WWII Vets - shed some light on our heroes

Anybody in the first wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day was a hero, in my book.

 

My grandfather was on Omaha Beach, on the Christmas before he passed, I finally got up the courage to ask him about the war, no one else in the family spoke but he and I as we sat around the kitchen table, me grilling him, he recounting stories.

We talked until about 2 in the morning, and it was one of the most profound moments in my life.

I love sports, but don't consider any of those guys heroes or role models, and think autographs are silly.

But WW2 vets, and any other vets that have fought for the freedoms of this country, those are my heroes, they deserve the honor - I am proud of my grandfather and wish I could have that conversation again.

DD

 

There's got to be a word beyond "hero" for that. Seriously. That took more than just guts.

 

My grandfather shared as story about that, as his landing craft was hitting the beach a morter went off as the first wave of his company were exiting, it took out about 20 guys, and he was in the back......he slogged to the beach, and got up to the embankment, he said they were trying to dig in using their helmets as 88 shells were going off on the beach, and he said you could hear the whistling of the incomming shells and guys would dump out the sand from their helmets and put them on before the shells hit. He talked about one of the guys who kept forgetting to dump the helmet out before putting it back on his head and they were laughing at him as the sand was sliding down his head with his helmet on.......

One of the things he said to me about the overall experience of WW2, was that it was the best and worst time of his life, a million dollar experience, that he would not pay a plug nickel to go through again.

A great man, my hero.

DD

 

Anyone that served in WWII is a hero to me. I have the utmost respect for them. I am a big time WWII history buff.

I have been to the National Museum of the Pacific War, in Fredericksburg many times. I just find it fascinating as hell. I find the Pacific war the most interesting. Those were some crazy ass battles. Iwo, Peleliu, Okinawa, Guadalcanal, Saipan, and Leyte are my favorites. I also like watching, and reading about the Naval battles. Midway, The Battle of the Coral Sea, The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, I could go on forever, so I wont, lol.

Anytime I see a WWII vet I take the time to shake his hand and tell them thank you, those were some tough dudes.

 

My grandfather was also there when they stormed the beach on D-Day. He never liked to talk about the war much, but he did mention a few things about D-Day. He said that many men didn't even make it to the beach. I think he said something about how a lot of them were jumping ship and were trying to swim to shore but they didn't make it. He also told me he got shot twice, once in the calf, and once in the thigh. He made it out alive and was awarded the purple heart.

It's kinda crazy to think that men actually went through those experiences, but I guess that's part of war. I used to tell my grandpa that it was so cool for him to be a hero, but he would just nod and smile. I could tell he really didn't like to recall the experiences. In fact, my father told me that my grandpa would often wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats. War definitely has a lasting effect.

 

My father was a radar expert during WWII at Corpus Christi, 21 years old and teaching radar to guys much older than he was. This is a story I've told here before. Not content to stay out of harm's way, he volunteered for active duty and ended up on the carrier Saratoga (where he got to shake Tyrone Power's hand when he visited the ship).

After the Saratoga, he was assigned to install radar, with a small group of fellow experts, on capital ships in the Philippines, where we were still heavily engaged with the Japanese. At the end of that tour, he and the other 4 guys (by now, close friends), were put on a B-25 being used to ferry people around. The crew was the pilot and copilot, with no bombs, just the .50 cal. nose guns, the waist guns, and the turret on top. All five were trained on machine guns, as luck would have it. So they're flying to Guam and someone spots a Japanese submarine, a large one (they made some really big subs), that must have had mechanical problems that prevented it from submerging. The pilot, thinking that this was his chance for glory, asked the guys if they could operate the machine guns. Getting an affirmative, he then said, "we're going after that sub."

They dove and strafed the sub, and my father said that crewmen swarmed out of that thing like ants out of a kicked ant hill. My Dad had one of the waist guns, and he said he could see the expressions on the sailors faces as he followed his tracers and took them out, they were so close. They were outmatched, the sub having several antiaircraft guns, with men replacing those they killed and wounded as fast as they went down. Finally, shot full of holes, an engine on fire, the pilot gave it up and radioed a mayday with their position, which is what he should have done in the beginning, instead of trying to sink a sub with a B-25 with no bombs, and radar experts as her crew.

Flying as far from the sub as possible, knowing the Japanese would be extremely ticked off by this point, they then parachuted out and drifted down to rough seas, 8 foot waves. None of the radar guys had parachuted before. The first guy to hit the water was one of my father's friends. He landed wrong, broke his leg, the bone sticking through and bleeding, and was immediately swarmed by sharks. Everyone else watched this play out as they came down. Dad said he nearly drowned getting the chute off, and then nearly drowned blowing up his Mae West lifejacket, but the rest of them all made it. The sharks quickly discovered them and started circling. They grouped themselves together, splashing and yelling when one made a run at them. After several hours of this, with darkness coming near, they were spotted by a PT boat. Dad said that when one of the sailors stuck out his arm to pull him aboard, he was so desperate to get out of the water that he climbed it like a rope. Turned out that the sailor was from East Texas.

