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Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






Was chatting to my Dad to get a copy of Great Uncle Val’s flight log (which I believe to be as complete as such things can be) posted down to me.

Turns out, he’s also working on transcribing Grandad Allan’s flight log. I’d previously understood Grandad Allan to have been solely involved in training. I may well be back with further tales!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Further info from Dad.

Grandad Allan did a sort of finishing school for pilots, posted outside Belfast. He’d basically help otherwise experienced pilots get used to British (I’m sorry to our Irish chums, as I’m quoting here) weather conditions.

On my Mum’s side, Great Uncle Sam (Val’s brother who I don’t really remember, as he died from lung cancer when I was quite young) was stationed in Canada, training aircraft outfitters.

Turns out Grandad Allan logged the name of everyone he flew with. Wouldn’t it be a thing if it turned out he flew with another Dakkanaut’s forebear!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/31 18:14:33


   
Made in gb
[SWAP SHOP MOD]
Killer Klaivex







Great Great Grandfather - Fought in the trenches in WW1, lost his leg. Nothing else known.

Great Grandfather - British paratrooper in WW2. Did the drop into Normandy. Wouldn't talk about the fighting, but had some very fond memories he would recount, like looting a wrecked train for cigarettes or the like. I've got his wings on my cabinet and his medals hanging above it.

Great Uncle - Flying instructor in WW2. Died in a tragic training accident crash.

Grandfather - Youngest ever Sergeant in the Scots Guards in the early 1950's. Served three years before heading off out to live in Rhodesia and trained some of their soldiery out there.

Father:- Jumped Rhodesia before he could get conscripted into the army in the '60's. 'Took the chicken run' back to the UK because he didn't fancy getting shot at for the good of the Smith regime. Became an actor instead. Still is.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2021/09/01 17:13:39



 
   
Made in fr
Stalwart Tribune





On my mom's side, both my grandpa and my great uncle saw service, but this was the French army in 1940 so that didn't last long. Just like about everyone else, they both ended up as prisoners in the debacle. Grandpa decided to wait it out, while uncle Louis decided to escape (he got help from train workers who disguised him as one of them and smuggled him out that way). The funny part is they got home at about the same time since Germany realized they couldn't possibly handle that many prisoners and released almost everyone a week or two later.

On my dad's side, my grandpa didn't fight. Instead he was, as he put it, "a volunteer worker hired by force." As part of the STO he was sent to work in a german factory somewhere near Poland. He stayed there until the russians got close; at that point the german guards just left so my grandpa and some of his friends decided to leave too. They walked through Germany until they eventually met american soldiers and were sent home.
He told me once that he regretted not learning german while he was there. At the time, he refused to speak any as an act of passive resistance, but in hindsight he thought that was pointless and he missed an opportunity to learn.

Other than that, most stories I've heard from relatives who lived through the war involve watching the bombs fall. They usually end with factories intact and shools or hospitals destroyed...
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the last bit, I’m reading the “hot damn” in the voice of Tommy Lee Jones!

Guess that’s the joy of the draft method, they end up with unexpected skills.


Well, more accurately I suppose they end up with unexpected skills because you, the government, are misplacing them initially as a front line grunt when their more specialised skills would be more useful to you. My grandfather also spoke fluent german as he was a second generation immigrant whose family spoke both german and czech growing up, and part of his accounting work ended up being prisoner management, and that still wasn't something his superiors wound up caring about until after months of active combat duty.

He also left the war with a profound respect for the indian soldiers who fought with the british - gurkas (not sure on spelling) who were apparently the biggest, strongest and most insanely brave men he ever met. One look at them after monte casino and he was even more certain he was A-OK with being behind the lines taking stock of captured war materiel and prisoners. Interestingly he carried forward that opinion of indian and middle eastern people well into his 80s and 90s, even in the early 00s in america where hating/fearing muslims was the older person culture war thing du jour. the bush years made him significantly less culturally conservative.


"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in gr
Rough Rider with Boomstick




Paternal grandfather fought in the Albanian front. Was a messenger. There was a tale he told to his last. It was about joining 3 men during the retreat after the Nazi invasion. They found a cannon abandoned on the road and the carried it from the border to Thebes about 400km. One night tortured by thirst they came upon a barrel of water. They drunk heartily only to discover the next day that the water was full of rust. Amazingly they all made it without contracing Tetanus.

