Today we have a thoughtful guest post from Nelle, in honor of the day. Seems like a good time for contemplation and reflection.
Fighting the Enemy Within
by Nelle
For the last few days, the local news has been full of commemorations of the 80th anniversary of D-Day today and footage of the veterans, now in their 90’s and 100’s, who went to France for the occasion. I looked for Band of Brothers to watch but came up instead with the Ken Burns documentary, The War, which came out in 2007. I totally missed it then; we lived in New Zealand. The first episode has a lot of interviews of veterans and we found ourselves thinking of our dads.
My dad was a Mennonite pacifist, but he accepted the draft, he said, for two reasons. One, in gratitude for taking him in as an immigrant (he came from what is now known as Ukraine, but then was Russian territory). He believed that, while he wouldn’t carry a gun, he couldn’t say no to a country that gave him a chance at a new life and allowed him to escape the Holodomor.
Secondly, and he didn’t say this for a long time, he had seen what war does to women and children (the German invasion of WWI and the Russian “civil” war that lingered in his area longer than most anywhere). While he wouldn’t talk about the details, Red soldiers were quartered in their house, with four young women, his mother, and two little boys. Bucha, Ukraine can give us a clue. He had an obligation not to turn his back on those who suffer.
In February of 1944, my father-in-law got leave in San Diego i to quickly go up to see his new son, who is now my husband. Then he shipped out to the Pacific. I don’t think he saw his family again until the war’s end.
Mr. Lewis, down the street from me when I was growing up, had shrapnel in his body. Almost all the kids in my cohort, born in 1951, had fathers who were overseas during the war.
As far as I knew, none of our fathers talked about it, but my dad got Christmas cards from guys he served with and even met up, in the 80’s, with a prisoner of war he had cared for on one of the crossings. The man wrote a book, entitled The Enemy has My Face. That was a generation of men who faced Nazis and they paid a huge price, as did their families stateside.
What was it like for us, growing up with these men as fathers and grandfathers? How do we meet their legacy? What did we know about our mothers and their contributions? (My mother sewed uniforms in a factory; my mother-in-law, who by then had an MIT degree in architecture, worked for Douglas Aircraft drafting airplane designs). What do we owe them as we face the fascists within the country now, fascists who co-opt our own warnings about them as the enemy within and project it onto us?
E.
We owe the past only gratitude; we owe the future everything.
WaterGirl
It’s chilling to think of being a young woman with the soldiers being quartered in your house. Nowhere to run, not even safe in your own house.
Here’s something I wonder about. For those who rape and pillage, does war bring out the worst, or allow the (sick) freedom to be as awful as you are?
Kelly
I knew one man that landed on Omaha Beach. Never got past the sand. “Shot in the ass ’cause I couldn’t dig fast enough” he’d say with a laugh. The wound in his ass healed well enough but he was also hit in a heel. Walked with a slight limp the rest of his life. He felt he got off easy. His war was over June 6th.
rikyrah
thank you for this post.
John S.
They’re not just fascists, they want a theocracy.
John S.
@WaterGirl:
War brings out both the best and the worst in people. It really just depends on the person.
Cacti
My grandfather served in the Pacific. All of my great uncles were in Europe. One in the Third Army with Patton. One was captured at the Battle of Bulge and tortured by the Germans in a POW camp, and had nightmares about it the rest of his life. Another was a navigator on a B-17 that was shot down but he managed to survive.
I revered every one of them and I hang my head when I see how their legacy has been squandered and a fascist movement allowed to take root in the United States.
NotMax
James Doohan (Star Trek‘s Scotty) on D-Day:
geg6
My Uncle Bud was dropped behind enemy lines just before the Normandy invasion. Took him five days to find the rest of unit and he fought in Europe until the end. My Uncle Walter was in the Navy in the Pacific and was in a lot of those island hopping battles with the Japanese. My dad, the youngest, was in the Army Air Corps. He was a mechanic and stayed mostly stateside (he felt they didn’t want to send him in harm’s way much due to his brothers) but did get sent to Britain for a while just before and after DDay to help service the massive amount of planes being deployed. But most of his war was spent in Biloxi, which he despised due to the heat and the massive racism. Made him, formerly not paying attention to such things, a big anti-racist. My mom spent the war as a bookkeeper at J&L Steel. They both taught us kids the lessons they learned and told us about what our uncles did (neither uncle talked much about their war to us kids). I am grateful to have had parents who contributed to defeating Germany and Japan and who took the lessons they learned and, not only passed on to us, but lived them until they died.
Baud
Beautifully written, Nelle.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@WaterGirl:
A highly recommended book:
https://www.amazon.com/Good-bye-Mermaids-Childhood-Hitlers-Berlin/dp/0826216900
Story of a girl growing up in Nazi Germany with a mother who was decidedly anti-nazi. She talks about the bombings and more harrowingly, the Soviet troops in Berlin in 1945.
I got to know her later in life as I did research on what happened to her mother’s boyfriend as the war ended. She passed away last year after a long and very full life:
https://www.independent.com/2023/08/01/in-memoriam-karin-finell-1930-2023/
Chris
Being half-French, half-American, a huge history nerd, and someone whose politics at the end of the day boil down to “there is literally nothing worse than fascism and no one I won’t ally with to stamp it out,” June 6th is basically my own personal national holiday. Went to the beaches in Normandy multiple times when I was in Paris, including on the 6th one time for the 55th anniversary.
Chris
@WaterGirl:
Both? With a side order of “war peer pressures the shit out of you to join in on the atrocities, or at the very least look the other way or you’ll end up fragged.”
It’s like our police problems: sure there are good people who join the police, but they either get washed out in training or get harassed into silence. And, every so often, end up “inexplicably” dead.
Melancholy Jaques
My parents story is common, if not typical. My father was in the Navy. My mother and her mother took trains from Cleveland to Oregon where my parents were married. After two weeks, my mother & her mother returned to Cleveland. My parents did not see each other again for three years. My father spent the war in the Pacific, my mother worked at Jack & Heintz making aircraft parts. The war ended, my father came home, and my parents produced seven baby boomers. When I was a little kid, it seemed like nearly every other kid I knew had the same story.
Tony G
@Kelly: One of my uncles did not land on D-Day — a fact that might have saved his life — but his division was among the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops that landed in Normandy in the weeks after D-Day. He was a 19-year-old kid — just a year out of high school — when his division landed. His division was in combat almost continuously for almost 11 months, until Nazi Germany finally surrendered in May of 1945. He was in the major battles in Western Europe in 1944-1945 — including the Battle of Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, and his division liberated one of the Nazi death camps in Germany shortly before Hitler blew his brains out. His specialty was clearing German land mines — so he was always in danger whether he was being fired on or not. Like most of the men of that generation, he almost never talked about the war — and when he did he’d make jokes (telling his kids that he spent the war peeling potatoes in a mess hall). That generation saved the world, and they did it without a lot of bragging and bullshit.
Tony G
@Tony G: I also have two Jewish in-laws that survived the Holocaust in Poland. The fact that almost half of the people in the United States currently support an American Nazi infuriates me to no end.
SiubhanDuinne
@E.:
Beautifully said, E.
I’ve been watching D-Day coverage since early this morning, and have been moved to literal tears more than once. Not sure why this anniversary is hitting me harder than usual. Maybe because it’s almost certain that most of the veterans won’t be alive to mark the 85th, let alone the 90th. Anyhow — solid addresses and poignant ceremonies today, immense pride in what those young men and women did, and a renewed inspiration to do what is in my own small power going forward.
I didn’t have any relatives involved in D-Day. My dad was designated 4F; I had one uncle on duty at Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, and another (Canadian) who fought in Italy. Both survived for many decades. My family was very fortunate.
Chris
Wish I had WWII ancestors to talk about, but not really. Grandpa just barely missed that war, graduating West Point in 1946, spent Korea away from the war zone too, then made up for it with three tours of duty in Southeast Asia (by which point he was in the Green Berets), which apparently left him disillusioned enough that he told a reporter point-blank that it was a “dumb war,” instantly ending any hopes of promotion at a time when he was a colonel with a perfectly good shot at making general.
He died before my parents even married, so all I’ve heard from him is stories and a tape recording he gave to some students talking about the war. There’s a lot I’d have liked to ask him. But I do think about how World War Two must have loomed over his service. He would’ve been part of an entire generation of men who grew up in the afterglow of the war thinking that the U.S. Army meant “freeing the world from fascism to make it safe for democracy,” and then, when he finally did get sent off to war, being told “actually, the U.S. Army means helping the drug dealing warlord on Hilltop A to win his gang war with his sworn enemy, the drug dealing warlord on Hilltop B. Isn’t it inspiring? Be all you can be, boys!”
Captain C
My Dutch relatives were still in the Netherlands, so suffered 5 years of occupation (my mother was born in Amsterdam 2 weeks after D-Day). My Opa taught at the underground university after the Nazis closed the official ones in 1943 after finally realizing that most Dutch were not prepared to be Good Little Junior Aryans. His 2 brothers and sisters were involved in the resistance; his brother Bas was a head of the student resistance and was apparently almost nabbed once (the gestapo came looking for him and his mother pleaded ignorance while he escaped out the back).
Also, they were relatively unscathed by the Hunger Winter of ’44-’45 (when the Nazis stole all the food they could get their hands on) because my Opa also worked for a pharmaceutical company, and they used their equipment to brew gin to trade for food.
