Anybody got any?
>be my grandpa
>be in N. Burma '44-'45
>no combat; his job is helping guide air traffic over the Hump to Kunming
>goes hunting in the jungle; can take the boy out of Wisconsin but you can't take Wisconsin out of the boy
>local natives really like monkey meat
>grandpa helps the Army stay on their good side by blasting monkeys with a Thompson or M1 carbine
>one day natives go over the hill to attack other village
>come back with severed heads
>grandpa snaps a pic of severed Naga heads lined up (I've got that pic somewhere)
>his experiences with Chinese and Indians left him with a grim view of both
>in his last letter home before shipping out in '46 he says that the British should leave India, let it collapse into disease and misery, and then come back after the Pajeets prostrate themselves and beg for forgiveness
>opinions probably colorad by angry 'Jeets heaving rocks at US Army vehicles in Bombay to protest the Bongs putting Pajeet traitors on trial
>came back with a nice Kachin sword from N. Burma
One of my grandpas witnessed a nuclear test in Algeria during his time as a conscript there
What's the radiation output like for something like that? Not fallout, but radiating....radiation...at the moment of explosion?
about 350
Unfortunate. Could be worse, though.
I am surrounded by newbies
you call yourself an oldgay yet tou lag reading comprehension.
>What's the radiation output like for something like that?
No idea, I trust
on this one
What I know is that my grandpa had a weird fungus develop on his back. It went away after a while, but he was convinced it was because of the test
I know this is a meme but the prompt radiation from 10kt+ nuclear devices is negligible because you'd have to be well within the lethal range of the blast effects to have a lethal dose. If you're in cover against those blast effects, that would provide more than enough protection against the radiation, as well.
>I know this is a meme but the prompt radiation from 10kt+ nuclear devices is negligible because you'd have to be well within the lethal range of the blast effects to have a lethal dose.
Rule of thumb: Small nuclear bomb: Prompt radiation kill zone larger than blast zone. Large nuclear bomb: Blast zone way larger than prompt radiation kill zone.
Direct exposure? Pretty low.
too much. a lot of people died from that shit. just more gov't/civ ignorance
Lookup navy wife who said top brass is club for gays. Her death is sus
>navy wife
That poor, poor woman. How could she know?
More details? I tried googling and literally just get shit about how LGBTQ friendly the navy is lol
My gramps was part of the American wave that swept across France late in WWII, removing Nazi holdouts and occupied towns. They rode in boxcar in the winter and most were sent home due to frostbite. He brought back an antique pipe that's pretty neat
>removing Nazi holdouts and occupied towns
Reminds me of something I read about the liberation of the area I come from
>Be a quiet French rural region in Western France
>Have a bunch of bored Germans garrisoned there
>One day the Germans leave without explanation
>The day after Americans in jeeps show up
>"Howdy! Where are the Krauts?"
>"They went zhat way monsieur"
>"Ok thx bye"
>They leave without further ado
>"We're free?"
>"I guess so"
>Party a bit then go back to life as usual.
Pretty underwhelming, but at least we didn't have to suffer through destructive combat like Normandy
>average Maquis activity in ww2
Fricking this. The French hugely exaggerate their resistance during the occupation and downplay their collaborators
The thing with WW2 France was that you had a few hundred thousand Resistants, a few hundred thousand collaborateurs and profiteers, and millions upon millions of passive people who slowly grew more sympathetic to the Resistance over the course of the war.
Most soldiers merely obeyed whoever appeared to be the most legitimate or who their COs said was legitimate : so Vichy until late 1942, then De Gaulle. Civilians for the most part just tried to survive and wanted the Germans to leave them alone.
Before 1942-1943, the Resistance had a core of leaders made up from mostly two groups : either people who were in because they genuinely loved France and hated Germany (veterans, some nationalists and royalists like Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves), and on the other were people who were in mostly because they were threatened by the Germans (Jews, foreigners, socialists, and commies after Barbarossa). Outside of that core, the vast majority of Resistants were young men without political affiliations who merely wanted to escape forced labour or grew to resent the Germans after winessing atrocities. It was only after 1943 that the Resistance got enough people to no longer just sabotage, kill random Germans and distribute propaganda, but play an active military and intelligence role.
Then you had Free France, which was almost entirely military, either De Gaulle's people in the UK or troops in colonies that declared for him over the course of the war. By 1943, every French colony except Indochina was with him.
The "Every Frenchman was a Résistant" bit was propagated by De Gaulle himself because he thought that national unity was paramount.
When the Allied landed was when most people stood up against the Germans : some actualy fought and risked their hides, but most were just cheerleaders or hypocrites. There was actualy a whole administrative process put in place in the 50s to be officialy recognized as a Résistant, with documents and witnesses
you should have that appraised. not only to figure out it's value, but to figure out if you're storing it properly and etc.
could be something worth a lot that's worth handing down and taken care of
Yeah it appears to be either German or Austrian, and is most likely missing a middle section. I've never been able to find an example with that basket chamber, so it's rather unique. I don't care about its worth since I'll never sell it
it's type of pipe popular in germany during the later half of the 19th century
not a particularly rare or interesting
it's not a fanciest looking one I've seen but you should try to search with that makers mark on it and see what you find. There are a few makes that are worth a bit
> wife's grandfather returns from WWII
> runs into some random guy at the station on the way back home
> realize they are from same town
> realize they are engaged to women with same first name
> realize they are engaged to same woman
> both go to her house to confront her, in her words she "nearly died of embarassment."
> "I didn't expect they'd both come back!"
Thot status?
Blackpilling. So tiresome.
So who'd she go with?
My grandpa went through most of the Italian campaign until a kraut MG got him across the chest as the only officer they had left
honestly probably fair to hedge your bets in that context. it's not like she was fricking them both...
Gramps was a member of the Canadian forces, served as an intelligence officer with the British Airborne, landed in Taranto, Italy. He landed behind enemy lines and basically had to solid snake his way back to his own lines. Guy never killed anyone during the war because he was an ardent french Catholic and was afraid he would go to hell if he killed a fellow Catholic, in italy.
One night the italians ended up catching him, but when they noticed him saying his rosary in latin, they invited him to drink with them. In the morning they trucked him as far as they could towards the front, and he made his way back.
Ironically he was closer to death waiting a year in England after the war, as he got stabbed in the thigh by a local youth and it got infected.
He always spoke very fondly of how the Italians treated him. One of them spoke perfect english and was a playwright. He told my grandfather to look him up after the war for free tickets to a play. He’d been killed, a week later, and had his body run over by a truck.