You shouldn't be worried about the one bullet with your name on it, Boldric. You should be worried about the ones labelled "to whom it may concern"-from Blackadder goes Forth!
 
   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





my grandfather served in WW2, he passed away when I was quite young, when he was dying in the Hospital, just before he died my dad visited him, Grandpa was suffering from cancer and doped up on some pretty wicked pain killers, obviously he thus haullucinated. so he told my dad that"they where taking us out to see the camp, and touring us all around them, and I thought how aweful it was that they where showing all us old codgers that..."

My grandfather had been involved in the Liberation and clean up of a Nazi concentration camp.... what he saw there quite literally haunted him until the day he died.

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






Being Anglo-Irish, half of my family was in the Republic, so nothing much there.

On Papa McBogus's side, nearly everyone was too old - chemists, too important to be called up, or else radio operators in the pacific doing nothing especially exciting (though I bet that was a great job to have), though I did have one great uncle serve in an artillery crew in the Burma campaign. He never talked about it. Apparently he went out one of the most ripped young men in his tiny welsh village, able to single handedly load field guns that usually needed whole crews, but came back skin and bones.

I've read a fair bit about the Burma campaigns, and even though he was artillery, jungle rations alone sound horrible enough. Can't imagine what fighting in that was like. immediately after the war he collected guns, usually buying them down the pub from people not properly demobilized, or else had taken them as trophies. I guess he must have turned them into the police or something because my grandad (who was in the Military from the 50s up until just before the Falklands) used to talk disapprovingly of some of the hardware he had had (something about a tank crew machine shotgun you could fire as fast as a machine gun???), but there was nothing in the house when he died.
The bloke never married, and lived with his brother, breeding pheasants mostly. Don't think he ever got a civvie job after. The only time I ever met him, I was about 9 years old, and he said nothing about the war then. My only memory of him is that he was mentally at about the level of a small child, and had to be kept to his chair with a bit of elastic because he balance was gone. Some degenerative thing I think. He called me Star Wars, because I think I brought along a Luke Skywalker action figure to keep me company on endless visits for endless cups of tea through that tiny welsh visit the one rainy summer holiday that I met him. I don't remember much of that holiday, except somehow someone had managed to get him to the front door as we were driving off, and him waving and yelling "good-bye, Star Wars".

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/02 06:17:38


 
   
Made in gb
Lord of the Fleet






London

Both grandparents on my mum's side were too young to fight but directly experienced the Blitz. My nan was evacuated to Yorkshire for a while, but for a good long time sheltered in the Tube system, narrowly avoiding the Bethnal Green Disaster which killed around 170 people. She literally avoided it by a few minutes.

Not too sure on my grandad. I believe a couple of his older brothers fought. He went on to serve in the Merchant Navy after completing his National Service in West Germany.

Unfortunately that's as far as my knowledge goes. Both my dad's parents died long before I came along. As for WW1, my great grandparents may have fought, although from my understanding you were exempt from conscription if you had a large number of dependents, which may have made my grandad's dad ineligible, and possibly my nan's dad as well.
   
Made in us
Powerful Pegasus Knight






Great granfather served with the 65th Puerto Rican regiment, he had enlisted in '41 but would be discharged out by the end of the war in '45.

Said he saw a lot of dead cows, sleeping in cemeteries, and some hard shoot outs but he was pretty jovial about it. He had a sort of way doing things like eating out of pie tins and such, reminded him of the war I guess. Never afraid to talk about it and wore his hat all the time, even still have a picture with one of his buddies in Italy.
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






 BlackoCatto wrote:
Great granfather served with the 65th Puerto Rican regiment, he had enlisted in '41 but would be discharged out by the end of the war in '45.

Said he saw a lot of dead cows, sleeping in cemeteries, and some hard shoot outs but he was pretty jovial about it. He had a sort of way doing things like eating out of pie tins and such, reminded him of the war I guess. Never afraid to talk about it and wore his hat all the time, even still have a picture with one of his buddies in Italy.


Haha, mine was the exact opposite. When I was younger and he was still of a reasonable age to go camping, whenever he was asked he refused emphatically and said he'd camped out from 1941 to 1945 and had had enough of it.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
Powerful Pegasus Knight






 the_scotsman wrote:
 BlackoCatto wrote:
Great grandfather served with the 65th Puerto Rican regiment, he had enlisted in '41 but would be discharged out by the end of the war in '45.