Jeffg166
I had a neighbor in center city Philadelphia who was in the Polish army in 1939. He was also Jewish. Captured at the start of the war he was in a camp from 1939 until it was liberated. He had a number tattooed on his arm. I can not imagine what he went through to survive.
He once showed me a reparation check he got from German. I think it was monthly. It was for $600. Not nearly enough for the ordeal he lived through.
I met him because a group of us 20 something year olds used to sit on the stoop of my apartment building. He would come out and try to join in. I figured the time of his life he would have done such a thing he was in a camp. We did become friends.
Belafon
My grandfather fought in Europe and then drank himself to death over the next 25 years after coming home. His brothers, one of whom fought in the Pacific and the other who decided to fight in both, survived it much better.
raven
I’ve become an amateur historian with a focus on my dad’s WW2 experiences in the Pacific. There is a site called Fold3 that houses historical military documents where I have accessed the “deck logs” and “war diary” of his ship and associated units. In December after 9-11 they dedicated the Pacific wing of what was the “D-Day Museum” and is now the “World War Two Museum” in New Orleans. He and I met in the Easy and went to the parade they held for the vets. Each branch had military trucks with banners for the Army, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard. My dad was always pretty grumpy about D-Day, he said “I was in 26 god-damned D-Days in the Pacific” but relented to go to that event. I had a really nice digital movie camera that I took with and I filmed the parade. I was at Lafayette square when the truck he was on came along. There was a group holding a sign “Return to the Rock” with the symbol of the 503d Parachute Regiment on it. When I processed the video I saw that my old man looked at the sign and, for just a second, broke into tears. He recovered quickly and went on with the event. I remembered that when he went into the beach of Corregidor with the 1st Battalion of the 503d (they landed the second day by boat) they got pinned down by a Japanese machine gun and he gave first aid to a wounded paratrooper. I’m looking at the binoculars he hung around his own neck while he administered first aid and I have them on my wall. He was a lifelong DuPage County Republican but I like to think he wouldn’t have put up with this fucker but who knows?
SiubhanDuinne
I just love reading these stories about various jackals’ relatives and their war experiences. Thanks to everyone who is sharing family anecdotes.
Gin & Tonic
My father finished medical school in Poland in 1939 and was immediately conscripted as a medic in the Polish army. At some point he was captured and imprisoned by the Germans. At some later point he got out, before the war’s end. The lack of meaningful information in the foregoing is because until the day of his death he never spoke a word about it. I know more about the imprisonment and (presumed) death of *his* father, who was sent to Siberia – hence my understanding that both fascism and communism were and are unalloyed evils.
Kelly
Three of my maternal uncles served in the Army Air Corps. The youngest, Ray, was in training when the war ended. He still qualified for the GI Bill which paid for his chemical engineering degree. The oldest Walt was working at a steel rolling mill when the war started. His job exempted him from service but a couple years in he volunteered. He was bombardier on a B29 out of Tinian island in the Pacific. He was a successful small business man. Owned a hardware store. Uncle Norman joined at the start of the war. He was navigator on a B17 out of England. He came back with what we now call PTSD. Best I can recall he never held a job after the war. Died in his 50’s.
My father-in-law was pilot of a PBY Catalina in the Pacific. He never forgave Japan. Mrs Kelly to be was worried what her dad would think of the Nissan pickup I was driving at the time, but he didn’t mind.
They’ve all been gone for quite a few years.
raven
@Kelly: It’s so weird. My dad spent the entire war in the Pacific and had great respect for the Japanese. My uncle never left Navy Pier in Chicago and he hated them
eta
He’s in the first row on the left.
Geminid
@raven: I’m wondering if you ever got around to reading Henry Clausen’s book, Pearl Harbor: Final Verdict, and what you thought of it.
Betty Cracker
My paternal grandfather participated in D-Day, coming ashore at Utah Beach as a 25-year-old U.S. Army sergeant. He’d joined the military before the war broke out so spent the early days of it training new recruits, then got shipped to Europe for the invasion.
I asked him about D-Day, and he said his main concern while wading ashore was keeping the cigars from home that were in his breast pocket dry. Pretty sure he made that up to spare me the awful details. He was a sweet guy who rarely talked about the war. He died in 1987.
Fast forward to the present, and most of the people in this town where he grew up and I grew up are cowardly shitbags who are longing for a fascist Trump restoration, including many of our relatives. I think my grandfather would be ashamed of them.
SFAW
Beautiful essay. Thanks very much for sharing it with us.
My father 4F-ed, but my uncle (technically, my aunt’s first husband) was in the Battle of the Bulge; my father said “he wasn’t the same” after that. It was only many years after my aunt divorced him that I got a hint of his behavioral change. [He was always good to me, but his treatment of my beloved aunt was pretty scary — none of which I noticed, being a pre-teen.]
As a result of being 4F, my father worked for Republic Aviation, as did my grandfather. I still have a cast model of a P-47, which he received when he worked at Republic.
coozledad
On February 7th, 1944, my uncle Bruce W. Collins was shot down over Anzio beach when his flight was bounced by FW 190s. The American pilots were still flying Spitfires then, based in Nettuno. It had been a rough week for the allies. His flight officer said they didn’t see a chute.
No chute meant he missed being captured by the SS on the ground and summarily executed.
When I hear Trump channeling Hitler, it turns my gut. I want him and his partisans to suffer.
Van Buren
My father’s cousin was a Captain in the Marines, killed in the invasion of Guam. About 20 years ago I was researching him and was startled to find an interview with a retiring HS soccer coach in upstate NY who mentioned that he had been the catalyst for getting an education. I tracked the guy and we spoke on the phone. He cried as he recounted how my father’s cousin had died in his arms after being hit by artillery fire.
trollhattan
This a.m. BBC played an interview with a living Native American veteran of D-Day—99!
He was a combat medic who, on landing saw many of his comrades sinking to the ocean floor, weighted down by all their combat gear. He spend the landing rescuing as many as he could while under intense fire, bravery that was noted by commanders at Omaha Beach who awarded him the silver star. His best friend was shot and unable to stop the bleeding, he stayed with him as he died.
Said he found a dark, brushy place to catch some sleep that first night, waking up to find himself surrounded by corpses—American and German—who had been in a firefight the day before.
He now lives in Normandy and visits the cemetery, reconnecting with those he lost.
War is a terrible thing we are too forgetful to not repeat, with shocking regularity.
raven
@Geminid: No, I’ll look for it.
TBone
@WaterGirl: recommended viewing. Sophia is a survivor of The War. Her eyes, in the truck scene after the rape of her and her daughter (this movie does not show the act, it’s late 1950s) are documentary evidence IMO. If you watch the movie, just look at her eyes. Her eyes 💔
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Women
Sophia’s wiki (she is the definition of badass):
Nelle
@coozledad: My dad’s hospital ship was off shore at Anzio, stationed to take the wounded. At one time, he had some photos of the conflagration that the fighting produced, taken from the ship. I’ve been fascinated by the times our fathers, uncles, grandfathers, might have been in the same place, at the same time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@geg6:
Where was this? I ask cuz my grandfather was retired on disability and lived in a company house at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation stone quarry in Millville WV. His son, my uncle, was in WWII, was at Nuremberg for some of the lower-level trials.
raven
@TBone: Intense film and, apparently, there is some controversy over the rape event.
SFAW
All these stories about jackaltariat relatives are amazing. I wish I didn’t have to go to work today, so I could keep reading them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My father was Canadian, so he was in their navy from the time Canada joined the war in 1939. He spent much of his time hunting U-boats in the North Atlantic. The only thing I ever heard him say about it was that he knew there were guys in the subs who wants to live as much as he did.
peter
My father, who was a year away from an undergraduate chemistry degree, joined the U.S. Navy in 1943. He was a Pharmacist’s Mate on a ship in the Atlantic which was torpedoed by a U-Boat. No serious damage, but the ship (and crew) spent several weeks in England for repairs. After V-E Day his ship was sent to the Pacific, but they stayed out of the fighting until the Japanese surrendered. He came home, got married, finished his degree, then went on to get a PhD on the G.I. Bill. Like many in his generation, he didn’t talk about his experiences, and it was only after my mom died in 2006 that he opened up and told me about them. I learned a lot about what made my dad the man he was. Too bad I didn’t learn it much earlier.
trollhattan
Photo of dad’s ship, USS Bennington, CV20, under attack off Okinawa, April 1945. Planning and skill and luck combine to determine whether we even exist.
smith
I had a number of relatives involved in the war effort: An uncle in army intelligence, another an AF pilot, and my dad who worked on the Manhattan Project. My mother used to tell us that on the rare occasions they got together during the war conversation was difficult because none of them could say anything about what they were doing.
The way my dad got involved in the Manhattan Project: He graduated in 1943, and immediately married my mother, and soon after enlisted in the navy. The way my mother told it, the night before he was due to report for basic training, he got a call asking him to report to Oak Ridge instead. His newly-minted degree was in chemical engineering, and they needed people who knew what they were doing to manufacture the exotic chemicals required. They spent the rest of the war in Oak Ridge, and my mother, who, as you can tell was the family historian, had a lot of stories about living in a top secret installation in wartime.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@SFAW:
Agreed. I have shit I need to do but can’t drag myself away.
One of my wife’s late aunts, she had a ‘boyfriend’ late in life (I hate using the term ‘boyfriend’ but can’t come up with anything better) after she and he were widowed. Met him once. What a hoot. I can’t remember how, now, but he was a POW for at least 2 years in Germany, maybe closer to 3. He recounted the “being marched ahead of the Allies to prevent repatriation” stories I’d read elsewhere.
