Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Your family's military history..pics welcomed

From my previous post I live on some of “land lord clements” land now trying to keep all I can keep or buy back my grandma has a leather map showing his lands very detailed I have no idea the age of that

Lost him on July 2nd. He was a hard man when I was growing up. He mellowed with age and my kids thought he was a teddy bear. He’s responsible for any good that’s in me and I will always miss him. My love for fishing and hunting came from the time we spent together.

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Father's side of family:
WWI - Grandfather, rifleman, 82nd All American Div. Survived mustard gas exposure with some lung damage.

WWII (all deployed to combat areas, all survived war, but there were a couple of Purple Hearts)
- Father, SSG Rifle Squad Leader, 10th Mtn Div
- Uncle, Bosun's Mate USN (landing craft operator Normandy and Pacific islands)
- Uncle, Armed Guard, USN, gunner on armed merchant ships.
- Uncle (by marriage), Army (?? don't remember more), captured early on in North Africa and spent was as POW

Post WWII/Korean war/1950s - Three Uncles served, 2 Army & 1 Air Force. None of them deployed to Korean Conflict.

Vietnam era - four cousins drafted into Army. One ended up in Air Defense Artillery with 4th Infantry Div, one went Infantry with 82nd Airborne Div., one ended up at Carlisle Barracks (don't remember branch), last was a Medic at FT Gordon. None of them deployed to SE Asia.

Post Vietnam. Couple more cousins enlisted in the 70s - Air Force.

1980s and on.
- one cousin enlisted and did a tour in Korea - Army
- I was commissioned 2LT USAR out of ROTC in 1980, then 1LT Regular Army 1982 in the Medical Service Corps, retired in 2002. Only officer and only career military on this whole side of the family.

So on my father's side of family:
- My grandfather, father, all my uncles, 7 out of 9 male first cousins, and myself served at some time. Only other male relative that didn't serve in armed forces is my brother. Nobody else has entered the military since the 80s. In other words: from WWI to about 1990 we had 18 males eligible for military service, and all but three served.

Mother's side of family is more vague:
Pretty sure four of her brothers served in WWII, at least two of them were Army Air Corps. Three came home.
One of her sisters went into the Army Nurse Corps WWII and stayed in for a career.
As far as I can remember nobody on mother's side went into the services after WWII.

Wish I had bigger pictures.

My dad (the one shaking hands), Operations Officer for the 2/94th Field Artillery in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma in September 1966 just before they deployed to Camp JJ Carroll near the DMV, northern South Vietnam;



My dad's tent (one of a couple) that was destroyed by a direct hit by a NVA 122mm rocket in March 1967.

All my great, great grandpaps served in the civil war. I have 2 of their discharges...



Pap served on the battleship Iowa during Korea. We got to tour her before she opened as a museum. Showing off our big guns, in front of THE big guns...

Fascinating thread here. Paternal GF served in the Canadian Machine Gun Corps in WW1. 17 months in France, mostly in a trench. Almost never spoke about it except once when my dad was graduating H.S. in 1943. He talked my dad into joining the Navy because he feared WW2 would wind up as another trench war. Told my dad all about the trenches, the bodies, rats, gas, and that if his son got killed in WW2 it would be better to die at sea. He didn't want his only son to die in the mud. Dad spent the rest of WW2 on a light cruiser as a radioman. They were at D-Day, the invasion of Southern France and did convoy duty in the north Atlantic. Dad's sisters both married WW2 vets so one uncle was a marine radioman in the pacific and the other was a ground crewman on B-17's in England. He was from a German family and bi-lingual and in the spring of 1945 Uncle Sam was suddenly looking for servicemen who could speak German. That was how he wound up at the Mittlewerks at Nordhausen, Germany's V-2 rocket factory hidden in an old Gypsum mine in a mountain. The U.S. went in there before the ink was dry on the surrender papers and packed up the entire place and shipped it here. He was there to communicate with all the German civilians that were hired to pack it all up. Brought home a Luger pistol out of a display case in an office area of the factory that I inherited when he passed in 2001. If this web site weren't so difficult for folks like me to post pics on I'd post a couple.

I recently learned that my paternal grandfather served in WWII. My father didn't serve. My maternal grandfather served stateside during the Korean Conflict. His son served in the MI Nat'l Guard during the 80s. I served in the Army from 1994-2021. Somewhere on an external hard drive I have pictures from all 3 of my combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thanks, Dinny

Almost forgot to include my own service to my previous post. So grandfather WW1, Dad WW2 and I served in the Marine Corps late 60's early 70's. Was on my way to Vietnam for the spring 1970 replacement draft when Pres. Nixon cancelled the orders of me and a whole bunch of other guys about the first week of Feb, 1970 and nobody knew why. Wasn't until the summer of that year that they made the announcement about troop reductions. Then we understood. So luckily I managed to avoid the Agent Orange but now I wonder about the water I was drinking at Camp LeJeune N.C. in 1970-71. Heard about it a couple years ago before all the lawyer commercials began and got registered with the VA in case I come down with one of those cancers. Although back then I think most of us consumed more beer than we did water.