Said he saw a lot of dead cows, sleeping in cemeteries, and some hard shoot outs but he was pretty jovial about it. He had a sort of way doing things like eating out of pie tins and such, reminded him of the war I guess. Never afraid to talk about it and wore his hat all the time, even still have a picture with one of his buddies in Italy.


Haha, mine was the exact opposite. When I was younger and he was still of a reasonable age to go camping, whenever he was asked he refused emphatically and said he'd camped out from 1941 to 1945 and had had enough of it.


Nah my grandfather was roughly 17-18, he went everywhere and spoke German and French too. Super open to essentially whatever I asked him and what he saw. Didn't hit him that hard. At the end before being discharged he was working on clean up through military districts, essentially policing. Supposedly he said he was a guard at the trials.

Now my other great grandfather was in the Navy. He was there pre war in the Pacific. Supposedly his destroyer got sunk out there but he survived.

Not many draftees in my family. Most are enlist or had went in to be an officer.

Also, you are never too old to go camping.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/09/03 14:50:27


 
   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut





My grandfather was posted to India, and manned an antiaircraft position. Apparently they had very few orders and little information on what was going on - so they shot at every plane flying over just in case.
Their aim must have been dreadful as they apparently downed nothing!
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

My dad’s oldest brother snuck into Canada so he could go fight in the Battle of Britain. Apparently he was a pilot for much of the war, but he didn’t try hard to reconnect with the family afterwards.

My maternal grandparents fled Eastern Europe when the progroms we’re getting worse, before the Holocaust. My grandfather fought in Italy during the war and was in the Air Force for the Korean War. I don’t know a lot of details because he died before I was born and no one wants to talk about him.

My best friend’s mother and grandmother were Holocaust survivors. His grandfather did not survive.

   
Made in us
Member of a Lodge? I Can't Say





Philadelphia PA

My grandfather on my mother's side tried to volunteer but there was something wrong with his legs (veins? nerves?) and they wouldn't take him. By the time he'd gotten it fixed WW2 was winding down but they took him anyway since he had the education and skills to work with these newfangled rockets there was suddenly a lot of interest in.

From there he'd go on to be a scientist for the Jet Propulsion Lab and work on imaging and optics for space probes.

The only real token of his service he had was a clipping from a newspaper of him in uniform with an officer "inspecting the firing board" which was them pointing at a piece of plywood with all sorts of dials, wires and switches all over it. He laughed about it and said it was all just junk they threw together for the press.

I prefer to buy from miniature manufacturers that *don't* support the overthrow of democracy. 
   
Made in us
Keeper of the Flame





Monticello, IN

My paternal Grandfather and two of his brothers were in WW2. Well, started in WW2. Grandad was part of a replacement wave when his heart condition became known, and he was booted out.

My great uncles, though, both died in Bataan. My uncle Jim was on the berm when they announced the order to make a breakout, and as the whistle blew and they charged over the berm a mortar shell hit him pretty much dead center. Nothing left to send home except some personal effects.

Uncle Whitey's story was brought home to our family by his battle buddy, the partner you're assigned to when you are in a combat unit. During a movement Whitey had his leg blown off by a munition (want to say it was either a grenade or a mine) and was placed in a fox hole by his battle buddy while he went to go get t he medic. As he was running away from the fox hole he heard shots, and turned to see a Japanese soldier emptying his rifle into the fox hole. After telling my great grandmother that story, the battle buddy put his hand on hers and said "Now I know it's little comfort Esther, but I can tell you I personally made sure that yellow bastard never shot anyone else."

www.classichammer.com

For 4-6th WFB, 2-5th 40k, and similar timeframe gaming

Looking for dice from the new AOS boxed set and Dark Imperium on the cheap. Let me know if you can help.
 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Its AoS, it doesn't have to make sense.
 