War’s hell. RIP grampy.
>One night the italians ended up catching him, but when they noticed him saying his rosary in latin, they invited him to drink with them. In the morning they trucked him as far as they could towards the front, and he made his way back.
Damn that's based
>he was an ardent french Catholic and was afraid he would go to hell if he killed a fellow Catholic, in italy.
>One night the italians ended up catching him, but when they noticed him saying his rosary in latin, they invited him to drink with them. In the morning they trucked him as far as they could towards the front, and he made his way back.
Unfathomably based
>Ironically he was closer to death waiting a year in England after the war, as he got stabbed in the thigh by a local youth and it got infected.
Things haven't changed I see
>was afraid he would go to hell if he killed a fellow Catholic, in italy.
Were non-catholics fair game?
your grandfather sucked off a bunch of greasy Italians
>Step grandpa Billy (Actual name Wilhelm) was in the Afrika Korps
>Panzer 2 tank driver, originally wanted to be a butcher pre war
>Did not talk about any combat he saw
>Captured by Free French, spent war in a pow camp the French ran, said it was awful
>Came to US after the war, married then divorced my grandma on my dads side as my actual grandpa got back together with her later on but Billy was still part of the family.
Dunno if counts for a war story, but my gramps hung out with Göring here in sweden during the interwar period. Iirc it was in the context of the company göring worked with in sweden at the time.
Later on the old man did design and oversaw maintenance for warplanes in use during the winter war and during ww2 in the swedish airforce.
I just think it's neat to have a pretty close by connection to a historical figure.
I could probably dig up an interview gramps did later, post war at some point.
t. Sweanon
Hermann didn't eat him?
No, why would he do that? He was relatively sane at that point in time. Later on he surfed half the fricking country's hospitals due to his penchant for morphine though.
based Hermann
>tfw you will never shoot scag with the head of the Luftwaffe
I went to a small private regimental museum and they had a bronze bust of Goring, one of several made and this one had been acquired by an enterprising solider, the guy showing us around told us not to take any pictures and keep it quiet since no one knew they had it and the family were actively looking for it.
They also had a massive painting of Saddam Hussein that was apparently done by a famous artist and again, they weren't supposed to have it. They were taking some Saudi officer cadets around once and they all recognised it and told them how special it was.
Uncle served in Vietnam, he said he just did drugs all day and called in air strikes on nothing because the explosions apparently looked really cool when under the influence of whatever wienertail everyone was on. Only time he encountered the enemy he got ambushed by 3 guys who shot him and then magdumped him while he was lying on the ground. Somehow he survived (7.62x39gays on suicide watch) and got sent back home, the day he left the hospital he immediately got beaten up by some hippies.
Your grandpa sounds like a homosexual
I didn't say anything about my grandpa
i'd watch that movie
>WW2
>Grandpa sent out on patrol through some dense forest with a couple of other guys
>They're not paying attention, so they somehow stumble into a German patrol doing the exact same thing
>Both groups almost at point-blank range
>Everyone freezes
>it's a Mexican standoff
>Totally silent
>Suddenly, one of the Germans farts
>Really, really loudly
>It echoes through the forest
>Both sides start laughing uncontrollably
>Wave each other off, go in opposite directions
That Kraut brap is why I'm here today
>Kraut brap
>the Kraut sauerkraut brap
a loud brap is also how I diffused a family fight one time.
Not quite a war story but I have two very strange stories
>Great-grandfather was part of the first crew to ever perform air-to-air refueling in the Korean war
>He is back home on leave hanging out with my great grandma
>One of her friends shoved him into the swimming pool unannounced, he gets a little upset but it's no big deal
>Flies back to Korea
>On the flight back, his eardrum ruptures due to water being trapped in it during the flight
>He is ordered not to go on the next mission
>His crew was never heard from again after that flight...
>Assigned the following day to replace the guy who died in his stead
>mfw I wouldn't be here if not for that shove.
>Same great-grandpa would tell me stories about how he loved the Korean people and culture
>He even managed to learn a bit of Korean while there with the help of the locals
>He would often play with the children in Busan and give them extra food he had and tell them various stories
>Be me
>Date Korean-american girl from my highschool
>Find out her grandfather was from North Korea but fled to Busan as a child refugee during the war
>Tell her that my great-grandfather was an airman who was often stationed there
>Huh, what a coincidence
>Meet her grandfather later on at a family event
>He asks my name, I respond with my first and last just in case he would recognize it
>He actually does
>Tells me that he decided to move to my hometown because he met a very kind American military man with my last name who talked about his home in America often
>I tell him what I remember of my great-grandfather
>He figures it he must've been the same man
>He decided that when he moved to the US that he would make his way to my/my great-grandfather's hometown
>Tfw my great-grandfather died only 3 years before I met her
Sadly her and I didn't stay together, but it's insane just how small of a world it is.
>Sadly her and I didn't stay together, but it's insane just how small of a world it is.
I've experienced this myself, more maybe living in a small state. Good lessons in always being careful about how you treat people, stuff really does come around sometimes.
Not a military service story but still military related.
>Be Panamanon
>Great grandfather owned a bar very close to the US controlled zones (Canal Zone, Howard, etc). Literally a 10 minute walk from the area.
>Being the son of a Jamaican, GreatGrand knows English, which is why many soldiers prefer going to his bar.
>Be January 1964
>high school students throw a fit because americans don't raise the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone buildings (Canal administration, etc), particularly a school located in the canal zone
>They march in with a Panamanian flag into the Canal Zone and start a fight a la L.A. Riots
>Some soldiers that had been outside the canal area ran into Great Grandad's bar, as the people are out for blood. Grandad tells them to hide upstairs while he distracts anyone who comes
>Some "peaceful protesters" banged at his door, telling him to give over the soldiers. He refused, saying that he would shoot them if they tried to break in
>joggers eventually get bored and continue down the street.
>the soldiers take the opportunity to get back to the american base under the cover of the night
>A few years, Great Grandad is ridden with debt from gambling and drinking, is almost forced to sell the bar
>These same soldiers build up from their saving enough to pay his debts, and even offer him to get him a home in America, which he refuses
>Great grandad eventually gambles and drinks himself into selling the bar anyway
Also, I might as well mention that everyone knew Just Cause was going to start the next day because they didn't let any of the Panamanian workers return that night to their homes
Dad was in operation just cause. Apparently a lot of the rioters in the late 80s were complete bros that hated the PDF and generally corrupt government. US forces let them loot boom boxes and cigarettes, and in return they gave US troops boom boxes and cigarettes as a notion of gratitude.