He spent months recovering from exposure at Pearl Harbor. On VE day, every gun in the area started shooting in celebration. The patients at the hospital, overlooking the harbor, thought that somehow the Japanese had managed another attack, but quickly found out the reason. The doctors pulled out some "medicinal alcohol" and they toasted the end of the war in Europe. I didn't hear this story until I was over 30, a year before Dad died. I think he knew his time was short, and he needed to get it off his chest. He felt bad about losing a close friend because of a reckless pilot, and he felt bad about the sailors he killed in what, in retrospect, he realized was a needless action.

I wouldn't call Dad a hero, because were he living, it would piss him off, but I can't imagine doing what he did. That was indeed the Greatest Generation.

 

My Grandfather was in the Pacific in the Army-Airforce. (The Airforce was still part of the Army in the early days of the war) He was an airplane mechanic. Ne never really talked about the things that happened to him. He did talk about seeing giant lizards on some of the Islands he visited, though. An engine dropped on him while he was working on it and he ended up coming back to San Antonio to train others. He had two sets of wings, his everyday and his dress. I have his everyday wings sitting on my desk right now. I've posted this photo before, he's the one on the right.

 

I recall seeing the photo. He's a good looking guy in his uniform. Is the image on the left a relative from WWI? Looks like it to me. -

 

Yes, runs in the family :grin:. That's his Father. Here's a pic of his wings.

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My grandfather was a doctor in the Navy, never in harms way. But he was the chief medical officer of the armed forces in WWII. President Truman asked him to provide him with a report of expected human casualties from dropping an atom bomb, and what the medical response should be and long term effects.

I can only imagine being briefed by the President that the atom bomb is ready to go, and that you are being asked to prepare him for using it. I'd be like, "what? wtf...I have no idea. This is all new to me."

 

Crazy coincidence. I like to travel around backroads of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to visit small towns. I stopped off at a new antique store in Alma, Arkansas a while back and saw a memory book and some old pics. The memory book was of a 7th grader from back around 1927 which I thought was neat since I have a thing for old photographs, periodicals, etc. But I also got a pack of stuff that included old photographs. One was of a guy that was taken in apparently in Montezuma, Iowa back in 1933, the year he graduated. On the back it gave his name (Paul Terrell O'Neal) and his parents' names. I was wondering how the pic ended up in Arkansas and what his story was. I thought maybe I could possibly return the pic. I just decided to research this a bit, and it turns out the guy was born in 1914, passed away in 1990 from cancer in Bentonville, Arkansas and is buried back in his hometown of Montezuma, Iowa. He served in the 73rd Bomber Squadron in WWII, but I'm unsure what his role was in it. He came back and was apparently an electrical engineer and operated his own tv repair store. No kids or spouse apparently, either.

I kind of think it's cool to know I'm holding a pic of a guy who, in some way, helped keep this country an open and free democracy, thereby allowing my family to come here 30 years later and prosper. It's kind of neat that he once probably held this picture, as well. So thanks, Mr. Paul O'Neal - here's to you living on in the Interwebs.

 

My grandfather served he talked about many things that were fascinating to hear whether it be growing up in the depression, seeing the Yankees, the day of pearl harbor and what life was generally like back than.

But he was brief on his exact role in the War... I do know he was involved in China Burma India Theater. I have seen fascinating pictures one he is with a few guys posing with a tiger they hunted down. Another he is holding a human skull. And my favorite one he is front of a plane that has a lady in a bikini painted on it...

It was always great to talk to him esp. when I was old enough to appreciate it. He passed in 09 it was crazy to talk to him when his mind started to go as he couldnt remember hardly anything on whats happening that day and forgot a lot of peoples names and faces but when he started talking about the past he could remember exact days from 60 years ago. My grandmother who was with him his last night said he was talking in his sleep to names she never knew and they were talking about the war....
So I guess war is something you never do forget..

My other grandfather served as well but I was just a kid when he passed and my mother has no clue what he did and my grandmother never liked talking about it with anybody

 

Even crazier? Both of the men in my photo are from Barnes City, Iowa. Very near Motezuma. Spent a lot of weekends in my youth there. My grandparents are both buried in the BC cemetary with my Uncle and Aunt.

 

I don't know much about my family's WWII history but my grandfather on my Mom's side was involved in ROC government in Nanjing and probably fled to Chengdu during the war.

In the late 90's I was backpacking through Indonesia and I met a WWII Vet at a temple in Java. He was a Marine who had fought in the Pacific theater and hadn't been to Asia since the war. He told me how terrible the experience was and how he had did many horrible things like taking skulls and teeth of Japanese soldiers as trophies. To him the war hadn't been something that was honorable or glorious but something that had to be done.

 

My Grandfather was from Des Moines Iowa.....

DD

 

Anybody put his or her life on the line for a rightous cause is a hero.