Best quirk: when it came to bread, he’d only eat white bread. “For 3 years I had nothing but grainy, brown bread in the camp so I’ll be damned if I’ll eat that stuff now.” Or words to that effect.
TBone
@raven: the movie itself is based on a work of fiction – its Italian name is not though. Best Actress for Sophia well deserved. It’s the point, the picture of this moment in time, that’s important (not historical accuracy) in this movie.
But I appreciate the extra knowledge behind the movie title!
raven
On 7 April, Bennington aircraft helped stifle the last major action of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The battleship Yamato, escorted by light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers, came out of Japan in a desperate attempt to break up the landings at Okinawa. That force, lacking any air cover, was spotted on the 6th by American submarines; and, on the 7th, by American patrol planes. When TF 58 attack groups found the force on the 7th, Yamato, Yahagi, and four of the destroyers were sunk. The four destroyers that escaped also suffered damage but managed to reach the Sasebo Naval Arsenal. Bennington aviators claimed at least two torpedo hits on the battleship at the cost of a single plane from her air group.
Aziz, light!
“The Russians are coming, hide the girls,” is a well-remembered phrase throughout Eastern Europe.
My dad served in the Army Air Corps but he never left Arkansas. He kept failing his B-17 piloting tests so they made him an instructor (!).
My grandfather was 35 when he was drafted after Pearl and served as the radar chief on a destroyer throughout the Pacific war. The younger sailors called him “Pops.” For 40 years he regaled me with war stories about all the action he saw, including the one in which he was nearly killed by a kamikaze pilot. He told me (his words) that the micks and wops would call him a hebe or sheeny or Christ-killer, but he was a semi-pro boxer who would respond with a brutal left jab. The Navy sent him around to other ships to compete in boxing tournaments, then a form of high entertainment for the men at sea. He came home with a seething hatred of all things and people Japanese (when his TV failed he refused to let us buy him a big new Sony), but 35 years later my brother, then living in Tokyo, returned to the states with a young Japanese bride, and with some effort we changed my zayde’s tune.
TBone
My war heroes, Dad and Uncle John, made sure I can shoot a long gun straight “just in case,” over the loud protestations of my mother. They told her I must not be frightened to use a shotgun if I had to. My abilities with a pistol are not as good because upper body strength. My war heroes wanted me to be able to defend myself. I am still very much anti-gun. But if the need arises…
Kristine
Thanks for writing this, Nelle.
My dad enlisted in the Marine Corps three days after he graduated high school. He wound up a tail gunner in the South Pacific. Like others mentioned here, he only talked about funny events. The only grim item he let slip was a passing comment about ground crews having to hose out the gun turrets after planes returned.
TBone
Holy cow!
(Doh! @smith)
wenchacha
Mom and Dad were dating; she was in Nurses’ Training as a Cadette Nurse. She told my dad about Officer Training program, and he qualified with the Navy. He went to Dartmouth, then on to MIT. He failed out of the program there; his tiny rural PA high school did not have enough advanced math and I think it was a lifelong source of shame.
He went on to the Great Lakes program, learning to be an electrician. His rejection from the Officers training made him something of a target among others. Because he blew his opportunity, and some other guy might have succeeded and not had to go to war. I don’t know how much he heard that, but we also didn’t hear much about the war.
I kinda hate that he didn’t have a story that he could share when other guys were talking. I think he may have felt “less than” because of it.
Nelle
There have been movies about all of this, but is it too far in the past for the younger ones to relate? I had a student who chose to write about his grandfather and his time in the Battle of the Bulge. It was a good freshman research/interview paper. My student was sort of a cocky frat boy, but when I asked him how old his grandfather was at the time, he quickly said, “Oh, he’s in his eighties.” I said, “No, how old was he when he went through all of that?” The color drained from his face. “He was 18, younger than I am now.” “Precisely,” I said.
We need to keep these stories alive if we are going to win our fight. We come from some resilient stock, even for all their wounds, body, mind, and spirit. We can do this. Look at who we descended from.
danielx
Amazing stories.
They add to the rage I feel towards these swine who espouse fascism, whether they admit to it or not.
JoyceCB
My father was ground crew in the Canadian air force. He was a specialist in what was then very new and secret radar sets small enough to be carried on a bomber. His squadron was one of the few Canadian ones assigned to the Pacific theatre; he was based first in Ceylon (as it was) and later in Bangalore. He came home with an abiding hatred of the British and the way they treated the native Indians.
His only war stories were sanitized jokes and funny stories. It wasn’t until he had a grandson that he began to open up, and write a few pages of memories.
No One of Consequence
@John S.: I believe that they do not want a theocracy. There are scant few True Believers amongst them. Religion is merely the vehicle.
But don’t take my word for it, it’s in their leather-bound paper-weight. Speaker / Pastor / MasturbationStatistician Mike is probably familiar, but I don’t think the lesson has quite sunk in…
Matthew 6: 5-13
Peace,
-NOoC
coozledad
Trump’s followers would constitute the employment pool for operating death camps. There isn’t any question. They will do it again if they are permitted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QaNCbig82Q
Chris
@coozledad:
I remember first reading Paxton’s An Anatomy Of Fascism years before “President Trump” was anything but a bad joke, and realizing that literally every conservative I knew would 100% have been a Nazi if they’d been born in Germany in the early twentieth century. Most of them wouldn’t have been first-hour Nazis, but the Nazis would’ve easily gotten them around to supporting, tolerating, or ignoring each and every one of their actions, and with very little effort, too.
Eolirin
@No One of Consequence: The Christian nationalist wing absolutely does, and is the most dedicated part of the coalition. That they practice a form of Christianity that most other Christians wouldn’t recognize is kind of besides the point. It’s very much religious for them.
We run a real risk by assuming too much cynical manipulation on the part of these people. Even if there’s an element of that from a lot of the leaders of that movement, the reason why they’re engaging in it is because there’s a base of politicial support that does believe. And that base is increasingly getting their own people elected instead of only helping to elect people who are only out to manipulate them.
Brachiator
A very thoughtful essay.
Thank you
sottyfoxsparrow
“…does war bring out the worst, or allow the (sick) freedom to be as awful as you are?”
I’m sad to say, I think it’s the latter… Slavery (prior to the war) proved that there are many among us who have no problem giving free reign to the evil lurking within, whatever the circumstance.
Wonderful essay.
eclare
@danielx:
That’s impressive, that he knew how some people would react.
RevRick
My parents were both closer to the action before the War as they both served in the American Embassy in Berlin. My mom was evacuated the day after Hitler’s army invaded Poland, but my dad, as an assistant to the Naval Attaché, was kept on until April 1940. He passed through Rotterdam a few days before it was bombed, and got stuck in Genoa until the French surrendered. He took tramp steamers to Buenos Aires and then to Rio De Janeiro, finally getting home in November. My parents had my older brother in February 1942, so he wasn’t immediately called up, but became a flight navigator instructor and spent the war at Stapleton Field outside Denver. My uncle fought in the Battle of the Bulge. My future father-in-law was an MP in Italy.
Christmas Eve in our house was kind of strange as my parents entertained three other couples (their lifelong friends). Two of the husbands liked swapping war stories, one who fought in Guadalcanal and the other in Italy. Sunday evenings we watched Victory at Sea and Air Power, which seldom showed the actual human toll.
Side note: my paternal grandfather emigrated to the US in 1910, leaving the rest of his family behind in Germany. My great grandmother was killed in an allied air raid on Magdeburg in 1944.
Melancholy Jaques
@coozledad:
Right-wingers are basically the opposite of Christian.
It galls me that there are no famous preachers who denounce these things. And the Catholic bishops are more concerned with denying sacraments to Democratic candidates.
Anotherlurker
My Dad was in the Pacific, Ie Shima in the Oakinawa campaign and he mentioned his experiences once and a while. His references were always one or 2 sentences and he never spoke more than that. However, he did mention kamakazis. He also mentioned Japanese soldiers throwing themselves off cliffs to avoid capture.
My uncle Ray was in Europe and he took shrapnel in his back. He never mentioned his experiences.
A close friend of my father’s was killed behind German lines during the D-Day push. He was the heir to an old family fortune but he stepped up when his country needed him. Think any billionaire’s offspring would step up today?
NotMax
No matter how often the story of Pointe du Hoc is related, it’s an amazing mission.
eclare
Thank you, Nelle.
These stories are sad, inspiring, and of course frustrating and infuriating as we go through this again in Ukraine and at the ballot box.
My dad was born in 1933 and only had sisters, so I don’t have any relatives with WWII stories to tell.
If you ever get a chance to see the WWII museum in NOLA, go. It is amazingly well done. Also, allow two days. We only had one, as our cruise left the next morning, and in one day, we only made it through the European theater.
TBone
@Nelle: You said it, sista!
Omnes Omnibus
My paternal grandfather was in Europe.* He landed in Normandy about two weeks after D-Day. He had three brothers who were old enough for military service. One also served in Europe, one was a Marine in the Pacific, and the last was assigned to Arlington National Cemetery. One of my paternal grandmother’s brothers served as a artillery observer and was awarded a Bronze Star. My maternal grandfather was 38 when the war started and was in a reserved occupation. My maternal grandmother’s oldest brother served, although I am not sure what he did. I think that was all pretty normal at the time.
*He did not really talk to his kids about the war. He told one or two “funny” stories. He did talk to me about the army after I joined. Not about the war, but about how to be a good officer from his POV as sergeant.
pat
Many years ago I read a biography of Ike. Don’t recall the title right now, it’s probably on one of my bookshelves.