>Be my dad's friend
>Law and order breaks down all around you in the wake of the invasion
>See mobs passing you by looting whatever they could get their hands on
>Mob hysteria finally catches up to him and he impulsively grabs a nearby box
>While running with his prize, he stops and realizes what he actually has
>It's a box of hot dogs
>The clarity of the moment hits him in the face
>Throws away the box and goes home disgusted with himself
Looters also took everything from abuela's pharmacy, even the toilet. She still cried for years afterwards thinking about the damages.
>Be my 4th great grandfather.
>Chilling in Georgia in his early 20s when The Mexican American War breaks out.
>Gets to New Orleans as fast as he can to go be a volunteer soldier.
>Leaves on a ship full of other volunteer soldiers all eager to get to Vera Cruz.
>Halfway into the voyage a killer storm hits them and completely fricks up the ship.
>Many of the soldiers were washed overboard with the masts, spars, and sails that completely disabled the ship.
>Those who survived the storm had so little food and water left so that when rescue came days later only 19 survivors were recovered.
>Survivors went to Vera Cruz to heal for a while before they were physically fit to fight again but by that time the war was over.
Later went on to fight in the civil war to which was a hell of a lot more eventful.
What unit was this Mex-Am War story? Would make a breddy good boat kino.
I don't have records of that event unfortunately. Pretty hard to find.
Another story from my family:
>Be great Grandpa stationed in France in the 50s(or Germany can't remember.)
>Been there for a month and gets his money together and buys a brand new 1955 Triumph Tiger 110 Motorcycle
>Rides it around the countryside when he has time as fast as possible.
>Gets off duty one day on a beautiful hot summer day to go to an army base a few minutes away to hang with buds
>Going mach Black person towards a hairpin turn with a straight road next to it where a 10/10 French girl, tomboy looking and sweaty, was walking next to the road
>Completely rubbernecks as both heads aren't looking at the road
>Realizes he's going like 50 towards a 20 mph curve.
>Brakes hard and skids like 40 feet into the gravel, flies over handlebars, goes butthole over head into the sign post, smashes through it like the Kool aid man, then thrown into the bush in a perfect starfish shape.
>French cutie runs over all concerned.
>"Oh yeah I'm fine." He said with two broken ribs, purple as shit ankle, and a bruised pride.
>Gets a ride from her brothers and never saw that chick again.
Bike was totally fukt and he had to stay on base for pretty much the rest of his deployment to recover. Damn shame about the girl and the bike.
Grandpa is in U.S. Army anti-aircraft in Europe during WWII. They get strafed while in a convoy and soldiers jumped out of their vehicles into a ditch up and down the road, when he saw Omar Bradley running up and down the ditch "kicking ass" (his words, written down to me when I was a kid since he lost his voice at this point) and yelling that they were retreating in front of the enemy. He remembered seeing the tracer rounds from the German plane hitting the vehicle in front of him, then hitting the road in front of his vehicle, and then flying over his head, which was one of the scariest moments in the war for him. Another time they came under air attack and the pilot didn't pull up. Crashed directly into one of their AA positions and exploded, killed several soldiers including the youngest soldier in the battalion who had lied about his age to get into the Army. That made him very sad.
They used the guns a lot to blow away sniper and MG nests.
He came back home to Galveston, Texas and became a lawyer. My dad described him as an ambulance chaser. He hitched a ride with a cop to a ship fire in Texas City, they got out of the car to watch from a distance when it exploded. It blew him on his ass and he remembered seeing a wall of flame in front of him, 581 people died in the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, and he was practically deaf in his old age.
Also attached to a division that overran a concentration camp, they force-marched the civilians from surrounding towns through it and had them clean it up.
The family heirloom from the war is a Beretta M1934 with the fascist Roman numeral calendar year stamped on it. I wasn't able to confirm for myself how he got it since he died when I was young and never got around to asking, but my dad claimed he shot a German who had one during a scrum with him and another U.S. soldier (the German survived).
Americans who can trace their families back that far are always interesting to me.
Who has the beretta? Have you asked for it if your family doesn't want it?
Grandparents on my dad's side were really into genealogy. My parents and them managed to track down our ancestry as far as fifth century Norwegians. They eventually were the ones to leave Norway and settle for 15 Generations in Iceland. It's amazing how much work they put into it.
My dad spent most of his career back and forth between Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Doesn’t talk about combat much but he told me a couple of funny stories:
>be coming home from 15 month tour
>in the cafeteria in Kuwait eating with friends
>sees fat guy in PTs walking toward table with tray full of food
>someone had dropped a banana on the floor
>guy steps on it and goes head over heels
>completely slopped with food
>guy gets up and rushes out of the cafeteria leaving his tray and food all over the floor
>little Bangladeshi workers quickly clean it up cursing him in jibber jabber
not really,
>my granddad spewed agent orange over vietnam and retired before he could tell me anything that wasn't classified
>my dad got kicked out for being muscle for the drug dealer on base
can't wait to see what kind of dipshit airforce dude I get to be
misspoke, he didn't retire, he died
2/2
My other favorite is the story about his interpreter that they called Ramone because he looked like that Brazilian porn actor (pic related). Guy loved to drink Iraqi gin from tin cans while on patrol and he carried an AK-SU with no stock and a 100 round drum magazine. When they’d get into contact he’d indiscriminately spray most of the magazine down whatever street they happened to be on without out aiming. The best was the time he fricked himself up.
>be Ramone
>drunk and helping with cache search
>use knowledge of devious Iraqi ways to find a bunch of grenades and det cord hidden under loose paver stone
>start tearing apart house looking for more
>throw lawn chair into outdoor ceiling fan for the hell of it
>fan tears itself out of cheap plaster and falls spinning onto your head
>anons dad finds you laid out
>”oh shit Ramone has been hit!”
>begins first aid
>”where’d all this white powder come from?”
> dad sees ceiling fan and shattered chair
>looks up and see hole where ceiling fan used to be
>slaps Ramone awake and finishes search
I really shouldn’t know who that guy is
His SuperRamon series was hilarious. I was going to make a character for Champions Online, then he got arrested for animal cruelty (dog fighting, I think) and I lost interest when I started playing a Susan Steel main.
Got a few:
Great great uncle on my mom's side was in ww1, killed a german by crushing his face with a rock in a trench raid, then got gassed somewhere in France. Family said he never smiled again after he got home from the war, not because he was traumatized, but because his face was mostly paralyzed. He had seizures too. We assume he was exposed to some sort of nerve agent. He died in early 50s, but was an all around solid dude according to the family.
