missions?. Perhaps he flew transport or something else?
 
#15
#15
My father fought in WWII, I asked him about it a couple times, he would never talk about it, with one exception.

It was sort of a funny story. I was stationed in Germany in the 60s (USAF) and my parents came over and we toured around Europe together for a month. We were in a small Germany town called Dinkelsbuhl he pointed at a small stone wall and said his platoon was behind this wall and pointed to a stone arched gate to the city and said the Germans were over there. He said we were trying to kill each other when a chicken came out of that door (pointing to a door to our right). He said everyone, Germans and Americans, stopped shooting till the chicken was safely out of harms way. He said we all knew the value of a fresh egg during the war.

At his funeral was the first time my mother would tell me what she knew. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, was wounded during the battle. She said at one point he was digging a fox hole and his shovel hit a corpse. Later she gave me a box of his things from WWII in that box were pictures he'd taken during the liberation of a concentration camp. I have a better understanding of why he didn't want to talk about it now.
 
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