What I really remember from that book is the decision to actually land on the 6th. I think there was some question of the weather…. The troops were already in the ships, Ike knew if they postponed the invasion they would have to let them off and they would never keep the secret.
The key was that they had some new weather forecasting information that said the weather would clear the next day, so off they went.
I’ve got to look for that book. When I finish vacuuming up the dust bunnies in the hallway…
TBone
My mother gave me this book. Whenever I feel despair, I return to it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning
That and the Wollman Test of Reality:
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19910829&slug=1302660
The youngs should be given both.
narya
Thank you Nelle, and thank you to the rest of you jackals for these remembrances.
NotMax
@
Ike also issued orders that every foot of film that could be had be used to document the camps.
Story is told that on his first visit to a camp (accompanying Ike), Patton rushed behind a barracks and promptly threw up.
NotMax
sigh
#71: danielx
trollhattan
@raven:
Thanks for that piece of their mission history. Sinking Yamato was important to the Navy because she was the IJN’s biggest (and last?) battleship. 18-inch main guns with phenomenal range. But the final mission was basically suicide with no way to organize a full battle group around her.
NotMax
My biological father was in the Seabees in the Pacific. Never spoke of it.
TBone
@TBone: link fix! I hope (facepalm)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning
Antidote to Despair!
WHY WON’T THE LINK WORK AARRGGG
raven
@trollhattan: Yes, the other super battleship was the Musashi sunk the previous October.
NotMax
Germane Lincoln Project (I know, I know) spot.
NotMax
Bad linky. Let’s try this again.
Germane Lincoln Project (I know, I know) spot.
TBone
@NotMax: can’t open link and I just had to fix a link in my comment 3 times before it took.
Must be my dumbphone?Oh! Internet hijinx!
Albatrossity
My dad served in North Africa and Italy, but since he was in a photo-reconnaissance unit, he was not in the combat zones. I had an uncle who was in the first wave at Normandy beach and made it back home; he never talked about it (at least to me). And I had a good friend, a fellow faculty member and mentor, who was assigned to Patton’s army, but after a week or two in France, fell victim to “friendly fire” when a P51 pilot mistook his unit for Germans and strafed them. He was hit in the leg, spent the rest of the war in various hospitals, and walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
All were good men who served honorably; all came from average American backgrounds; all were deeply affected by their service and what they saw during that time. We need more average Americans to reject autocracy and fascism; I hope we have enough of that kind of person.
caphilldcne
My great grandfather, Pa, was in the battle of the bulge. My mom’s father was medically ineligible but worked in the plants in Detroit turning out war materials as did, I think, my great grandmother.
My Dad and one uncle fought in Vietnam. I joined the Air Force but of course did not see action during the first gulf war – they didn’t pay big $$$ to train me as a missile officer just to have me go off to war in Iraq. No sir.
I think our family’s military service pretty much has ended with me getting out 4 years to the day I got in. Makes me ill to see this objectively fascist movement develop in the US. Will definitely fight them at the ballot box, best I can.
TBone
@NotMax: 💙😍
Jackie
What a great thread! So many shared memories from parents and grandparents.
OT, but Steve Bannon has been ordered to report to prison July 1.
hueyplong
@eclare: Same here on father’s birth year and before that, they’re not Americans. Our stories are about Canadians at Passchendaele in WWI, with the exception of an in-law who was part of the ground crew for the Polish Squadron in WWII. That’s a group with a fairly complete understanding of anti-fascism.
We’re kind of Brit-adjacent, though when reading about things or seeing movies, I identify with the Americans or, on the rare occasion when they’re depicted, Polish airmen.
frosty
I think back on the fathers along the band-new suburban street I grew up on in the 50s. I don’t know anything about the house at the end. The next one in, the man had one prosthetic leg. The next one, our immediate neighbor, was a pilot who flew the Hump between India and China. Then my dad, who was a corporal in the USAAF but never left the states. Up the hill, a man named Swiczeska (sp?) who was Polish and may have gotten out early enough to avoid the Holocaust.Seems like Nelle is right, everyone was doing something.
Then there was my Scoutmaster. He was a captain in the Marines, was part of three assaults in the Pacific, and earned a Silver Star. Us scouts, who were WWII history buffs, never knew anything about it until we read his obituary 15 years ago. He of course didn’t tell us anything.
HinTN
My mother served in Europe as a physical therapist / ambulance driver. My MIL served as a nurse in the Pacific Theater. Neither wanted to talk about their time
ETA – My father was older and served very young at the tail of WWI.
Uncle Cosmo
Dad was drafted at 30 in ’43 when they took anyone who could walk, Mom made lightbulbs at a Westinghouse plant when he went off to diesel mechanic school at Ft Crook, NE,[1] then on to San Luis Obispo.[2] Mom who’d never traveled more than 250 miles from home rode a train for several days to join him in SF[3] before he shipped out for Pearl, where he ran into his favorite BiL, a sailor in port on the USS Monterey.
Then on to the Leyte landings, where his unit hauled cargo on the beach while the motor pool was set up. Spent the first night with his M1 in a slit trench near Tacloban[4] scared spitless that the Japs were infiltrating.[5,6] On to Okinawa[7]. After the surrender he spent a few months in the Korean occupation, came home & lived for the most part contentedly ever after[8], only telling us the funny stories.[9]
——
[1] Where he reputedly spent a day interpreting between a detachment of Italian POWs and the Army sergeant in charge of them.
[2] Where he fell in love with CA and spent several years before my birth trying unsuccessfully to talk her into moving there.
[3] Where they experienced their one modest earthquake.
[4] Foxholes? Hah – the water table was 18″ down,
[5] Unit had its only fatality that night, to friendly fire
[6] He never slept at night for fear of having his throat slit in his sleep, instead caught catnaps during the day.
[7] Where the unit, again unloading cargo on the beach, purloined 3 55-gal drums of grain alcohol and stashed them in a deserted location, Later they had a party by pouring out half of their cans of fruit juice and filling them with booze. Dad didn’t drink but he recalled the guys crawling back to their tents screaming they were blind. Fortunately the DENATURED alcohol wasn’t laced with enough methanol to cause permanent blindness or death.
[8] But reportedly was terrified he’d be drafted again once the Korean War broke out.
[9] One of the few times I ever saw him angry was when I related a couple of stories told me by a kid down the block whose dad manned a machine gun on a Marine landing craft. Don’t you believe a word of it! he snarled. –Are you telling me Terry’s dad is a liar? YES!! –How the heck would you know? Because no one who’s been through that ever wants to talk about it. EVER!!
NotMax
@Jackie
FAFO, Mr. Twoshirts.
Peke Daddy
My father was 36 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He spent the war building Liberty ships in Vallejo.
Jackie
@NotMax: Moving ad.
Personally I appreciate that the Lincoln Project hates TCFG as much as we do, and are doing their part to protect democracy.
TBone
@Jackie: ZIPPITY DOO DAH MY OH MY WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY 🎶
No One of Consequence
@Eolirin: Fair points all. You are right, in the danger of assumptions here.
I suppose that I was trying to point out that the leaders of the Republican movement/party/massDelusion, the political ones, don’t seem terribly Christ-like. Don’t seem terribly concerned with any Christ-like tenants of Love and Kindness, Humility or Forgiveness. They appear to me to have more in common and in semblance with the Hypocrites (thus my referenced passage). Perhaps I am giving the Leaders too much credit for being thoughtful enough to foresee their own coming confrontations with professed beliefs and tenants they cannot live up to. Have no intentions of living up to. Or perhaps I am giving too much credit to the populace, some of whom are professed Christians , and their ability to discern that their Leaders are not Godly, nor Christ-like. Accountability can only be forestalled for so long, once the mortal coil is shuffled off, even if it was avoided in the above-ground portion of existence. At least that was my understanding of the Christian belief of the afterlife? I can’t get passed professed Christians and the apparent disconnect between their beliefs and their political representation.
Well, this was too much screed only to arrive at the conclusion that this is all just my problem…
Peace,
-NOoC
p.s. Apologies for off-topic, if that is how this is perceived amidst a good thread of timely and poignant comments/content.
TBone
@Jackie: me too
Ruckus
My father served in the Navy during WWII. He was a machinist, making metal parts to repair ships.
I served in the Navy during Vietnam. I was a specialist electrician. I operated and maintained electronic navigation equipment and was in charge of a department on a ship for two years. I do not remember this fondly nor hatefully. I enlisted for 4 years, it was better than being drafted into the Army or Marines and being used as a target, even if that was only for 2 years. I served for 3 1/2 yrs to the day, because Vietnam ended. And they were rightfully sure I was not going to reenlist. For me the worst part of the Navy was the lifers. Not all of them, just the one’s that chose it as a career because no one else would have them.
Haydnseek
Hi geg 6. My dad was flight crew on one of those C-47’s that your Uncle Bud dropped from. I was born in 1951. Like my friends he never talked about the war directly, only the friends he made that he served with and the people he got to know in England. He lost many of those friends. Those planes had to fly in formation, low and slow, and the German flak was relentless. The loss rate was high. That’s why some of those missions had hundreds of planes going over the drop zone.
He saw some things that I can’t even imagine on these missions. I lift a glass to all who were part of the invasion. I thank the French for remembering them and honoring them.
TBone
Today is the day Basement Bannon became Residential 😆
How utterly fitting.
NotMax
@Peke Daddy
Hey, could have been ice ships.