Both my grandfathers were in ww2, one in europe and one in japan. Mom's dad was older and enlisted in 42, spent the war in tanks in europe under Patton. He had 19 tanks and tank destroyers destroyed under/around him, and was sole survivor of 14 of these. Not sure if he was lucky or cursed. After the war, he had his own bedroom that was locked at night, or else he would get up and try to kill grandma in his sleep. Stayed in the army his whole life. Commanded tanks in Korea, then died of a heart attack right before he got sent to Vietnam. Never talked about it, but we assume he either really liked killing or wanted to die, or maybe both, since he always sought combat deployments the second there was a war to go to. (Con't)
Other grandfather was younger, enlisted in late 44, and completed MP training just in time to occupy Nagasaki. Was in the first wave of guys there, saw some fricked up shit in the aftermath of the bomb, and ended up being rather sympathetic towards the defeated Japanese. He was from an old confederate family from Mississippi, who still had very strong sentiments about decorum and behavior, a holdover from being plantation owners descended from French knights. He was responsible for weapons turn ins, and was the only enlisted man who saluted Japanese officers when they turned in their swords. A Japanese equivalent to a colonel saw this, cut through the line of other Japanese officers, returned my grandfather's salute, then bowed and presented him his pair of swords. Grandfather thought this was cool, claimed the swords as his war trophies, and took them home to East Tennessee. Grandfather died in at 38, but looked like he was about 80 at the time, everyone assumes it was from radiation exposure in Nagasaki. The swords then sat in a closet until the late 90s, when my dad got the from his mom, and did some research, turns out they were Sengoku era samurai swords from about 1480, made by a smith named Masahiro Fujiwara, who was famous enough in his own times that Japanese smiths 200 years later were using his name as a trade mark indicating quality.
That grandfather's brother in law, my great uncle, was in the army and fought in North Africa and Italy. He stopped in England on his way there, and spent a couple weeks chilling arpund London before going over to Africa. The night before he was shipping out, he got really drunk with one of his friends and three British girls, who convinced the two of them to come back to their house after the bars closed. It was way out in the country, cab dropped them off, they spent the rest of the night drinking and taking turns on all three girls. Next morning, he wakes up, still drunk, to find he miles away from where he was supposed to be, the girls don't have a phone in their house to call a cab, and he is about to miss the ship and very possibly get hit with desertion charges. He and his buddy run four miles to the nearest little town, where a pair of bobbies try to arrest them for disorderly conduct and public drunkenness, they proceed to beat the hell out of the bobbies, steal their bicycles, and make it back just in time to get on the ship. Once he got to Africa, he spent most of his time repairing tank engines, and saw a little combat. He fought against Germans, Vichy French, and their Arab auxiliaries, and bitterly hated all three groups until the day he died. He was in the invasion of Italy, and added Italians to his growing list of people he hated, and was field promoted to sgt at the wise old age of 19 due to casualties. When they were in Pisa he and his buddies decided to go see the leaning tower. There was an Italian policeman there who tried to stop them from going in, so my uncle wienered his Thompson submachine gun, pointed it at the policeman, and counted back from 10 in Italian. When he got to 6, the policeman ran away. They went the tower, climbed up, and decided to ring the bell. There was no rope to ring it with, so they took turns blasting the bell with the Thompson to make it ring until they got bored and decided to go loot some of the locals.
No one else in my family was in war again until my uncle went to desert storm as military intelligence. He was some sort of spook as well as being in the army, and at one point carried the nuclear football on airforce one for Reagan.
Based if true.
Yeah, that's what everyone in the family says. He didn't have a reputation for lying or exaggerating, but you never know. I always thought it was one of those stories that was too crazy to be made up. I like to think it's true. Fun stories either way.
Do you still have the swords?
My dad does, I get them when he passes.
Pics?
Don't have any. I'll try to visit him soon and see if he'll let me get some pics.
don't bother taking pictures of pictures. if you don't have a proper scanner, bring them somewhere that does and cough up the chump change for them or buy a cheap 'broken' scanner and fix it ya dundonothing
I meant I would take pictures of the swords. They are in the vault at his house.
If you get lucky and autistic enough you may actually find the descendants of that Japanese officer..
I've thought about it, but japanese post war military records are a nightmare to work through because of how much stuff was lost or destroyed during the war, or just thrown away afterwards. I used to think it would be cool to find the family and repatriate the swords for homosexualy weeb reasons, but then I got older and learned that japs aren't allowed to have swords any more, are basically a culture of effeminate losers, and besides, they are my family's trophies and heirlooms now. Vae Victis.
>japs aren't allowed to have swords any more
Kinda. There's a loophole in the Japanese law; Japanese swords produced with "traditional methods and materials" are legally considered "works of art" and therefore not weapons and as such a permit for one of those is generally quite easy to get. This also applies to some firearms as well, such as tanegashima. Just like everywhere else, though, there aren't many of those around. Swords have a universal mystique that leads to them being preserved proportionally much more frequently while the vast majority of guns in military use (ie. pretty much all of the guns that have ever existed in Japan) that aren't extremely ornate and/or owned by someone famous tend to be destroyed ignominiously - scrapped, used and abused until failure, abandoned, traded away to the third world, etc.
Here's the thing: Japan has problems with wildlife, deer and boars especially, destroying crops, right? The Japs are obsessed with preserving traditions and culture, right? The solution is simple: create and heavily promote a "traditional hunting season" or multiple such seasons specifically for rifled tanegashima.
If it actually is a legit sword they can own it
You could, sure, but it would likely be disappointing. They likely wouldn't know about or appreciate the swords and would demand they be returned anyway, saying your ancestors was a thief that stole them or something
>Do you still have the swords?
>My dad does, I get them when he passes.
>If you get lucky and autistic enough you may actually find the descendants of that Japanese officer..
When a Japanese officer had such ancient swords, it usually meant he was from a wealthy samurai family or even nobility. If you found his descendants, and they were still rich, they would pay you stupid amounts of money to have them back in the family's possession. Tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more.
Not him, but those things would be priceless to his dad, himself and his family
>Southern weeb
The first of many
t. also born in Tennessee and am a prolific collector of Japanese artwork (especially woodblocks)
>Family said he never smiled again after he got home from the war, not because he was traumatized, but because his face was mostly paralyzed.
Kek that's funny in a very dark way. Reminds me of the Drinking Problem joke in Airplane!
>We assume he was exposed to some sort of nerve agent.
Nerve agents (organophosphates) did not exist in world war 1. Your uncle probably had a mega case of bells palsy, a side effect from vaccine metal adjuvant injections.