   
Made in gb
Esteemed Veteran Space Marine






Northumberland

My maternal Grandfather didn't participate at all in the Second World War, for medical reasons (asthma I think). But my paternal Grandfather did. Despite being 15, he was so eager to join before the war ended he signed on with the Merchant Navy as a 'Junior Deck Officer' (A form of Cadet I understand) in '43 instead of missing out (his older brother served in the Royal Navy). He ended up on a range of convoys - mainly Atlantic and through the Suez from what he told my Grandmother. Apparently the sun was so hot on the southern routes that on deck the skin would simply peel from your back in a sheet if exposed. Possibly apocryphal, but it does make you appreciate the hardships the Merchant Navy endured to support the Armed Services.

He died before I got a chance to ask him about the war, but my Dad can recall him talking about the constant threat of U-Boats, of ships slipping under the surface after being torpedoed, and men burning in the water (His ship, the S.S Clydefield was also an oil tanker, often carrying fuels). He apparently never spoke of it much. After the war, he re-enlisted in the Royal Artillery and served as a signaller in Palestine during the insurgency towards the end of the British Mandate.

The First World War was much hotter for my ancestors. My Great-Great Uncle served in the 9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry from 1914 to 1916. The Battalion War Diary for that formation has some incredible entries. This entry was part of the 2nd Battle of Ypres, a month after G-G-U entered theatre (aged 18):

'24.5.15 – Whit Monday. Trenches gassed at 2.45 a.m. Gas in G.H.Q trench lasted for 3 hours. Trenches subjected to 13 hours of shellfire from commencement of gas. 7 wounded, 4 officers [Officers: Capt. Heads, (x4 others illegible)], 151 other ranks to hospital from gas poisoning. 60 wounded but remained at duty.’

13 hours of shelling. To endure that and still function is incredible. G-G-U made it to Feburary 1916 before being shot through the shoulder and invalided back to Blighty. From there, he went into reserve and then discharged back to his civilian job for 'Munitions Work' - rolling plate steel in the foundries of Gateshead.

One Great-Great-Grandfather served in the 9th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers from 1915-1916. He ended up slap bang in the middle of the Somme, at Mametz Wood. Thanks to Siegfried Sassoon, everyone (deservedly) remembers the Welsh at Mametz Wood, but they forget the Northumbrians.

On the 5th July 1916, before the Welsh went in, the 9th Northumbrians had opened the assault by taking one 'Quadrangle Trench', overrunning the German 163rd Battalion with a bayonet charge on the trench. After two days of shellfire, they managed to hold the trench and pushed on to Quadrangle Support with the 10th Lancashire Fusiliers. On the morning of the 7th, an assault was made at 1.10am, uphill through mud where it turned out that the artillery had dropped short and failed to cut the German wire. B Company, with my G-G-GF was the forward company, so they ended up strung out in the open in no-man's-land, with enfilading MG fire from Mametz Wood, and counter artillery fire starting to drop in. Despite this, they reformed for a second attack and continued to fight uphill towards the German lines for another 4 hours. To make matters worse, the Germans had been preparing for a counter attack themselves and had pushed the Prussian Guards (9th Pomeranian Grenadiers) into Quadrangle Support. The 9th PG launched a counter-attack down the slope towards the two Fusilier battalions, and my G-G-GF, and a bayonet fight broke out under the light of star-shells, in knee-high mud. Unfathomable horror.

He was wounded in that last assault, by a gunshot to the hand and discharged in 1917. I have a penny on my desk from his war, with an ugly gouge in the centre. Apparently it (and his paybook in his top pocket) had stopped a round from killing him at some point. A lucky man indeed. Sadly, his luck ran out only 3 years after the war, dying to TB in 1921.

Now with 100% more blog: 'Beyond the Wall'

Numine Et Arcu
 
   
Made in ca
Excellent Exalted Champion of Chaos






Grim Forgotten Nihilist Forest.

Great Grand-Dad *My Mother's father's father." Was Apparently ex-Red army. The man died like fifty years before I was born. So I can't confirm or deny if that is legitimate or not. If *So* That man had to of seen some gak. To put it lightly. From "No step backwords" To knowing if you were going through rural Russia and saw someone who *Wasn't* gaunt. They were eating people. Run.


Really makes me think. Sure my life sucks but. I didn't need to run from cannibals or hide in a mangle of corpses to open fire on Nazi's.

