For some reason, this is one of the dates that has always stuck in my head. Use this thread to tell stories about WWII and the people you know who were there. Here's one of mine: When I lived in NM, I become friends with a really nice guy who was well into retirement and walked with a cane due to a severe limp. Turns out, he was in Patton's Army and was wounded late in the war. After we established our friendship, he started opening up and giving me little snippets of his experiences during the war. He would mention something briefly, and then pause, think about it for a bit, and then change the subject, as if he didn't want to remember anything else. We never really had a conversation about the war, but our conversations would, I guess, act as a trigger for him to vocalize these memories at times. One day, I learned he was one of the soldiers who marched to Bastogne to lift the Nazi siege. Upon learning this, I wanted to ask a ton of questions, but refrained and he offered no more info. A few months later, in the dead of winter when it was snowing, we were talking about the weather and the snow in the mountains. Out of the blue, he says something like: "I can't stand to be in the forest when there is snow on the ground. Most people think it is beautiful, but all I can think about is that march and the dead." Besides the thoughts and memories conveyed by the words, I was struck because he said it with what seemed to be a combo of hate and disgust. All the other memories were just stated in a perfunctory way and I never heard that tone from him about any other subject. Not to mention, if he had not talked of Bastogne before, I would not have understood his comment. Of course, as soon as he said it, he paused and then started talking about the weather again. He passed away last year. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ― Plato
I think I've told mine on the bbs before, but whatever. My maternal grandfather was a French farmer and joined the army during the war. Of course, the French surrendered and he was put in a POW camp. My mother was a toddler then. They had a hard time scratching out a living, and she told me how they would burn dried cow manure for fuel. But, her father was keen to get back. He escaped from the camp but was recaptured on the way home. He escaped again and got home, but a neighbor turned him in and he went back to the camp. Finally, he escaped a third time, made it home, and stayed low until the end of the war. October 3rd is the anniversary of his last escape, so I'm supposed to drink a glass of wine for him on that day, though I usually forget. Unfortunately, he spoke in a French patois and, when I was little, I spoke practically no French at all, so I never really heard any other stories from him. That one story was translated to me by my older brother as he told it.
Much respect to those who partook in it, and those of us who celebrate it. Es un mes y un día antes de La Feria De San Fermín en Pamplona.
Unfortunately, as the current rights holder to Band of Brothers, SPIKEtv doesn't remember. Seems like the perfect day to run a marathon...you know, instead of some Jason Statham travesty or Snakes on a Plane. Both of my grandfathers were in the military during WWII, but neither in a fighting role. Growing up Jewish, I've gotten to meet some who were survivors of the camps. My family can trace our roots to eastern Europe, but we have no direct knowledge of any relatives who died in the war. Still, it's something very meaningful to me.
I can't even begin to imagine what these guys were thinking the moment this picture was snapped. Spoiler
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While backpacking through Indonesia I met a WWII Pacific Theater Vet who was returning for the first time to Asia since the war. He didn't talk much about the war but mentioned how brutal the Japanese were but also said he had done things he didn't care to remember either.
Thanks for the thread. It seems like the men who served in that war, the remembrance of this day is dying off little by little over the course of the years. My own father served during WWII. He was a combat veteran of the 82nd and 17th Airborne serving as a glider trooper and saw action as a replacement starting in November of 1944. He was on the right shoulder of the German attack near Stoumont and Trois Point during the Battle of the Bulge. Around Christmas, he was transferred to the 17Abn which was about to enter combat and saw action in several more battles including the "Battle for Dead Man's Ridge" about 10 miles west of Bastogne. http://www.thedropzone.org/europe/bulge/Mclain.html On March 24, 1945, he made his one and only combat drop in a glider pulled by C-47's in Operation Varsity. This combat operation was the last Airborne operation of the war and opened one of the first bridgeheads across the Rhine. You might remember in episode 9 of Band of Brothers Lewis Nixon talking about his particpation in this battle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Varsity Their are so many stories and battles that were fought in that war. It's almost mind boggling. I'll finish with one I just learned the other day. It recounts the actions of Quentin C Aanenson...a pilot in the 391st Fighter Squadron, 366th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force. I saw a bit of an interview of him watching Ken Burn's excellent series "The War" I got curious about the man and found his Wikipedia page. The following is an excerpt from that about his combat experience.
Thanks for this thread Rimmy and everlasting gratitude to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. I never knew my Uncle, who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge around Christmas day (the exact day of his death is unclear). My father didn't tell me this story until several months ago. He was 15 when he found out that his older brother was dead. He had a high school basketball game that night, and his parents made him play, because that's what his brother would have wanted. After the game, all the players and cheerleaders from both teams lined up to voice their sorrow. My mother (who my father knew, but worshipped from afar) was last in line, gave him a hug, but said nothing. The next day he walked her home from school, and they held hands for the first time. Two years later they got engaged (they were both 17). They were married for 59 years when my mom passed two years ago.
That is an absolutely great story! Thanks for the thread, Rimrocker. My experience talking to WWII vets was that those who saw combat wouldn't talk about it. Where I grew up in Southeast Houston, pretty much the entire neighborhood's houses were small homes purchased because of the GI Bill's low interest home loans, and damn near everyone's father was a vet, so I had many that I got to know, some pretty well. The stories you did hear were the ones that didn't involve the violence so many went through. My own father, as I've mentioned here before, saw combat in the Pacific in 1944, and all I knew until I was 30 was that he'd been a radar instructor at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, where he got to shake hands with the actor Tyrone Power, who underwent training there as a Marine aviator, and that Dad had served for a while on the carrier Saratoga. A couple of years before his death, when we were alone one evening, he suddenly started talking about his experience in combat, and I was stunned. That one evening, and then he never mentioned it again. Talking about what happened was such an emotional experience. One of his close friends was killed, and he saw it happen. He also killed and maimed several Japanese sailors. It haunted him, the whole incident. The pilot and co-pilot of a B-25 bomber that had no bombs, ferrying 5 radar experts from the Philippines to Guam, the radar guys taking the machine guns in an attack against a large Japanese submarine that couldn't submerge and eventually shot them down. Dad worked a waist gun. He said that they were so close to the sub that he could see the expressions on the sailor's faces that he hit as he followed the tracers and bullets from his single barrel .50 caliber. He said the pilot was a fool who should have left the sub alone and radioed its position, but they were all eager to take it on when the pilot suggested it. The excitement turned to terror soon enough.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Gen. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which, “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash">#DDay</a> <a href="http://t.co/LttzSckHgO">pic.twitter.com/LttzSckHgO</a></p>— U.S. Dept of Defense (@DeptofDefense) <a href="https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/607185215581085697">June 6, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Today?src=hash">#Today</a> in 1944, 73,000 American forces landed in Normandy on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash">#DDay</a>. 6,603 died <a href="http://t.co/LpjDaoNUNj">pic.twitter.com/LpjDaoNUNj</a></p>— U.S. Embassy France (@USEmbassyFrance) <a href="https://twitter.com/USEmbassyFrance/status/607109725675593728">June 6, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