Both my Dads were in WW2. One was Hitler and the other was Jimmy Stewart.
Dad was in Bosnia 1995 and told me about how the dam operators asked the people to slow down the killings since the bodies were clogging the dam. He's got a fun story of weapon-pointing escalation from rifle to .50cal to tank to apache, and of walling around in an Serb Volunteer Guard base on liason while marking target with a GPS device in his pocket.
Years later at a stateside Rainforest Cafe with my mom and us all, apparently his female interpreter from over there noticed him walked up looking far hotter than she did in Bosnia. Mom wasn't amused.
Nice. I feel like bosnia is one of those conflicts with an insane number of wild stories that will never get told to anyone but immediate family, if at all.
I know a guy who had some stories he shared from then, but I wasn't sure if I could believe him.
Eventually tracked him down by name and found his war stories of being in charge of "10,000 guys" were true, even if the 10k part was only temporary.
He was originally an officer in charge of teaching people their roles or something like that. Its hard to track down his positions since he only spoke so much about his former role in the Yugoslavian army and joining up with the Bosnians.
He got in good with them for bringing a lot of supplies from croatia, whom he originally sided with because the Serbians were trying to kill him as part of kicking off the series of civil wars.
Not because he was special or important.
He just had stood out as a "dangerous patriot" of inferior blood to them, and was on a list of such people to eliminate if possible.
How did he get on that list?
As far as he knew it was because he transferred to the army from the navy, with his stated reason being to defend his country (Yugoslavia)
He was at Sarajevo for a while during the siege and quickly got tired of being shot at from who-the-frick knows where, and nearly getting shot multiple times going through the secret tunnel they built to get around the siege.
He never spoke in detail about the conditions there... but it was very bad, apparently.
Bad in terms of food and what the lack of food was doing to people.
I know a number of the guys under him after he got stationed elsewhere in charge of a "muslim brigade" didn't even have fricking shoes to wear.
His coolest stuff was about the radar guided artillery systems Yugoslavia had been cobbling together from various bits sourced from multiple countries.
Guns from Sweden, radar from England (like, OLD radar at that) and other stuff from the soviet union.
I keep trying to get work under him at my company again so I can hear more about that.
He was happiest talking about what Yugoslavia was trying to build itself up to be.
My grandpa spent almost entire conscription (late 1960s) trolling and shit talking political officer..he even ended up in arrest at some point for all of that but thanks to good contact with unit commander and other conscripts he quickly got out just to frick around some more..ehhh, i miss you Gramps.
Was your gramps in an eastern euro army?
>be granddad
>be hard as nails forgotten middle child in large working class family from the English midlands
>try to join parachute regiment with older brother at first opportunity
>officials won’t let kin join the same unit due to WWI.
>Join royal marines instead
>through a circuitous route and a demotion for fighting, volunteer for 40 commando.
>make it
>See some bad shit at Dieppe
>Meet older brother in Sicily
>See more shit in Italy
>See more shit in the Balkans
>Meet older brother at a cafe in Vienna at the end of the war.
>Only ever talk about the war with Brother.
>die in 2007 at the age of 86
>10 years later in the US, grandson finds journal in an old box full of granddad’s stuff because wife is putting together a genealogy album. Read it with dad.
I’m glad you wrote a lot of it down. You always said the scar from the web of your hand to your elbow was from surgery to correct a nasty fracture in your youth, not a bullet zipping under your skin while laying prone shooting at Germans.
>Dieppe
Damn,he was extremely lucky, or unlucky, both at the same time i guess
Grandpa flew bombers in the Korean war.
He was also a crazy bastard and passed this down to my uncle, who unfortunately never got to show off his "bloodline abilities" in the military.
>be gramps
>onnamission to blow up a train or something
>trains a fricking coward
>doesn't wanna be blown up by honest hardworking americans
>hides innatunnel like the nork b***hmade steel its probably made out of on its nork b***hmade rails.
>Grandpa is unhappy
>Grandpa is a notoriously crazy fricking bastard.
>Grandpa decides he has a shot of bouncing a bomb innatunnel due to the winter hardening of the soil.
>Navigator thinks he's fricking moronic
>Grandpa flies straight at the mountain/hill/cliff/whogivesafrick where the train tunnel is
>Navigator goes full panik.png
>"PULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUP"
>Gramps lets a bomb go and pulls away when he thinks he can't get any closer
>Navigator narrowly manages to squeeze the turd he was about to drop back inside himself
>Bomb didn't go in. Detonated on the outside of the tunnel
>Grandpa is undeterred by this.
>If only I could see the Navigators expression when Gramps turned the plane back around to dive at the cliff again
>"PULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUP"
>Once again, Grandpa shows why he is the one flying the plane, not reading the map
>Somehow the bomb goes bouncing inside the tunnel this time.
>Big boom
>Fire and smoke pouring out of the tunnel on both ends
>Train is burning
>Job well done.
I don't know what he flew, precisely, but he flew big bombers.
Might have been a 29, might have been something else like a 36 or a 50.
Either way, picture something like pic related
Hot damn, your Grandpa made it into Chinese propaganda of the Korean War
>The more we save, the more we can eat!
Decisive Rabbit strategic victory.
no fricking way!
I... I refuse to believe.
Yes he had a silver star... but I never found out what it was for.
https://historyhub.history.gov/military-records/f/military-records-forum/21524/seeking-a-list-of-all-silver-star-recipients
> We are unaware of a comprehensive list of every Silver Star recipient. There are partial lists available on various military and unofficial memorial websites:
https://valor.militarytimes.com/
https://homeofheroes.com/silver-star/korean-war/air-force/
shit... hope I can find him.
I might to try and find his actual service record or something.
small update to my search
I was very wrong about the plane and the award lol
he had a distinguished flying cross with one oakleaf cluster
and he was in a smaller bomber just like that fricking cartoon.
at some point he did fly bigger planes, but not then.
So he wasn't rewarded as handsomely as I thought...
But he was definitely part of the inspiration for that cartoon, and I can only assume that his crazy stunt earned him that medal.
The cluster probably came from a time his navigator was given the wrong coordinates, and he ended up with "over a hundred" bullet holes in his tail, but still somehow got out of there alive.
I can only assume that he attributed his success to their poor aim, because he once commented on how every time planes took off or landed at his airfield, enemy forces tried to shoot at them, but missed "every time," so no one cared.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Recipients_of_the_Distinguished_Flying_Cross_(United_States)
> http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/p_flying_cross.htm
He aint on either of those, though I have some suspicions as to why given certain fallouts he had with the military after the war.