Dodged those a time or three...During an interdiction turnaround mission one night in '69 to rearm on bingo fumes we were forced to land at Phu cat during a 122mm attack launched from the nearby hills..Fortunately only two out 5 detonated.

the other three disintegrated on impact spewing big chunks of burning solid propellant from all compass headings like the 4th of july. No major damage this time just a PITA for the fire dept extinguishing

a few grass fires along the active and between several aircraft revetments..

Don, I gotta say that the old man all crabbed out in a bodybuilding pose pertaining to your description of the pic is cool as schit…!

My father was in the battle for manila, his only words were when we came into the city there was no quarter. Cousin was a Kennedy SF in vn, another was the first Kia for our county no pictures

My Dad served and retired at 60. Numerous uncles and now my youngest son who is currently in AIT.

No pics either, not until I get off my ass and scan some in. Dad was a replacement for the 116th/29th, right after June 6, he got stuck with the bazooka at one period, and a 50# pack radio another period. Uncle JR was Army in the Pacific, he had it bad, never talked much about it. I have but two remembrances of his time there, the trigger group and magazine from his carbine, bent to hell from a 7.7 right at the part surrounding the magazine, still has 4-5 rounds in it. He was in a jeep on the island of Truk with that across his chest. Good move, JR! And a Nambu in it's synthetic leather holster, that he took from a prefecture police officer IN NAGASAKI, like only several days after they landed in Japan. He was not supposed to be there but... but he did end up with Leukemia in his later years.

My father in law was a driver for the prime mover on one of the 280mm atomic cannons deployed to West Germany, I have a whole bunch of old, curled black and whites of them barging his over the Rhine and shlepping it around post war West Germany (tight corners!)

Grandfather served in WW1
Dad served in WWII in Europe, did the Normandy thing, Did 20 years
His brother was a Marine in the Pacific, got out after the war
Mom was a WAC in the fifties until I came along
I did 20+ years as Light Infantry

Joe

American Revolution - Several
GGGFs - Civil war - 1 each side, I have the BP Colt Revolver from the one that marched with Sherman...
WWI - for the most part missed
WWII - English great uncle died on the HMS Hunter - Battle of Narvik
- Another tail gunner, shot down and spent several years in a Stalag
KOREA - Uncle, tank commander, Battle of White Horse Mountain - Bronze Star
VIETNAM - Uncle, USS Earnest, G. Small, Uncle, DR on a Hospital Ship
IRAQ - Cousin

DAD - served 12 years, Stationed England and Guam, 'found' mom in England, 'got' my brother while on Guam......... it has not yet capsized

The handsome boy standing up is my uncle, my hero. He was captured by the Japanese early in the war and spent the war in a POW camp.He managed to build a radio receiver in his wooden leg, and could get and spread news to his fellow prisoners, bolstering their morale.My father, a combat veteran in the European theatre described him as " a remarkable man". I never heard him use that term to describe anyone else. Went on to be a Doctor after the war.

No pics.
Gramps was Merchant Marine.
Nazis on island, commies after.....even my dad (no service due to hand damage as a kid)...........nobody talked about that stuff.

GGGG grandfather was a German mercenary employed by the British, American revolution. Not sure how well known it is but....the British hired 30,000 mercenaries to fight in the war.

A number of Indian wars, mostly on the plains, USA and Canada, both sides.

My Grandfather WW1 and WW2, wounded in the 1st, (1st Canadian mounted rifles) nearly died there, he was only 17.
He lived to lie his way into WW2, I have all his discharge papers from both wars.
My Grampa around 1920


My uncle was a royal rifle, spent 4 yrs in a Japanese prison camp (hong kong), enough said.
I had a picture of him in the camp, but it was lost in the computer..

My Dad also served and was stationed in Germany after the war.

One grandfather was in the Army in WWI, the other I don't know.. My father was a Lt. and the Operations Officer on the USS Langley in WWII. His brother was a Lt. in the USN also. My cousins both were in the Air Nat'l Guard during the Viet Nam War..

I was in the USN and served as a torpedoman on two submarines; the USS Redfish and the USS Razorback from '66-'69. The Razorback is now at the Maritime Museum in North Little Rock AR.