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My father served in the Army Air Corp from late 1941 till the end of WWII. Late in 1941, gent serving on the local draft board dropped in my grand parents home to tell them to let my Dad know he has a low draft number and would be one of the first to be drafted....that he might want to join some service he'd like to be in. Dad will join the Army Air Corp and will be finishing up his basic/advanced training when Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He will become an armorer in the air corp and be assigned to the 312th Light Bomber Squadron. In the 312th, which will be sent to the Pacific in 1943, as part of the 5th Air Force....MacArthurs Air Force. They should have gone overseas earlier, but the squadron was created to be a dive bomber unit, using the army version of the navy Douglas dive bomber. They were the best dive bomber squadron in the Army Air Force....LOL, they were the only unit with them. Army decided the plane was too obsolete to use and equipped their squadron with the A-20 Havoc light bomber, which was another version of the better known "Boston Bomber" which was used in the European theater of WWII. Anyway, Dad had become the top sergeant in charge of the armorers section of the squadron by the time his unit was shipped to the Pacific.

A story told by my father after I asked him what did you and the men in your squadron do for fun when in the Pacific. I had dropped by my parents home to visit and was chatting with Dad while my mother was in another part of their house when I asked this question. Without much thinking, he replied we played POKER. He then explained they were always on some airfield on some island with nowhere to spend the money they were paid. So, when payday came on the first of each month, their squadron began a poker game and other squadrons on their airfield participated too. It was a continuous game of poker until 2 or 3 guys had won everyone else's money. The poker games could last over a week.

My mother had walked into the room we are chatting when I asked Dad, well, were you ever a big winner in the poker games when in the Pacific? Dad replied, there was one month I was getting good cards for a few days, had won well over $1500, but my luck changed and I lost most of it. As mentioned, Mom had walked into the room and was standing behind Dad listening to his answer. I could see the expression on her face and it changed quickly from being in a good mood to quite angry and she unloaded on Dad.

You see, Dad had married my mother a couple of months before being shipped overseas and my older brother was born when Dad was in the Pacific. Mom's words to my father, expletives deleted, was their I was living with my parents with our baby Larry, having a hard time making ends meet and you didn't send us any money.....cuss, cuss, cuss and stormed out of the room.

Dad never had a chance to reply to Mom's outburst. After she'd stormed out of the room, I will comment, guess Mom never heard this war story and ask Dad, gee, why didn't you send her some of the money before losing it? He replied, as an enlisted man I could send home each month, only the amount of money I actually received, that Mom got most of my army pay. Then he goes on to tell me, "We were paid in the currency of whatever island we were on that had once been some Dutch/British/or whatever island we were on before the Japanese had captured it." We were on a Dutch island and were paid with Dutch money printed in the U.S. She couldn't have spent it if I did send it to her.....it was only good in the Pacific.


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MPC (Military Payment Certificate) we used in Vietnam.

Not worth a damn anywhere else....

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Thanks for posting. I enjoy reading all of those stories. Since you started I'll tell my dad's story.

Dad graduated HS in the spring of 1942. He helped my grandfather and great grandfather get their 80 acre farm plowed and planted right in the SW tip of Kentucky. The closest town of any size was across the border in Union City TN. Unless I'm mistaken their property line was also the state line. They still used mules instead of tractors.

Late in the summer dad, a friend and a cousin hopped on a bus for Detroit and got jobs in an anti-aircraft gun factory. It had been converted from a car factory. They got a 1 bedroom apartment and worked all 3 shifts at the factory, sleeping in the same bed in shifts.

All 3 were drafted within a few months, dad is the only one that came back. His friend killed in a tank in the Pacific, his cousin was a crew member on a B-25 that crashed during training.

Dad was assigned to an Army hospital at a bomber training center in New Mexico at first, later in Louisiana. He worked as an orderly assisting doctors.

By the fall of 1944 dad was transferred to the infantry and went through training in Paris TX. Most likely in preparation for the invasion of Japan. They had just finished training when the Germans attacked at the Battle of the Bulge. Dad was put on a train for NYC, a fast ship across the Atlantic, a train ride across England and a LST to France.