I know the medal is real, even if it was too long ago for me to remember what it was without asking my father.
He was definitely a pilot.
He had kids while he was still serving so they have their own memories as they moved between places.
He is also the ONLY fricking guy in our family to have perfect eyesight, even when he turned 90.
I probably would have to request his service record to find out more.
If they relied at all on contacting people and getting responses for some of those lists, no way he would have responded.
He was very, VERY bitter about a number of things by the end of his military career.
Got shafted by some broken promises, among other things.
Damn... so now my only question is how often bombers might have TRIED that tactic of getting the bomb into the tunnel.
Grandpa was definitely crazy enough to do it and enough of an butthole that he might have tried just to scare his navigator.
Thanks anyways, anon.
Try these:
> https://www.tracesofwar.com/awards/241/Distinguished-Flying-Cross-(DFC).htm
> https://valor.militarytimes.com/award/6?page=1
Search "tunnel" on http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/p_flying_cross.htm
> Akagi, Joe L. (USN)
>> Flying as section leader on a strike against enemy rail installations in the heavily defended area of Tanchon, Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Akagi surprised a group of two hundred enemy troops repairing damaged rails and immediately initiated strafing attacks on a rail tunnel in which the troops had taken cover. Skillfully pin-pointing his bombing attacks, he succeeded in personally sealing both ends of the tunnel to trap the enemy troops.
> Alley, Lawrence G. (USMC)
>> On 14 January 1953, Captain Alley led a flight of Marine attack aircraft on a specially assigned mission against a heavily defended tunnel directly behind the enemy main line of resistance. Directing his flight to orbit beyond range of hostile anti-aircraft guns, he conducted a low level reconnaissance and, despite intense defensive fire, successfully located the camouflaged objective in extremely mountainous terrain. He then rejoined his flight and led an aggressive dive bombing assault in which he scored direct bomb hits on the obscure portals of the tunnel. Upon completion of this assault, Captain Alley observed that the target was damaged but still in serviceable condition. Without hesitation, he again dived his plane in an individual low level attack through increasingly accurate hostile fire. Although heavy smoke partially obscured the objective, he skillfully skipped his remaining bombs into the tunnel entrance.
nope.
although this seems to prove that multiple bombers were crazy like that.
I probably would need to use this
https://www.usa.gov/military-records
Given my families childhood memories of him in service, among other things, I don't think he faked the medal or his story.
I can't even find his name searching this https://catalog.archives.gov/
with one interesting exception of a criminal case over a border violation that I think used to be classified as (secret) based on the addition of (secret) in the name.
Apparently reckless flying was the charge.
is there a way to look up silver stars awarded to pilots in the korean war?
to see what they were awarded for?
gramps is dead and was too bitter when my dad was young about how his life had gone to talk much about stuff like that.
Holy shit.
>the more we save the more we can eat
This could be a mistranslation, but it's too moronic to not be true
WOAH
YEAH
KICKSTART MY HEART GIVE IT A START
WOAH
YEAH B-B-B-B-B-BAAAAAABYYYYY
a direct male descendant of mine, on both my mother and father's side have been in every major american military conflict since the french and indian war including myself being the one to carry the torch into the war on terrorism era.
got plenty and have none to share sorry, 6/10 thread
>claims he has many stories
>refuses to share them because he doesn't like the thread
what a fricking loser
let me guess
>purple heart, sent home day 1
>purple heart, sent home day 1
>purple heart, sent home day 1
repeat for every such conflict?
based, but.... gay?
>you jump out of the airplane while it's still fricking moving 10mph, full crate of grenade, 100 lbs of gear, m21 and all
>drop the crate and the belts, unsling your m21 and IMMEDIETLY begin engaging cubans in the woodline of the airstrip
>there are still rounds coming at you from the control tower
>there is another plane quite literally, flying up on your ass that you gotta get the frick out of the way
>in the distance you see a navy destroyer fricking BOMBARDING THE SHIT OUT OF THE RADIO TOWER that the actually cursed navy seals are still trying to secure and repel cuban counter attack
>the 1st plane, the one just before you, dropped a towed 105mm howitzer out of the back gate that was pushed 10 feet out of the way of incoming planes and it is POINT TARGET engaging cubans not even 100m away in the woodline just the same as you are
>and a10 warthog screams over BRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT
>cubans miles away were just turned into batido de mano
>that's when you realized war was just exactly how you imagined in the ww2 books your dad made you read as a kid
>and you're more scared and morbidly terrified than you've ever been in youre entire life
>for a second you remember being in the recuiters office, one year ago to the day
*ascendant/*ancestor
because of my grammatical answer you get one story
>be my dad
>19 years old
>one year to the day since he enlisted in the army to be an 11b airborne infantry man
>he's shuffled onto a c130 and sent down the strip
>m21 scoped marksman rifle
>ghille suit made out of cheesecloth he bought from the meyers off post of fort bragg a month ago with miscellaneous twigs grass and leaves he's found around his barrack's and stuck in it
>You're on the crazy train to Grenada son get ready
>couple hour plane ride
>vietnam vet platoon daddy's and squad mommy's sleep like baby's on the ride
>you and all of the <21 year old fresh faced straight out of IET motherfrickers are shitting yourself
>you have your full battleload of 7.62 nato for your m21
>no less than 6 belts of 7.62 nato slung over your shoulder to feed the beast that is the platoon m60
>and an actual milk crate of grenades
>not grenade cores or housings with the pieces to build 6 or 7 grenades
>a plastic milk crate with 20 or more loose live hand grenades in your hands
>plus your helmet, ruck, canteens, and the flak vest they literally just started rolling out to high speed outfits like your own
>like all the cool guys you just toss the flak vest in the back of the plane, nobody needs that homosexual shit, I wanna be able to shoot, MOVE, and communicate sargeant
>The c130 rips down out of the clouds
>you can't see through the windows but the red light wakes every mofo on the plane up
>this is not a captured airfield
>there is like a single fricking seal team on the island and they're getting fricking decimated with machine gun fire at the radio tower on the opposite end of the island.
>and we're trying to land a fricking plane here??
>2nd plane to hit the enemy controlled tarmac
>enemy is so taken back and surprised they attempt to return fire but most retreat to the woodline immedietely
>planes dont even stop
Its bad enough when people b***h about a threads quality with nothing to contribute.
the idea of doing that, having something to contribute, and STILL holding back just seems worse.