Jackie
@Haydnseek: 🥂
TBone
@frosty: my former (before adoption by stepDad) IRL last name is a shortened version of Swiczeska. Probably shortened at Ellis Island.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: Great!
Tony G
@Peke Daddy: My father lucked out during the war — he was never drafted. He was somewhat old than most draftees (27) when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but he always believed that the real reason that he was never drafted was that in December of 1941 he was a skilled, experienced worker in a military-related job — an electricion working for a freight railroad. He never got a formal notice about that, but he never got a draft notice either. He always thought that the government had decided that guys like him were more valuable keeping the trains running, or doing other work related to the manufacture and transportation of weapons, than they’d be running around with a rifle — but that they didn’t want to advertise that policy for obvious reasons. His younger brother, who didn’t yet have that work experience, was drafted into the Army (and came home in one piece).
geg6
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Aliquippa, PA. Still a lot of things in that town named after Jones (the J in J&L). That whole town was a company town, with company housing and neighborhoods built based on your employment status – management neighborhoods, supervisor neighborhoods, skilled tradesmen (carpenters, electricians, etc.) neighborhoods, laborer neighborhoods. Also by ethnicity – Black neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, Polish neighborhoods, etc. My parents grew up in tradesmen neighborhoods and weathered the Depression fairly well as J&L kept as many of the tradesmen working on things even when steel orders were down. My maternal grandfather was a mason and my paternal grandfather was a millwright.
eclare
@hueyplong:
My paternal grandfather didn’t serve, but he worked for the Illinois Central RR, so maybe the US needed him to do that?
I don’t know much about my maternal grandfather, we weren’t very close to that side of the family.
Old School
@TBone:
Kind of weird. I’ll try: Man’s Search for Meaning
Ironcity
Would second some of the comments here that the veterans didn’t talk much with family and friends about what happened. I heard bits of a neighbor’s story only twice at neighborhood picnics when he had had enough beer. He was top-turret gunner in a B-24 in Europe. The crew got together and decided that if they got shot up so much they couldn’t get home they would go to Sweden or Switzerland if they could rather than going down in Germany. They got bounced by German fighters, maybe jets, and did their preplanned divert to Sweden. Darn near made it. Ended up in the water near the beach and he was rescued by a girl in a canoe. They were interned in Sweden for the duration. A long time later I did figure out what squadron he was with and found a web site with a very well done page on the crew that filled in a lot of the details, maybe explained why he didn’t say much.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@frosty:
Wow. There are several good reads that you’re probably familiar with on what it was like to be a combat Marine in the Pacific:
https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195
https://www.amazon.com/Guadalcanal-Diary-Modern-Library-War/dp/0679640231
Reading them, it’s understandable why such vets didn’t talk about it.
TBone
About the Enemy Within 😡
Reposting from earlier because this pisses me off. There oughtta be a law.
Jared Kushner has a real estate deal pending using his dirty, filthy, bonesaw coverup oil money investment firm to build some bullshit hotel in Serbia. He promised to build an anti-NATO MONUMENT memorial in exchange for said deal that uses language approved by the Kremlin.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/06/05/oh-jared-2/
eclare
@Tony G:
My grandfather never served either. I never asked, but like your dad, he was an electrician for a RR. A passenger RR, but still.
Tony G
@Ruckus: I was about two years too young to be drafted into Vietnam. I did not regret that fact, and I had no desire to volunteer when the U.S. military changed to an all-volunteer force in 1973. Although it turned out to be the case that we were too young to be drafted, the Vietnam meat-grinder certainly concentrated the minds of the boys I went to high school with, distracting us from concentrating on more pleasant topics like teenage girls, marijuana and Led Zeppelin. What’s interesting, in hindsight, was how absolutely false the “domino theory” that had been the pretext for the war turned out to be. A united Vietnam after 1973 did not bother its neighbors (with the exception of doing the world a favor by overthrowing the horrific Khmer Rouge in 1978). Is it possible that we were lied to about the war from the beginning? That’s unpossible!
West of the Rockies
@Jeffg166:
Thanks for sharing that story! Isn’t it odd, the brushes we have with big history without realizing it? When I was a little kid, a neighbor and his wife were concentration camp survivors. He seemed ancient and fragile to me.
Maybe someday we’ll be asked to tell about what the country was like on 1/6/’21.
bluefoot
One of my grandfathers fought mostly in North Africa until he was killed by a landmine. My grandmother coordinated efforts back home to take care of families who lost fathers and brothers in the war. The family ended up being refugees but somehow my grandmother still tried to take care of others in the same plight. My other grandfather was a diplomat during the war, and spent part of his time coordinating strategy meetings between Allied leaders.
One of my friends is German and his grandfather was a Nazi. He always speaks of his grandfather with sadness in his eyes. It’s interesting to me how similar he and I are in our political and social viewpoints, and how similarly the traumas of our parents during the war affected how we each were raised.
Sometimes I think about what legacy I’ve inherited from each side of my family. I know one legacy from both sides is the belief in service, and sometimes that means fighting, and sometimes that means sacrifice.
TBone
My Great Uncle John (eventually became Lt. Col.) was an officer during WWII. He didn’t talk about it much. My Dad interviewed him using a cassette recorder before he died.
Uncle John was traveling along a road in France in the backseat (officers had drivers) and was being hunted by a Nazi airplane that followed his car. The missile from that plane bounced up from where it hit the ground directly behind the car and exploded UNDERNEATH my Great Uncle John’s seat (under the car)! He remained childless as a result of being wounded in his holy of holies. I was robbed of cousins, but my Great Uncle survived!
West of the Rockies
@raven:
Christ, they all look like such confident, competent men… but they were probably all between 18-25.
Tony G
@eclare: It sounds like the same situation. The passenger railroads in those days (when civilian air travel was still in its infancy) were probably the main way to transport troops to ports of embarkation. Out of curiosity, I did a little of “my own research” to see whether I could find any information about a specific policy, but I came up short. My guess is that it was something that the government just did, without advertising the fact that they were doing it. (They didn’t want the families of the dead and wounded getting up in arms about the lucky guys who fixed trains instead of getting their heads blown off.). It was a different world then, of course, with the news media limited to newspapers that were highly censored. In any event, it probably happened with no official announcements of any kind.
trollhattan
@Uncle Cosmo: Grand summary. Dad sounds like a man who lived life to the fullest, regardless of circumstances. What more can one hope for?
Re. #7 Dad referred to the stuff as “torpedo juice” I think on account of it fueled the air-launched torpedo engines. Being on a carrier they needed a lot of the stuff and “boys will be boys.” Lucky for those boys they honored last call that night.
Tony G
@West of the Rockies: Yeah, they were very young. I remember that Kurt Vonnegut sub-titled his novel that was partially based on his own ww2 experiences “The Children’s Crusade”.
TBone
I’m gonna be reading this thread well into the night. Thank you, everyone, for sharing this amazing content!
narya
Re: not talking about wartime experiences. My mother’s cousin’s husband was on Iwo Jima (I think; I know it was in the Pacific). My father tried to ask him about it a couple of times, but he wouldn’t say anything.
eclare
@Tony G:
Thanks for the info. My grampy was very proud of his work at IC.
schrodingers_cat
Its not a coincidence that the generation that fought World War II and in the Indian context the generation that fought in the Independence movement is dying, illiberal forces have reared their ugly head again
We are having to refight these battles all over again.
TBone
@schrodingers_cat: and we’ll kick ass AGAIN no matter how long it takes.
eversor
@No One of Consequence:
No they do. The Federalist Society, The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, National Conservatism were all specifically founded with pushing Christianity on the rest of us. They are the ones running the show and calling the shots. Bill Barr, Sam Alito, Leonlard Leo, and all of them are very open this all about Christianity.
They are also true believers. Sure Christianity has helping the poor and all that. But the catch is that it’s private charity called for. Not state action. And the Old Testament, New Testament, and Christ himself due call directly for patriarchy, heirarchy, strict gender roles, place women as second class citizens, and all the horrible stuff liberals lie isn’t in the bible. Hell the New Testament is more sex negative than the Old Testament.
Actually Christianity is the right of Rick Santorum, Ross Douthat, and Rod Dreher on sexual/gender/social issues but with a ton of private charity.
If you aren’t willing to confront Christianity you aren’t willing to confront fascism. If you defend Christianity you are defending fascism. Christianity is the main head of the fascist hydra that has to be cut off to kill it. So contronting the rich, white, male, does nothing without confronting Christianity full on.
Christianity backed Hitler and Franco. If you have Christianity you either have to give it full patriarchy, heirarchy, sex, and gender or it will give you fascism. The whole “Western Right Resurgance” came out of the Churches and is run by Christians all over Europe as well.
None of this is calling for a genocide. It’s just admitting what Christianity is and what it has always done the moment it gains power rather than being supressed and fringe. If we are going to have a recokining over fascism we need one for Christianity. It’s done much worse and over a much longer time. Fascism in the angsty teen, Christianity is the professional evil.
Subsole
My grandfathers both fought in WW2.
Funny enough they both fought in Italy, though in different locations. Neither spoke much about it.
Mom’s dad only ever told me one story. He was on leave, went into some tiny little village, sightseeing, and was sitting in the church listening to a sermon. Bunch of German soldiers came in and started walking up and down the pews, looking for Americans. Grampa had dark hair and dark eyes and dark skin before spending all Summer in the Italian sun, and so the Germans just assumed he was Italian. Walked right by him. This was fortunate, considering he spoke maybe five or six words of Italian.