He arrived the 1st week in January while the fighting was still pretty intense. They were placed in box cars for the train ride to Belgium. By the time he got there he was exhausted from 2 weeks of being constantly on the move and with very little food.

Dad had been issued a brand new Garand in France and had spent an entire day cleaning the cosmoline out of it. When he got to Belgium they took it away from him, painted a red cross on his helmet and attached him to a mobile hospital.

He spent the rest of the war just a couple of miles behind the front and driving an ambulance back and forth with wounded. When not driving he assisted in the hospital.

Dad's said driving across the Rhine on a pontoon bridge while being shelled was the scariest few moments of the war for him. He never could swim at all.

When the war ended the guys who had been there the longest got home first. Dad didn't get back home until April 1946.

We lost dad about 2 1/2 years ago, he was 1 week shy of his 90th birthday. I still miss him.

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Another of Dad's WWII stories.


As mentioned in my first post Dad had enlisted in the army air corp a few months before we declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor. He was around 22 years old when he joined. Dad was a fairly big guy. He had dropped out of school around the 7th grade to work and help put food on the family table during the depression years. While he had little education, Dad was an intelligent guy. Much of his adult life, he owned his own business. Most of his friends, golfing buddies and etc., had a college degree. Dad had become the top sergeant in charge of the squadron's armor section rather quickly.

Anyway, the story.

Dad's squadron had been in the Pacific for a couple of years. One day he realized his enlistment had ended a few days before and he was tired of the war. So, he walked into his company hdqtrs to see the captain he'd served under most of the time he'd been in the squadron. Once with his captain, he tells him I want to get out of the army and go home. Captain has his head down looking at some paperwork and replies without looking up, Yea, me too, but like me and everyone else, you're in for the duration (of the war), so you're stuck here. Dad replied, that duration thing doesn't apply to me, I joined the army before this damn war began and my enlistment ended a couple of days ago and I want to go home. With these words, the captain looked up from the paperwork and commented, you are serious aren't you.....damn right I am, replied my Dad.

Captain tells him, your enlistment ending means nothing, you're still in for the duration. But, just to shut you up, I have a proposition for you. We are short of 2nd Lts in the squadron....I'll get you a battlefield commission just to make you happy. Dad said, I wasn't prepared for that offer of being made a Lt., told the captain I had to think about it.

Next day, Dad told his captain thanks for the offer, but I'll stay a sergeant first class and....not say anything else about going home.

After listening to Dad's story, I asked him, why'd you turn down being an officer? Dad chuckled, well money wise I already made about the same pay as a 2nd Lt. Dad then pointed to a sleeve on his shirt and then said with the number of stripes I had as a SFC, I had a heck of a lot more pull in the squadron than any 2nd Lt. I would be happier as an NCO than an officer.


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Good stories here.


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My Uncle John (married to my Mom's sister) was in the 1st Infantry Division from Day One. His unit was over run at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, and he went into the bag. After 10 days in a POW enclosure behind German lines, he and his buddies were loaded onto a leaky old Italian freighter for the trip across the Mediterranean and eventually to a POW camp in Germany. As the ship was leaving harbor, under escort by a couple German E-Boats, a British air attack hit them. The E-Boats took off on an evasive maneuver, and a couple bombs nearly hit the freighter whereupon the Italians who were guarding the GIs abandoned ship. John saw his chance, and he and a couple other guys jumped into the water and swam to shore. Some friendly Arabs found them all water logged/bedraggled and spirited them away to safety, and eventually back to American lines.

He was gone two weeks but in that time the War Department notified his mother that he was MIA. She immediately headed to the bank and withdrew the money he had been sending home since 1940 when he was drafted- and went on a spending spree buying a used Chevrolet and a fur coat. A couple days later she got another telegram saying they had John back and that he was OK. Oops. He served through the end of the war and was subsequently wounded three times. Funny thing- he stopped sending his pay home to his mother, rather it went to his fiancè, whom he married as soon as he mustered out, and lived happily ever after. Not once after returning home did he go visit his mother. I hope they buried her in that car, wrapped up in that damned coat.