So thank you for sharing a story.
shiet okay one more of dad's on grenada
>end of the 1st week of the invasion
>just running patrols every day and every night
>clearing out Gilligan island hutts
>no sleep
>no sleep
>it's been one week and no one has slept once
>you think you slept a few days ago on the sidewalk curb but your not sure if you were actually asleep or just imagined you were asleep because youre going insane
>michael jacksons dont stop til you get enough is playing in one ear of your buddies walkman
>you're prone in a patrol base at night
>surrounded by 10 foot tall elephant grass
>you're fighting off sleep
>keep nodding off
>all of a sudden your fricking hair jumps up on your neck
>distant cracks and shuffles in the grass
>pitch black
>you look to your left and squint
>your battle buddy is face fricking down in the dirt asleep
>more shuffling
>more cracks
>something coming towards you in the bush
>you want to yell out to your comrades but you have no idea what could be coming
if you yell out you could alert the enemy in the bush to your position
>if you don't you can all get jumped
>direcctly beyond the bushes by about 400m is a Grenadan village full of "friendly's"
>if the platoon opens fire in that direction civilians will die
>the noise keeps coming closer
>you can't see shit through the scope of your m21 at night
>your knuckles are white aiming at the grass waiting for whatever comes through that bush to appear
>out comes, a pig
>and another one and another one
>two dozen wild pigs quietly walk out of the grass
>walk about 10m
>notice the 20 airborne infantry men laying down in the woods
>honk squeel and tear off into the woods
>the andrenaline is pumping in your ears
>what was in reality 30 seconds felt like an hour
>you're drenched in sweat
>you look over at your battle buddy at the same time he looks at you
>he's leaned over his ruck pointing his m16 downrange
>you both break the sound discipline laughing because you both almost lit up a village because of pigs
okay I'll share one last one but I'm not gonna share anything after it. I did a lot in the army that was objectively "worse" than this, but it's what fricks me up and really stands out when I think about my time
>in basic training
>one week from graduation
>getting refitted for uniforms and shit
>before we're filed into the reception uniform building we're all lined up outside getting marmites or hot plates whatever you call them
>I'm like 10 people from getting my tray
>one of the 3rd platoon guys serving just dropps to the ground with the grits ladle still in hand
>just starts having a grand maw seizure
>going actually nuts frothing from the mouth and shit
>drill sargeants yell at us to keep going through the fricking line there isnt shit to look at here privates ill frick you up if I see you looking over here
>we just one at a time at the position of attention march forward one step through the line
>dude's seizing away in the grass
>drill sargeants have one private take over grit's and one private hold his head
>then the drill sargeants just start laying into him
>like three of them were standing over him with their arms crossed just fricking berating this dude while he's seizing
>I don't know if they thought he was faking it, or if they were chastising him because he obviously enlisted knowing he had some sort of pre existing medical condition
>but I remember senior drill sargeant carter just standing there saying to him
>"do you realize how stupid you look right now private? You're making a fricking mess of yourself. This is disgusting. You know you're going home a fricking disgrace don't you?"
still fricks me up, he died in that grass in front of us and the fla medics didn't even ask the drill sargeants what happened. they just took his body and drove off, and we got fitted for uniforms.
Had a similar situation at osut in 2022, dude had some sort of respiratory reaction during the first few days of training and ended up dying. Still feel weird about trying to bring him to the drills and having three or four of them screaming at us while trying to convince them he was unable to breathe.
VAXXEDRAW.COM
Man, frick those guys. I really do hate how American drill sergeants operate.
What year? I went through in 2003 and it seems like they were extra-careful to avoid having this exact scenario happen. Super-serious about injuries, hydration, drills ready to perform ELS shit if a private went down with something bad
thank you again.
and I am glad you got that last one off of your chest.
>got plenty and have none to share sorry, 6/10 thread
I reckon that is cause your a homosexual Lt Dan
>Be my father in 2006, RAAF C-130 avionics tech specialist
>Deploy to Iraq, usual Coalition shit, far from his first time in the sandpit
>Night shift. Finishing up work, readying everything for hand off to the day shift.
>Phone call comes in from back home in Australia
>Squadron's warrant officer informs them that there was a problem with a C-130 that had come back to Australia with a load of personnel from Cyprus, which had been evacuated due to the Israel-Lebanon War kicking off
>There were oxidised particles in the oxygen tanks
>Rust inside a pressurised explosive canister is REALLY FRICKING BAD. It shouldn't even be able to rust at all.
>The plane had been stationed in Iraq before being sent over to Cyprus, so it's up to them to inspect every aircraft they have and figure out if this is an isolated incident or if there's something real bad going on
>Warrant Officer caps off the call by saying "If anyone asks, this conversation never happened" and immediately hanging up
>Maintenance crew, dad included, share odd glances
>Flight Sergeant turns to dad and asks for his opinion on what they should do about it
>He shrugs and says that they should make a note of it and leave it to the day shift. Everyone agrees, they log it, and everyone heaves off to bed
>....
>The next day, Dad wakes up to the strangest damn thing
>Absolute silence
>On an air base
>In Iraq
>The silence is about as loud to him as the constant taking off and landing of planes of every kind
>There isn't a single aircraft running, from C-130s to C-5s, Tornadoes to F-15s, KC-10s to B-1s
>The skies are crystal-clear, so it's not the weather
>He drags himself out of bed, gets dressed, and heads down to his post to find out what the hell's going on
>He arrives to find his guys standing extremely upright in the maintenance office, with a USAF colonel with the complexion and shape of a tomato screaming down their throats about how American systems are tested to American standards
>Dad's face when
I don't think I get the joke tbh? Was it a US plane or an Aussie plane? Why the secrecy?
Someone before them fricked up. They didn't report the fact that someone gave them a fricked up plane. Then they didn't fix it before an important person became aware, so the VIP assumed the frickup was their fault.
Imagine getting handed over the keys for a rental car that is, on paper, brand spanking new and you sign for it without inspecting it. Then you go to drive it away only to discover that the previous driver scrapped the side of a tunnel for half a mile. But paper says car was fine when you received it. See, you signed for an unblemished car right here. How did you manage to frick up the car so badly in the 5 minutes you had the keys?
>Eventually, the yank tires himself out and leaves to go find a burger
>What the genuine, actual frick was that?