He remembered the German sergeant-equivalent’s eyes, almost 40 years later. Said they were the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Like a doll’s eyes. Said the Italians were lovely people who hated the Germans.
Dad’s dad spoke less. He went in at Anzio and had a less than joyful time. Fought up and down the mountains for the rest of the war, without a scratch. Spent a few years in Germany, then transferred to Japan…in 1950, just in time to go experience Busan. Where he got wounded like nine times in under a minute when his position got overrun. Recovered from that and got sent to Vietnam in the late 50s as an instructor. No combat, just training.
Survived all that just so Joe Camel could smoke his ass…
He had lots of pictures. I was struck by how devastated Germany was, years after the war ended.
raven
@West of the Rockies: Shit, I got out 3. months before I turned 20 and did two “deployments”! Check out this lean, mean fighting machine!
Tony G
@eclare: I’m really curious about whether any historians have written about that. Given the fact that ww2 was an industrial war, it make perfect sense that the government would decided that a skilled worker in an industry that manufactures or transports war material would be more variable doing that than serving in the infantry. It also would make sense that the government would not clearly communicate that policy lest it have a negative effect on morale.
evinfuilt
@Cacti:
My Grandfather was also stationed in the Pacific. He had a “cushy” desk job. Which just meant he had to worry about being bombed instead of shot, as his friends were.
We only spoke about it once, he looked so sad when he told me of the friends he entered with but didn’t leave, and all the celebrations for the Western Front year after year while ignoring so many of the horrors in the Pacific Theater.
That my dad would mock his service because he was a secretary. Yet I know my Grandfather had a purple heart, and I doubt it was for a papercut, he never told me what it was, and I’m fine. I visit his stone once a year, I know he would feel deep shame that one of his daughters seemed to have forgotten what he sacrificed his own youth for. Yet, all his other surviving children and grandchildren still love and respect his memory, and his sacrifices, and will do what we can to make sure it doesn’t happen here.
Tony G
@Tony G: Another critical part of the industrial warfare of ww2 was, of course, the ocean transport of war material by the Merchant Marine. I had another uncle who had been an engineer on freighters before, during and after the war, and in June of 1942 his ship was torpedoed and sunk in the Indian Ocean, with the survivors crowded together in a lifeboat for a week before making it to land. (My uncle, for the rest of his life, used to keep his life vest hanging up in the basement — telling the kids that “This thing saved my life.”.) After a short period of recuperation after being rescued, he was sent right back out on more missions, for the rest of the war. The Merchant Marine had, I think, the second-highest death rate in the war, second only to the bomber crews. Again, I am so infuriated that so many Americans are now supporting a fascist — but I would bet that the majority of Americans are completely ignorant of the history of fascism, Nazism and World War Two.
Peke Daddy
@Tony G: Yep, that was my dad. His work in mechanical drawings and drafting class there was consistently cited as exemplary.
geg6
@Haydnseek:
And I am thankful to your dad for maybe getting my uncle there safely. I’m still amazed that he not only survived the flight and jump, but the aftermath when he was alone, wandering around France, looking for his people. Bud never talked about his experiences (neither did Uncle Walter about the Pacific), but he talked to my dad about them and that’s how I know.
Peke Daddy
@NotMax: That’s BatSqueeze. How many snifters of brandy did Churchill down before approving that?
TBone
@Old School: hey, thank you!
lowtechcyclist
@Melancholy Jaques:
How do we know they haven’t?
Has Rev. William Barber been silent on the subject? I doubt it, in fact, it looks like he’s part of the Bad Faith documentary on Christian Nationalism. Or how about Rev. Warnock, the Senator from Georgia? I bet he’s had some things to say too.
But you know how that plays in the media: “famous Black person criticizes white conservatives; in other news, dog bites man.”
So how about famous white preachers? I’m stumped: who are these famous white preachers who aren’t Christian nationalists? Are there any that are famous enough that they could hold a press conference and what they had to say would be picked up by the national media? That’s a serious question.
If a mainstream Protestant minister condemns Christian nationalism but nobody from the MSM reports on it, does it make a sound? That’s the situation we’re in right now.
Jager
My father flew the 2nd Glider across the Rhine during Operation Varsity. The Army Air Corps had finally figured out what to do with the Glider crews after they landed. They were trained as infantry! Dad fought as a grunt in the Battle of Burp Corner in Wesel Germany. His company of pilots and co-pilots held off a German tank attack and blocked a key crossroads preventing a German counterattack. He was awarded an Air Medal, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. He never talked about anything to me except the funny shit that happened. This is a great one! Shortly after Varsity he and a few of his pals went to Paris and got as drunk as young Americans can get. My dad’s co-pilot walked into a bistro’s glass door and broke his nose. One of the guys got a pen and paper from the bartender and drew a paper Purple Heart, they held an awards ceremony at the bar.
My dad’s best friend (my backup dad) was a tank commander and had fought from Normandy to Germany, he was the only guy my dad shared his war stories with, after my dad died he shared some of the stories with me, but none of his.
My mother’s WWII experiences as a young bride following her husband from base to base, would make a great movie, especially her cooking lessons from Mrs Tyson’s black cook Frances. We were the only family in my North Dakota hometown eating North Carolina wet BBQ on a regular basis!
lowtechcyclist
@Ironcity:
Was his name Orr, by any chance? ;-)
Betty
As a Boomer, plenty of family stories about what they did during the war, both dads and moms, but my comment is about a video I saw of a veteran at today’s ceremony who kissed Zelenskyy’s hand which led to a lovely moment between them. As Biden said in his speech, we still have to fight for democracy. The veteran thanked Zelenskyy and said he would pray for him.
TBone
Some music fitting the occasion 🎶
https://youtu.be/riLLdVLJauA?feature=shared
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Tony G:
https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/5-world-war-ii-jobs-that-were-more-dangerous-than-being-an-infantryman/
Thanks for bringing up the MM. They’re always overlooked.
I’ve got an old friend who was a historian for the Army until he retired a couple of years back. I should ask him for some references on this because the internet is full of unsubstantiated numbers regarding which combat position had the highest death rate.
eclare
@Tony G:
I am meeting my dad’s older sister, 94, for lunch on Monday (dad died years ago). If anyone knew anything others didn’t, it would be she. I’ll ask her about it.
Ask WaterGirl for my email and send a greeting to me. If I find out anything I’ll let you know. Doubtful, but who knows.
lowtechcyclist
My wife’s grandfather was killed by a German bullet on April 3, 1945. He is buried in the Netherlands American military cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. His daughter, my MIL, was born on May 30, 1945. My wife and I have visited his grave.
Elizabelle
Excellent essay, Nelle. And I appreciate all the family stories. Honoring the memory of WWII veterans and their loved ones.
billcoop4
My late friend Bob was in Army Intelligence during the War (I’ve had no family members serve since 1865). Knew him in the 1990s and 2000s through his sons at Church.
The funny story: While in England, he had a contact with a French woman in the Résistance. They only knew each other by code names, and shortly after D-Day he was reassigned. Fast forward to the 90s at Church. An older couple originally from France joined the parish. Bob talked with them, started sharing reminiscences, and …yep…she had been his contact.
The sad story: Bob sat his sons down one day and said, “I have to tell you this, but I’ll only talk about it once.” He had been with the first group of US soldiers to return to the site of the Malmedy massacre.
BC
JustRuss
My dad was Army Air Corps. War ended before he finished training. Which was probably fortunate for me.
frosty
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yes, I’ve read With The Old Breed. The series The Pacific was based on it.
WeimarGerman
Thanks for all the comments. Thanks for all your ancestors!
One of my grandfathers was a Survivor. He lived through the war as a laborer in Berlin, working for Siemens and others. He had it better than almost all Jews because he married a Christian in the ’30s. His father fled Germany to Brazil but he refused because he wouldn’t believe his neighbors would be evil. He was arrested/detained at least 3 times, each time closer to being shipped out.
If your interested to read more about “privileged mixed marriages” and his story, his memoir and papers are at this link.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@frosty:
I figured. Posted mainly for others interested in good books on awful events.
Another good read is:
https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Hidden/dp/1539586391
This is a fascinating, literally on-the-ground recounting of D Day through numerous German soldiers on different beaches and in different tactical roles.
frosty
@geg6: My father’s older brother was a C-47 pilot. All he ever said was “I towed gliders over Normandy.” Thanks to the internet my brother and I could do some research.
He towed gliders but he also dropped paratroops. He did the same in Dragoon (southern France), Market-Garden, and Varsity. Dropped supplies in Bastogne. Flew jerricans of gas to keep Patton moving. And flew wounded back to hospitals in England.
At the end of his life he shared some of his stories with my Dad but swore him to secrecy. My dad kept his word and the stories died with him.
PaulWartenberg
I had a grand-uncle who was already enlisted as a Navy pilot when Pearl Harbor happened in 1941.
Edward Kinzer took part in the Battle of Coral Sea where he took part in several bombing runs and made a direct hit on a Japanese destroyer before getting shot down. His personal belongings were still on the Yorktown when it went down at Midway.
The Navy named a transport ship after him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kinzer and I can still remember visiting my great-grandmother in West Virginia at the age of 10 where I saw the metal cask of the christening bottle and the Navy medals and Purple Heart he earned.
Last I know, the US Navy sold the ship as surplus to Taiwan back in the 1970s. Dunno if it’s still in service.