I've sold so many armies. :(
Aeldari 3kpts
Slaves to Darkness.3k
Word Bearers 2500k
Daemons of Chaos

 
   
Made in gb
Soul Token




West Yorkshire, England

My mother's father worked as an aircraft engineer for the RAF (specifically Lancaster bombers), and used to tell stories about how they'd send the engineers up in the aircraft on their test flight, so they were motivated to do as good a job as possible. After the war, he carried on with the family business of running a bicycle shop until he retired. He was a really good carpenter, and we've still got several bits of furniture that he crafted.

My mother's mother worked in a factory making parachutes, and would tell us about how the girls there would smuggle the waste scraps of silk home to make underwear from (I was never sure if she was joking).

My father's father was in Norway when the British retreated from there, and was then sent to Singapore, and was captured by the Japanese when they occupied the city. He spent most of the war after that in a prison camp in modern Taiwan that was nightmarish--starvation, disease and the captives simply being worked to death. When the camps were liberated, he was pretty much a walking skeleton, who was not expected to survive by the doctors on the American carrier he was treated on.

He stayed in Australia for a time (and boxed a kangaroo at least once) to recover, considered staying there, but moved back to England and met my grandmother, a nurse who had voluntarily come over from rural Ireland to help. My family still occasionally visits County Kerry for a holiday there, and we're good friends with families that she grew up with.

I never really talked with him about it until right up at the end of his life, but he did open up a bit to me, and later did an interview for a historian. In hindsight, I get the impression that he carried a lot of shame with him for surviving, and for being at the forefront of two military defeats.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/13 23:43:59


"The 75mm gun is firing. The 37mm gun is firing, but is traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying "Driver, advance." and the driver, who can't hear me, is reversing. And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich." 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





So, my father rode his bike from a mid-westerly part of the US to the far west coast of the US, and basically never left. He became good friends with a couple who became my grandparents (so, not technically related, but I always grew up calling them grandma and grandpa, so. . . )

Anyhow. . . Grandma had in her curio cabinet an array of various military medals along with an ancient looking black book. . . Being rather inquisitive, I waited for my opportunity, and got into the cabinet as I wasnt supposed to. Turns out it was a sort of journal/scrapbook of my great grand-fathers experiences during WW1. I later learned (through reading the journal, and looking at the assorted papers) that he had been posted in some sort of intelligence role on the western front, and that he had earned commendations/medals from both the US/UK side and the German side (one of the medals was an Iron Cross of some variety, this was an era before the internet, and older me knows that there are varying degrees of that medal)

The thing that struck me most about the diary, even though it was obviously written after he'd gotten home to the US, was the overwhelming feeling of fear. And it wasn't the fear of artillery as we'd likely suspect. It was clearly fear of being "found out". . . Although I could not read enough of the diary to figure out which side he was most fearful of. Grandma's biggest recollection of him was that he was in the US army for quite a while, even spending some years in during the inter-war period.

Years on, I do fully believe that he was crossing lines and earning medals on both sides because in my studies during Uni, I was exposed yet again to German military paperwork of the early 20th century, and it was nearly identical in appearance to what was in his journal. . . and the family had all the US military paperwork with his medals as well. Which is somewhat odd given how far behind the US military intelligence apparatus was at the outset of WW1, compared to the Brits and even Germans.



my dad's direct (ie, biological) father who I had pleasure of knowing for many years loved to tell me of his time in the US navy during Korea. . . Although older me suspects some of his tales of tying planes to the decks of the carrier so they didn't get blown away during hurricans to be, well. . . somewhat embellished for the sake of the youthful audience of the story. We do know from official photos that my grand-dad was part of the Navy Blue Jacket Choir, and was apparently quite the great singer (though by the time I came along, smoking had somewhat ruined his ability to sing)
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Auckland, NZ

My grandfather on my mothers side, Ken, was an engineer/motor mechanic in the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
He was captured in April 1941 during the battle of Greece, and spent the next four years as a PoW in Austria. He managed to survive until the camp was liberated at the end of the war. I hear he picked up some odd habits after he came home, like he loved eating sticks of butter. I guess due to the starvation he went through.
Sadly he died of cancer about 30 years ago. I was a bit too young at the time to remember him much.

My other grandfather was also an engineer, but in the british army. However I don't actually know much more than that about what he did during the war. For some reason I never thought to ask him, and he passed away about 5 years ago. I'll have to see what my dad knows.
   
 
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