Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What did your Grandpa do while in the military?

Lots of WWII Navy vets in my family...

My paternal grandfather was a mechanic in the Navy. He worked on the big Fairbanks-Morris diesel engines, and spent much of WWII in the belly of a boat cruising around the Pacific. I don't know much else about his time in the service, but after the war he worked for Fairbanks-Morris. He died in 1979; I was in grade school.

My maternal grandfather was a Seabee. He was a lieutenant, and spent the war building runways on the various islands in the Pacific. He became a farmer after the war. He died in 1980.

My maternal grandmother was also a lieutenant in the Navy. She told me that she was a communications officer that censored letters and monitored phone calls home, so that no secret information was leaked. I'm not sure if she met my grandfather during the war, or afterward. After the war, she became a nurse. She's still alive, living in a VA nursing home. When my brother was commissioned in the Air Force, our grandmother pinned him at the ceremony. She sure lit up, seeing my brother in uniform.

My wife's maternal grandfather was in the Navy, and spent his time in the Pacific. I don't remember what he did, though. He beat lung cancer a while back, recently turned 90, and he's still kicking.

My paternal grandfather and a buddy ran away from home as teenagers and enlisted for the Great War. They were discovered before completing boot camp and sent home, but I've got a couple pictures of them in their Doughboy outfits. He tended the boilers on Great Lakes freighters through WW2.

My maternal grandfather was a truck mechanic with the Army in the Pacific Theater. Sadly, he passed away before we ever got to talk about any of it.

Mine never would talk about it with me, or anyone else that asked him. I only know bits and pieces from what my Grandmother knows. He was in before Pearl Harbor and didn't come home until Japan surrendered he spent the whole war in the south pacific, where he fought at Guadalcanal. He left us in 2011. I still had so much to talk with him about.

Sounds just like the father of one of my high school friends. He went in The Corps in '38 and ended up making three hot beach landings, don't remember two of them but the third was Iwo Jima. He'd never said anything to family, but told me about it while I was home on leave once. Incredible and disturbing stuff.

I'am sure grateful he found his way to the U.S.

my grandpaw was in the navy he was on a ship that picked up the dead after the fights were over. he had lots of stories...

My grandpa was a solder in WW1, served in Verdonn, france, sailed over on the SS Leviathon.
Never talked about it, -- I would have loved to hear those stories

Served with the 61st Regiment, Co. I, Georgia Volunteer Infantry, CSA under Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Lt. Gen. Jubal Early.
May 6, 1862. Wounded in right side, hip and back, resulting in paralysis, at Cold Harbor, Va. June 27, 1862. Captured at Fisher's Hill, Va. September 22, 1864. Paroled at Point Lookout, Md. and transferred to Aiken's Landing, Va. for exchange March 17, 1865.
Other than that, not too much..

He enlisted in the Alabama NG as a private and was promoted from a cpl to 2nd Lt. (Don't remember all the details). Served with Black Jack Pershing chasing Pancho Villa, served with George Patton (both were Lt's if I remember correctly), went to France/Germany in WWI and finally made Bird Colonel at some point in his life. Don't know what his rank after the war was. He graduated from medical school in 3 years back then. Lived his life as a GP (country doctor) in Lowndes County, Alabama. Died at aged 91 in 1969.

He was a man of impeachable ethics and strong resolve. I've had blacks from his era tell me that when he came to their house on a call he treated the women with respect and called them 'Ma'am', something unheard of in those days. He didn't take anything from anybody but didn't try to dish any out. He was more of a father to me than my dad (his son) was. Taught me shooting and gave me his 03 Springfield and Colt .45 ACP that he brought from the war. Sadly, both have been gone for many years due to my youthful ignorance.

Mechanic on the sub-tender USS Anthedon http://www.tendertale.com/tenders/124/124.html

My paternal grandfather was a private in the Canadian Machine Gun Corps in WWI. 2nd Battalion IIRC; forgot what company but I have all his records, but not in front of me at the moment. The only time he ever spoke about it according to my late father was in 1943 when my dad was about to graduate from high school. He spoke to my dad's sister about it a couple times back then also. His unit was on the wrong end of a few gas attacks, they saw the carnage of the trench war, sometimes they hauled ammo to the front lines for the machine guns and the carts returned to the rear loaded with bodies. He talked my dad into joining the navy in 1943 because he feared another war in Europe would wind up another trench war. He told my dad that if his son were killed in WWII he didn't want his son to die in the mud; that if you were a casualty it would be better to die at sea. After all the hell he went through in WWI I'm surprised that he never seemed to show any PTSD or other problems. He was with us until 1960; worked to age 65 and spent too few years enjoying his well earned retirement.