Uncle Cosmo
I recognize you catch a lot of grief for your hostility to Christianity – some deserved, some not, given your younger self’s experiences – but I think it’s worth noting that pretty much any spiritual doctrine that chases after temporal power tends to kick its spirituality to the curb, Particularly when said doctrine claims to hold the keys to heaven and eternal life. The Christians just got there first (~1700 years back) when the whole frackin’ Roman Empire dropped into their cassocks. In a different time-line I betcha the Mithrans or Zoroastrians would’ve given them a run for their money (not to mention the Islamic world).
prostratedragon
@TBone: Viktor Frankl. I should read it again soon.
@NotMax: Hitchcock shot footage of the camps for the British government, some of which made it into a documentary. No surprise here: he seemed very interested in how people in the surrounding towns could pretend not to have known. Maybe the key to the rest of his career.
hueyplong
@prostratedragon: George Stevens (The More the Merrier, A Place in the Sun, Giant) also was on the scene, filming, at a concentration camp liberation.
Uncle Cosmo
You’re quite welcome. I’m the family historian, and I need to get busy ensuring that all the stories recorded in my head get written down before I’m too befuddled or dead for my brother’s grandchildren.
His life was more an object lesson in the Japanese proverb Deru kugi wa utareru – the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. He learned to keep his head down so worse things wouldn’t befall him. He might’ve been so much more…
It says something about living in the postwar USA that in spite of a lot of bad luck, he passed away in his 85th year a relatively happy man, secure in the esteem of his family and friends and neighbors. But he might have been so much more…
JCNZ
A bit late, but I have to add to this.
I grew up in an ordinary street in an ordinary suburb in Wellington, New Zealand. Our neighbour across the street, Mr Wilson, captained a landing-craft at D-Day (he was in the RNVR). Next to him, Mr Jones, had been a navigator in Lancaster bombers. Two houses along from him, Professor McCreary, had spent the war in prison as a Conscientious Objector. Across the street, Mr McGregor, had been captured in Crete and spent the war as a POW in Poland. Next to him, a Dutch couple, Mr and Mrs Risseu. Mr Risseu had spent the war in Germany as a conscripted worker – Mrs Risseu had been in Buchenwald (they met in a refugee camp in Austria after the war and emigrated to New Zealand). Next to them, Mr Cording, who lost both legs in North Africa. And next to him, my father, who had been a Lancaster bomber pilot and won the DFC.
raven
@frosty: Half of it. The first half was based on ” Helmet for a Pillow” by Robert Leckie.
Melancholy Jaques
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s what I’m talking about. I really should have been more clear that my use of the phrase “famous preachers” was meant to be a pejorative. I should have said “holier than thou motherfuckers” or something similar. I am chastened and will adjust accordingly.
prostratedragon
My father, his next older brother, and a grand-uncle were my only close relatives serving in WWII. A couple of uncles were too young, and the rest were in vital industries. G.U. was a chaplain, no idea where. Father was in ordinance control, whose mission involved maintaining US ammo supplies and commandeering captured enemy supplies. The latter could get hairy enough because of booby traps, which he learned to disarm, that he could verify the use of expressions like “hurt locker” well before the movie came out. Never was specific about that, just a moment of silence kind of thing.
In Europe, he was attached to the 3rd Army in its sweep across southern Europe. Somewhere, either in France or Italy, he ran into his brother one day, who was a mechanic with one of the transport divisions. Dad’s last service before mustering out was at Yokohama, inventorying a Japanese ammo depot. He felt a bit guilty at being relieved not to have to follow up an invasion wave, considering why that was so. He always was quietly proud to have served, but what he saw in Yokohama made him a pacifist.
Stateside, mother and her sisters all did war work in Chicago, she and the younger one in light factories after school. The older sister, who had taken some college, went to work as a secretary in the Army. She made it here career and even received a citation for her service to some higher officers. Aunt on the other side, who was older and between marriages, also worked as a secretary in those years, for the government, moving to D.C. and participating in the crazy, crowded housing situation of that time.
They’re all gone now, but would be beside themselves about this nazi revival and TFG in particular. I’m kind of glad they don’t have to see it.
WeimarGerman
@lowtechcyclist:
Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, comes to my mind as a white progressive pastor. There are many others, but to your point never get the visibility of their snake charming colleagues.
Father Greg Boyle was just given a presidential Medal of Freedom, but he’s much more an exemplar of a life of service than a preacher.
eversor
@Uncle Cosmo:
It wasn’t just my younger self. My fathers family was turned into the camps by Christians and that was very common in Hungary. Two made it out alive. The rest was wiped out by Christians in the camps and the Christians who got them put in.
My mothers family had similar issues with the Christians in the Netherlands.
I can’t afford to naive about what Christianity actually is. What it actually teaches that liberals don’t want to admit and constantly lie about. In fact I respect the Alito’s more than the liberal Christians because Alito as horrible as he is doesn’t like or hide from what his religion really is. Which puts him morally above any liberal Christian.
Religion is temporal. That’s the issue. There is no imaginary man in the sky (and per Christianity it is a man and men are in charge. So if you are a woman who does not submit to men or you a man who’s woman do not submit you are no follower of Christ and are a liar if you claim you are and worse than Alito). It’s all bullshit. So the moment you don’t squash religions and let them gain respectability you get what we are going through now.
Notice how the biggest shit shows are the most religious? Notice how every time an authoritarian gains power they are waving religious symbols and have the backing of religion? Notice how it’s always those on the outs (women, minorities, children) who get hurt the worse? Because that’s all religion is. And of all the religions Christianity is by far the fucking worst with the longest track record of being bad to the point Nazis, Stalin, and Mao look tame.
It being first out of the gate at power doesn’t excuse it. You can’t seperate Christianity from what’s going on now. You can’t seperate it from Reagan. You can’t get it out of the backlash to the sexual revolution. You can’t get it out of fascism. You can’t get it out of slavery, colonialism, treatment of various natives, or conquest. You can’t get it out of control of women. You can’t. That’s all what Christianity is. So if you don’t like those things get rid of Christianity. And if you want to keep Christianity then you have to accept all those things will keep happening and are morally right.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@raven:
Sheesh, how could I have forgotten Leckie. “Okinawa” is another of those first-person account must reads.
His massive “Delivered From Evil” is another must read.
Gin & Tonic
@eversor:
The Khmers Rouges were atheist (or at least not overtly religious.) Lenin and Stalin were officially atheists. China’s Great Leap Forward had no religious element (that I am aware of.) Idi Amin was (to my knowledge) not religious. These just off the top of my head.
Gretchen
My dad landed on the third or fourth day of the DDay invasion and fought his way across Europe, including the Battle of the Bulge. He was one of six men who were the first to see a concentration camp. The Nazis had fled, and they had rations for 6 while confronted with hundreds of starving people. They didn’t know what to do so they started arresting the prisoners that the others were trying to get to, assuming they were collaborators. It’s said that when Patton arrived, he threw up.
At one point dad was in charge of Patton’s security. A plumber showed up to install a shower for Patton. Dad didn’t know about it and sent the plumber away, and got a Patton chewing out when the general found out who was responsible for the lack of shower.
Dad would only talk about the war when he’d been drinking, and I though of it as boring old war stories. When I was older and wanted to know, he’d stopped drinking and wouldn’t talk about it without the lubrication.
One mystery: he was an infantryman, landed in Normandy, never had reason to fly, but at the end of the war he had a parachute, and mom made slips out of « dad’s parachute ». Why did and infantryman have a parachute? I requested his army records, but all those records were lost in a fire in St. Louis
My mom’s birthday was May 8, VE Day. Best birthday present ever!
Omnes Omnibus
@Gretchen: Your dad must have picked up the parachute somewhere along the line and kept it for the silk. It wasn’t uncommon.
Nelle
@JCNZ: History felt more alive, more recent when I lived in NZ. There seemed to be acted, cherished effort to honor the sacrifice. “We will remember them.” I had friends while parents were forcibly moved from Poland to Siberia, and then sent various places via Tehran, to wait until the war ended and they could return to Poland. They landed in a big camp in NZ, then couldn’t return to Poland and made new lives down there. I also met people displaced by the Indonesian war. NZ has been a safe harbor for so many.
NutmegAgain
Thanks for this. My dad was a veteran of WWII, and I get all misty remembering him. He died when I was young (30), and I’ve missed him my entire adult life. He was in the USAAC (Army Air Corps–the actual Air Force came later). He was in the Pacific, part of the CBI theater (China Burma India). He wanted to be a pilot of course, but had hearing issues so no dice. He ended up doing operations for a bombardment group that flew the Hump. He went on one supply drop flight, and they crash landed in China. (A lot of the flights over the hump didn’t make it, the technology just wasn’t there.) They all survived, and the stories he had, of banquets with the local warlord, and drinking contests, and well, just incredible. I’m grateful he was relatively safe, and came back whole. So many of his peers did not.
Ironcity
@lowtechcyclist:
He was top-turret gunner in a B-24 in Europe. The crew got together and decided that if they got shot up so much they couldn’t get home they would go to Sweden or Switzerland if they could rather than going down in Germany. They got bounced by German fighters, maybe jets, and did their preplanned divert to Sweden. Darn near made it. Ended up in the water near the beach and he was rescued by a girl in a canoe. They were interned in Sweden for the duration.
Was his name Orr, by any chance? ;-)
Looked it back up because I couldn’t find what I had before. He was Jim Turnley and the pilot was 1LT Fred Tod. March 25, 1945. B-24 44-10517 713 Bomber Squadron. They got shot up pretty good and lost engines and hydraulics. B-24s had hydraulicly boosted flight controls and it took 2 strong men in fear of their lives to fly it without the boost. When the pilot told everybody to get out the co-pilot stayed, then went out at the last moment. Neither of them lived.