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I never knew the details. But my dad had been sending money home to his famly. When he got home after the war at least some, if not all had been spent. It caused some friction between my dad and grandfather. But to be fair with the depression, war and 3 little sisters at home I'm sure my grandparents were struggling. Especially without their only son to help on the farm. One of my dads sisters was in her late teens, the other 2 just toddlers when he left.

Probably why dad never lived at home after the war and didn't continue the family farm. I was born in 1958, around 1960 my grandparents came to Georgia to visit from Kentucky. My grandfather repaid the money in full. This would have been about 14 years after the war.

I never knew any of this until after dad died 2 years ago.


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I met one of my wife's great-uncles only once. He spent most of his life in Australia, but came back to Kansas when he was in his 80's to see his family one last time.

When I asked how he wound up in Australia, he told me that he was in the Army in 1941 and was being transferred to the Philippines. The ship stopped for a couple of days at Pearl Harbor the first week of December and then headed out. When they got word of the Japanese attack they were redirected to Australia. Sometime there he met the lady who would become his wife and went back to Oz after the war.

Images of the Bataan Death March flashed in my mind and I asked if him if he realized what a close call that had been. He replied "Yeah, I had a couple of things like that happen to me during the war." Sadly I didn't get to hear about them, he had way too many folks to say goodbye to.


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"Jimmy, some of it's magic,
Some of it's tragic,
But I had a good life all the way."
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Dad's Squadron spent a few months in the Philippines after we'd invaded Luzon. For the first time in the Pacific, he had opportunity to get a weekend pass and decided to visit Manila. Manila had been well defended by the Japanese and much of the city had been damaged by the fighting.

Here is kinda a funny story about his visit to Manila.

"Everywhere I went in the city, you could easily see the damage done to the buildings. Few windows were intact, heavy cal bullet hits in the brick/stone of the walls/sides of structures. Easy to spot where some field piece or tank was used to blast the Japanese that fought from a building."

Then I decided to go down a street that had an army MP standing on the corner. As I walked down the street, I noticed not a single building on either side of the street had any damage that I could see. When I reached the end of the block I'd walked down, there was another MP standing on the corner. I stopped at the intersection and looked down the crossing street and again, lots of damage to be seen in both directions. On the next block of the street I walked down, again you could see damaged buildings. I turned around and looked back down the block I just walked. The MP had watched me and commented kinda strange isn't it. Dad asked him how come everywhere I've walked in Manila and have seen evidence of fighting, that this block is undamaged?" MP answered, well some guy named Douglas MacArthur owns a couple of buildings on this block, so no fighting was allowed here. Now you also know why my fellow MP and I are stuck on this block."

For you uninformed, MacArthur was the U.S. Army commander in the Pacific and had lived in the Philippines many years before the war. His father had been Governor-General of the Philippines for many years.


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One story about a friend's family. His father was in the war in New Guinea. He led a patrol out behind the enemy lines and all the men but he were killed. He survived but never got over it. PTSD, survivor's guilt, whatever-- he just never recovered and went into bouts of depression for the rest of his life.

One other story: a classmate's father was in the German army on the eastern front. It was indescribable, he said. Just awful. When flying out to see his son he observed the size of this country. He said to me, "It was crazy to get into a war with the US. I flew over countless valleys, any one you could have put the whole German army in".

I also asked him once if he ever had used the MG42's. He said he'd never seen one but they had heard of them at the front where he was.


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Short time ago, read an old book that its author had written about his personal experiences fighting in WWII by a guy who was from the Alsace region of France. This region of France in its past history was sometimes German controlled, sometimes French controlled. His mother was German, his father was French. Anyway, he joined the German army during WWII and served in an elite German division on the Eastern Front.

g5m wrote, "it was indescribable, just awful." Well, the author of book I read, did a darn good job of recalling his experiences serving on the eastern front in the German army for most of the war fighting the Russians. Talk about a hell he lived through. Small wonder he quickly surrendered to U.S. troops on the western front. He'd been wounded four or so times on the eastern front, his division was basically wiped out by the Russians, and he'd ended up in a German unit on the western front fighting U.S. troops.