My grand father was student at Mexico's Military Academy at the start of the Mexican Revolution where his uncle, who was a colonel in the Mexican Army, went and grabbed his butt and took him to war. Rose to the rank of Major after 11 years when he finally said "ENOUGH", and boogied to So. Texas and went to work on the King Ranch for the next 59 years. By the way, he came here legally, but that's another story.
George

Grandpa lied about his age to join the Army after his older brother had been drafted.
I'm not real good with the dates, but I know a lot of the stories. I was THE person he told these stories too, and to say I feel "fortunate" is an understatement.
Grandpa served in the 45th Infantry Division as a B.A.R gunner. The 45th Division was known as the "Thunderbirds" and was comprised of a lot of native Americans. Their insignia fittingly looked like this...



But, before the rise of the Nazi party, this was their insignia...



This 17 year old kid pushed his way across France, into Germany, capturing Nuremburg, Munich, and eventually liberating Dachau concentration camp.

The atrocities witnessed by these young men were unimaginable.

Sidenote: Not long ago I watched a movie entitled "Shutter Island". Leonardo Dicaprio plays a WWII vet that's having troubles dealing with the attrocities he witnessed at Dachau. And also, dealing with the mass slaughter of the remaining Nazis and German soldiers.
"Huh?" I thought. Never heard Grandpa tell that story. So, I did a little research.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_massacre

He did tell me other stories about Dachau though.
He said that anything that could hold a body (drawers, under mattresses), was full of bodies.
He's told me this same story several times, which leads me to believe that it might have really affected him.
Anyone going in or out of the camp had to be dusted with bug killer (DDT?)...
There were some "displaced persons", that got it in their mind that it was powdered milk. They took some, mixed it with water and it killed them. He said the bubbles coming out of their mouth was a foot high.

Apparently, they'd also "liberated" a local brewery near Dachau, and he said that
"you could walk across the nearby river without getting your feet wet". All the G.I.'s had tied their "liberated" beer barrels together in the river to cool them down.

A lot of stories....

I asked him once if he ever had any desire to go back and see any of that country. He said, "Well....I'd like to see that Munich stadium again....where that G-d-Damned sniper tried to shoot me in the azz!!"
Apparently, he'd been on patrol all night, with another unit that'd lost their BAR gunner, the night before they were to take Munich. When the patrol returned, all they had to eat was some chicken that was laying there all night. They all got a case of the [bleep]! And they were about to invade a city!! Can you imagine the misery??!!
Anyway, he said he was running from crater to crater, fighting and crapping. He was propped up against a column of the stadium "relieving himself", and every time he'd reach out for some "paper"...he'd get shot at.

Rolling into Nuremberg, the krauts had blown up every train coming and going...
Several of the box cars were full of new weapons. They approached from behind a tank, as they were getting fired upon. He reached down and grabbed a brand new never fired rifle. It cost him $8.00 to mail it home, but it got mailed. I used to play with it as a kid. It was well before I knew anything about firearms, but he always said it was Hungarian. It did have a fold out bayonet on it.

He had a lot of "spoils" of war, (several Lugers), but they had a hard time finding a "ride" back to the states after the war, and they were all traded off for stupid stuff like booze and smokes!
They eventually made it home via a captured German luxury liner!

Imagine...going from a 16 year old kid living in the Ozarks without electricity, or running water a couple years prior...to all that.

My Grandpa was without a doubt, my biggest hero when I was a kid.

Grandpa (father's father) was a fireman in Jersey City NJ. He was involved in the Black Tom explosion in 1916 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tom_explosion )

I was named for my Uncle Paul
A very young man from the Anthracite coal mines of PA.
Whose landing craft took a direct artillery hit off the beach of Anzio.
He still rests in the Rome,American cemetery.

WWI & WWII; 36 years active naval service and a pair of Navy Crosses along the way. Tough as nails and never took any crap off anybody.

Great-Great Grandpa served in the 13th Missouri Cavalry. My dad remembered that as an old man in his 80's Grandpa had a wound on his wrist from 1864 that would occasionally swell up and then break open and drain. He sat on the front porch and would pick at it with his pocketknife, as Grandma chided him to leave it alone.

When asked how it happened, the answer was simply, "I caught a rebel ball."

Maternal grandfather joined Army at age 17, lied about his age and hitchhiked 200 miles to join only to find out he didn't weigh enough. He was told to go eat two pounds of bananas and come back. Bananas were 5 cents a pound so he ended up with ten cents worth out of the thirty cent he had left home with. He was drill sarge for a few years before WWII, then a staff sarge, in one of the first few waves that hit Normandy beach. Said he had the honor to shake hands with Patton. Still living today at 94, although his time is about at it's end.

Paternal grandfather was a farmer and didn't get to join due to a rare skin cancer that eventually took his life in the early 50's.

My grandfather served 34 years in the army. Retired as a first sgt. Multiple tours in Europe w/many bulge stories. Railsplitters division maybe? Don't remember the unit # though. Two stints in Korea and then was the drill instructor for Alvin York's grandson

My Grandfather was on Iwo Jima with the Seabees during WWII. As a child was totally fascinated and horrified on how cruel a human being can be..... many thanks to our forefathers ....Almost glad they are not here to see what this country is becoming. It is a slap in the face.