I don’t understand what people are thinking. Maybe they aren’t.
wjca
My FIL joined the Army in the late 1930s. (To, as he put it, “get out of the [family] flower shop.”) By Pearl Harbor, he was a sergeant . . . and the Army wasn’t sure what to do with a Japanese American NCO. In time, he became part of the NCO cadre when the 442 Regimental Combat Team was formed. Fought all the length of Italy, thru France, and into Germany. Ended up a Warrant Officer.
The only war story he told was of the 442 arriving at Rome. And being required to twiddle their thumbs for 3 days, until the 1st Texas could arrive. So that Rome would be liberated by white guys.
O. Felix Culpa
My dad was too young for WWII and his father too old. My mother’s family was on the other side. One of the nicest and biggest men I ever knew was a Marine who took part in every major landing in the Pacific theater. Was never wounded, despite his size, but lost many friends. He never spoke about it, and I can’t imagine the horrors he saw.
uick
My dad was a medic in WWII, serving all over France, Austria, Germany (plus the U.K.). He got part of his ear shot off, but never told me how that happened or anything serious or how he felt about the war, what he saw or caring for the wounded.
But I do think he had a raging case of PTSD that was untreated. He died in 1966 when I was 12, so I never got the chance to talk to him as an adult. But he did leave me a precious gift. He was an amateur photographer and I have two albums of his mostly behind-the-front-line images. The photos are slice-of-life scenes of buddies, war wreckage and some images of Hitler’s hideout (well after Hitler’s demise, of course. Seems like it was a must-view place to visit after hostilities ended).
The photos are in incredibly good shape even as the pages they are mounted on are crumbling. At some point, I will scan every page and create a permanent PDF to pass along to my kids.
jackmac
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My dad was a medic in WWII, serving all over France, Austria, Germany (plus the U.K.). He got part of his ear shot off, but never told me how that happened or anything serious or how he felt about the war, what he saw or caring for the wounded.
But I do think he had a raging case of PTSD that was untreated. He died in 1966 when I was 12, so I never got the chance to talk to him as an adult. But he did leave me a precious gift. He was an amateur photographer and I have two albums of his mostly behind-the-front-line images. The photos are slice-of-life scenes of buddies, war wreckage and some images of Hitler’s hideout (well after Hitler’s demise, of course. Seems like it was a must-view place to visit after hostilities ended).
The photos are in incredibly good shape even as the pages they are mounted on are crumbling. At some point, I will scan every page and create a permanent PDF to pass along to my kids.
Tony G
@Gretchen: Judging from my uncle’s experience, it was probably common for the GI’s to come home with “souvenirs” (obtained somehow). My uncle who was in the infantry in Europe in 1944-1945 came home with a few items that he probably wasn’t supposed to have: a ceremonial Nazi dagger and helmet (complete with swastikas) and and an empty bazooka shell (that looked just like a rocket ship, and was a favorite toy of the boys in the family). Somebody still has these things; I don’t!
Tony G
@NutmegAgain: I’ve read about The Hump. Given the state of aviation technology at that time, that might have been the most dangerous thing for airmen to do, although they wouldn’t have been facing fighter plans or anti-aircraft guns. The Hump kept China in the war, and thereby probably did more for the defeat of Japan than anything else did.
Elizabelle
@WeimarGerman: Going to read your grandfather’s story. Thank you for the link. And for being here and commenting.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
Late to this party, but here goes.
Dad was Navy. Annapolis, class of ’45, graduated in ’44. I think (need to confirm this) he was a midshipman on one of the battleships bombarding Normandy during the landings. I do know his “first ship” was a destroyer in the Pacific; kamikaze’d in early 1945 but survived the attack; he transferred to a different destroyer for the rest of the war, and was liaison officer for her during Occupation.
Mum spent some time with State Department in DC; I think 1943-4. She went home to help take care of her father (who died in 1946).
I had two cousins still in UK who were involved with Spitfire production from 1939 onward. I met one of them when I was very small, and I met the widow and daughter of the other. Those two ladies still lived in the same house in London, and could point out the ones in their neighborhood destroyed in the Blitz and rebuilt after the war.
All of them gone now.
All of them were very quiet about the war years; a lot of what I know of their time I had to research on my own.
It may just be my particular clan’s experience, but I found that while they caucused with conservative parties, their own values were surprisingly liberal – and once you showed them that their party didn’t match their politics they adapted to being more politically liberal quite easily. I suspect that more than a little of that had to do with years spent opposing the original fascism.
Michael Bersin
Dad served from 1943-1965. He didn’t talk much about his service. It was always vague – we gathered some details over decades. We are in no way certain about the details. We have his service medals (his grandson now does). He may have flown in bombers (as a gunner), was grounded due to inner ear problems, then ended up building runways with the advance across Europe. The description was vague, but Dad had dents in his face. Supposedly, he was in some proximity to artillery when burning debris in a barrel set off an explosion, killing the crew and injuring my dad. He had skin grafts on his face, taken from his buttocks. Mom used to quip, “When I kiss his cheek, I’m really kissing his ass.” (Yes, I grew up in that kind of family.) When I was very little I asked Dad if he had killed Germans. Dad didn’t answer. I never asked him again.
Mom was born in a French colony in North Africa. She was 13 when the allies launched Operation Torch. She never talked about it when we lived at home. I was around fifty years old when she first mentioned her experience – we were watching a documentary on the North Africa campaign when my parents were visiting us in Missouri. She said, “I was 13 years old, we spent three days in the cellar, one of my brothers went out to get us food.” They lived next to the port in Casablanca – The U.S.S. Massachusetts engaged in a duel with the Jean Bart which was docked in the port. The fuses in the 16-inch shells on the Massachusetts were from WW I and didn’t always work. One of the 1900 pound shells hit the dock in the port, didn’t explode, and skipped into their neighborhood, demolishing a house. Mom never allowed us to have guns in our house when we were growing up.
Mom and Dad met in Casablance in the early 1950’s. They told fascinating and sometimes hysterically funny stories about that period in their lives.
In the last few years of his life I believe Dad suffered from PTSD, but I was too clueless at the time to understand what was going on.
Mom and Dad are buried together at Arlington. We were there for their burial. I plan on making a trip out next year, after Dad’s 100th birthday, to see the gravestone (it’s viewable at the Arlington National Cemetary web site). The U.S.S. Massachusetts is now a museum ship in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m going to try to get there to see it, too.
NutmegAgain
@Tony G: They were carrying cargo (intended for the Kuomintang, who stockpiled it to fight Mao instead of the Japanese, ahem) My dad’s plane was a B-29 superfortress, and it’s my understanding that they also carried their fuel for the return trip. So, not a bomber on this run, ut a flying bomb itself. I have a snapshot of the plane nose down where they landed. It was a road, being built by Chinese (presumably) peasants. The area was so remote, they didn’t really know what a plane was, and several workers did not get out of the way in time. Extremely sad.
Michael Bersin
One of my mentors in graduate school, well-regarded internationally as a scholar in the field and loved by his students, was a well-known luddite in the classroom when it came to AV equipment. We would constantly chuckle about it.
When he passed away his obituary noted that he was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross as a radar operator on a B-29. We had no clue.
Elizabelle
@Michael Bersin: Let us know when you come out to visit Arlington National Cemetery. Maybe we can do a meetup.
FWIW, I (and likely many other jackals) have a vehicle pass, since my parents are buried there, too. Maybe we could do a meetup that includes visiting of some of the cemetery’s many interesting memorials and graves. So much history there. Just have to be out by sunset.
Gin & Tonic
@Michael Bersin:
Been there; it’s a worthwhile trip, especially if you have some connection to it (I don’t, but I live pretty close.)
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Michael Bersin: Dad was liaison officer aboard Jean Bart when she finally commissioned in the 50s. He was given a jigger made from a 40mm shell casing by the ship when he left. He said that Jean Bart carried one 16″ shell her entire service career – with a plaque that read “courtesy USS Massachusetts”.
KSinMA
Thank you for your eloquent essay, Nelle. And thanks to all of you for memories of your friends and relatives.
SFAW
@RevRick:
Same with my paternal grandfather. As far as I know, he never returned to Germany. [His mother died, but I have no idea when it occurred. My father recalled my grandfather getting a letter from “home,” informing him that his mother had died. My father said my grandfather read the letter without comment, folded it up, put it in his pocket, and did not discuss it.]
Ruckus
@Tony G:
I forgot to add that they announced the draft lottery about a month or so after I enlisted and did the drawing and my number was 15. That meant that if I hadn’t already joined I would have been drafted, and likely would have gone in before I did into the Navy. And due to the number of enlistments they told me I’d go in about 4 months. So my time in was January 1970 to July 1973, meaning I got discharged not long after the war ended. The only positive thing to me is that I got to see a lot of Europe, being stationed on the east coast, and I get my healthcare at the VA, which is actually pretty good.
Miss Bianca
@narya: very late to this thread, wish I had caught it in real time. Just felt compelled to chime in that my father, a young Naval officer at the time, was also on Iwo Jima. The only story he ever told us young’uns about it was that he was apparently known as “the barefoot boy of Iwo Jima” because the foot rot would get so bad he refused to wear his boots. To the remonstrances of his peers, who said, “what about the land mines?”, he said that his retort was, “what about them? Boots aren’t going to save me!”
Poor dad. I know he had terrible nightmares about that time, but only because mom told me about them.