When his American captors realized he was French, he was turned over to the Free French army to deal with. After listening to his story, the Free French released him to return to the Alsace and his father and mother......he'd been thru too much already.

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Is this the guy who initially enlisted in the German transportion corps, then later joined an elite unit?

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Perhaps, I recall he was in some kind of support German unit and was then assigned to the elite division after it had suffered so many casualties after Russians turned the tide of the war on Eastern front at Stalingrad.

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That's the one. I can't recall his name. I enjoyed the book. Loaned it to a friend and never got it back.

Some said the guy was a fake. I don't know.

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Dad was only involved the last 5 months of the war. He told me that Germans were being "captured" faster than they could keep up with it during the last weeks. German officers were coming forward working out arrangements for US units to "capture" them. Said it was nothing to see a single private escorting 100 prisoners to the rear. They didn't want to surrender, they had been told any officers who surrendered would be shot. With the future after the war uncertain for them I'm sure capture sounded better.


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A couple more stories:

When I was a kid-- mid 1950's or so--I was talking to a maintenance man at our church. He had a strong accent and I asked where he was from. He said Estonia, (IIRC). I asked how he got here and he said after the war he was a DP and came here. It came out that he had been a soldier on the Russian side and, of course I had to ask him if he ever killed anybody. (Kids!) He said, "Yes, many Germans".
He was very careful but also let it be known how the fighting there was awful.

One time at the church there was a guest speaker coming in. He was Japanese and the emotions were still pretty tough about the war. I asked my mom if I could go hear him and she didn't want me to but eventually I probably nagged her into an 'okay'. I rode my bike down and listened to Mitsuo Fuchida talk. And then met him and got to visit with him. Memorable to say the least.

One man I worked for flew fighters in the Pacific. He told me he never even saw a Japanese plane. Long flights, patrols I guess. I asked him what plane was his favorite as he flew multiple types. His answer: "The one that got me home".


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I read the book D-Day last year. We captured Koreans on D-day that had been captured by the Russians and forced to fight for Russia on the Western front. Later captured by the Germans and sent to defend the Atlantic wall and eventually captured by the USA and finally sent home.

There were lots of foreign conscripts in Western France being forced to fight. Most gave up pretty quickly after their German guards were killed.


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One fellow I met, who was from Canada, was a Bren gunner assistant
(? terminology) and was at D-day. He was captured a few days into the war by Germans, and was interrogated for a couple of days and offered the opportunity to go to the Eastern front to fight the Russians. He declined and was sent to Czechoslovakia to work in a mine and was liberated from there.


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Tens of thousands of Ukranians joined the Germans to fight the communist. Regarded as poor fighters, the Germans sent them to the Western front. Many quickly surrendered to the allies. After the war, the British forced the Ukranians to return to Ukraine where the russians executed them all.

Pardon the poor spelling.

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Is that book "The Forgotten Soldier"? Not to be rude but at 300+ pages it became kind of redundant.

A synopsis:

It's really hot and dusty here.
There sure are a lot of Russians.
We mow them down by the thousand and another thousand come after them.

It's really cold here.
There sure are a lot of Russians.
We mow them down by the thousand and another thousand come after them.
They have a lot of artillery.

It's really, really cold here.
There sure are a hell of a lot of Russians.
We mow them down by the thousand and another thousand come after them.
They have a hell of a lot of artillery.

It's really hot and dusty here.
We're all hungry.
There sure are a hell of a lot of Russians.
We mow them down by the thousand and another thousand come after them.
They have a hell of a lot of artillery.

It's really cold. I mean it's really f*cking cold.
We're all really, really hungry.
There sure are a hell of a lot of Russians.
We mow them down by the thousand and another thousand come after them.
They have a hell of a lot of artillery.

And so on....


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Hit the target, all else is twaddle!
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