>As it turns out, the Day Shift blokes had been checking the oxygen systems as requested when an American crew came down the flight line to fill them for the day's operations
>The yanks, friendly frickers they were, always volunteered to fill up our planes when they were done with theirs, something that we were all too happy to let them do
>Maintenance techs mention the weird rust problem, and theorise that it might have a point of origin in the oxygenation carts
>The AMERICAN oxygenation carts, one of which having filled up the plane that went to Cyprus
>The yanks apparently kicked it up the chain, and within a matter of hours, the entire fricking USAF had been grounded
>Globally
>Fighters, bombers, cargo, it doesn't matter, nobody's flying today
>Any aircraft that could've been filled by an American oxygenation system is grounded, including other Coalition forces on the base, such as the RAF
>We cannot allow rust to develop in the oxygen tanks, that shit can cause your aircraft to no longer be a matter of aerodynamics and more about ballistic physics
>After a while, they finally find the source
>One of the American oxygenation carts had an improperly-maintained filter, allowing some sand and dust to get inside
>There's some oxidised particles in that stuff
>All other carts check out fine, everyone's oxygen tanks remain rust-proof like they should be
>Everyone agrees not to speak of it again
And that's the story of how my father inadvertently grounded the entire fricking USAF for a day, just by asking the right people at the wrong time. He was pissing himself laughing talking about it, but he assures me that the mood was a lot less comedic at the time.
Australians are truly the most powerful race
My great-grandfather served as an artilleryman in the First World War, and wrote a chapter of his memoirs about it. Leaf btw.
>Didn't complain at all about the actual shooting and fighting
>Did complain about the fricking Indian artillery guys stealing their fricking tools all the time and they'd have to go and steal them back because otherwise they couldn't maintain the guns.
>Did complain about when they'd get rotated away from the front to the rear lines and some godawful British drill sergeant would make them spit-polish their fricking buttons and do jumping jacks and all this other nonsense that didn't make a lick of sense for artillerymen in a muddy war and wasn't relaxing at all (he said he would rather be back in the line shooting the artillery)
>Did suffer a minor injury severe enough to be sent to England for hospitalization and recovery.
>Did get told asked by a local English priest visiting the hospital ward if he was proud to be over here serving his King.
>Did horrify said English priest by telling him "Screw the King, I'm here for my country."
Altogether seems like a 10/10 Grade A Amber, Rich Taste kinda guy. He passed before I was born.
>my old man goes to Vietnam as a pilot
>gets to his unit, eager to get to flying
>first day at his unit he gets a checkride over the AO
>they are fricking shot down while clearing the base
>the pilot giving him the check ride says, "it's not normally like that."
later
>pops is checked out to fly and glad to get to work
>taking off like before
>probably the same butthole who shot him down before starts shooting at him again
>51 cal round comes through the bottom of the chopper and blows off his goddamn foot
>he's freaked out and doesn't want to look at the bloody stump
>emergency landing at field hospital, medics pull him out to look at his mangled foot
>turns out the round hit the bottom of the foot pedal and ricocheted off
>the force drove the pedal into the bottom of his foot so hard he felt a sharp pain and then his foot went numb
>gets called a wuss and sent back to base
even later
>pops is flying his Cobra
>shooting nails at Charlie from 1000 feet
>LOL what are you going to do about it scrubs?
>OH SHIT THAT IS A LOT OF DSHK FIRE
>a couple of rounds come through the wienerpit glass
>there is bright flash and suddenly he can't see
>wipes his eyes with his sleeve and there is blood
>still can't fricking see
>there's a LOT of blood
>his gunner turns around to see what happened
>gunner starts freaking out because pops looks like he's had his face shot off
>they do an emergency landing at a field hospital
>medics clean up the wound to get a look at it and stop the bleeding
>it is literally just a cut on his forehead
>pops gets called a wuss and sent back
even more later
>pops gets fricking shot down again, this time in the middle of a goddamn firefight
>he pulls out his trusty service sidearm
>it's a fricking .38 revolver
>the Loach gunner drops a sack full of AK-47s to him
>he at least feels less stupid while he waits for pickup
even more later than that
>pops gets shot the frick down again
>this time he's got CAR-15 and a bandolier of mags
>not this time Charlie
>Loach
Reminded me of a war story series done by the Billings Gazette in Montana of Vietnam vets. This guy has a load of amazing stories about piloting a loach.
my dad was a hardcore naval seal that did over 30 successful missions in iraq but went missing at sea and the never found him. Mom told me he was getting cigarettes
whoever did that, regardless if they were havin a giggle, deserves to go to hell
There's a line where patriotism becomes histrionic and I think you've crossed it.
go to the library. big city libraries have these machines that read some seriously old newspapers. i forget what they're called but i'm being honest. they also have computers but what i'm talking about is something different
good luck. lots of interesting articles to peruse
It's called microfilm or microfiche.
Not sure about their long-term storage life beyond 50 years though.
should be pretty good because that's exactly how they store archives.
my grandpa just vibed and set up tests with the first fire finder radars. it sounded reasonably comfy.
There have been attempts by universities and other historical groups electronically archive the entirety of old paper archives of both books and newspapers. These archives have the history of literature and news for decades.
Many weekly newspapers used to keep every single newspaper they ever made back then and kept them in a safe place.
>Be grandpa
>Be electrical engineer aboard sub-hunting prop plane in Vietnam
>Some genius tells you that your plane will be receiving modifications for testing
>Enter plane
>There is a fricking nuclear weapon in the buoy-deployment bay
>"We need you to drop this out of the plane and try to climb above a safe height before it detonates"
>"This is a fake, right?"
>Boss just chuckles and walks away
>Same deployment
>Flying in international waters tracking Russian nuclear subs
>Dumbass pilot accidentally strays fifteen miles into no-fly zone
>Radar picks up contact from Russian MiGs on intercept course
>Shit bricks and barely escape engagement range after diving low enough to touch the water
He also got put on the crew that had to gather the corpses of dead crewmen after the fire caused by improperly maintained bombs that John McCain barely escaped dying in.
Nuclear depth charges, kino
They were supposedly just testing if that model of plane could get above the safe elevation for strategic deployment of nuclear weapons. As far as he told me, it didn't have the climbing power for it.
>be my grampa, x-ray technician in Angola
>its the summer of 1974, everything has gone to shit after the carnation revolution
>military is ordered to perform a complete retreat from all the now-independent colonies
>the independence movement Black folk split into camps and start a civil war, with the main actors being MPLA and UNITA
>shit starts deteriorating very fast, the routing Portuguese forces are an attractive target for the ordnance they carry
>Black folk promptly start setting up roadblocks along the main routes of retreat and demand all weapons be surrendered, this becomes a common occurence
>gramps' unit commander never gives in, instead every single time he encounters a roadblock he simply calls the opposing Black person faction and tells them theres a fight to be had
>opposing nogs arrive and start blasting each others
>in the mids of the confusion, the portuguese convoy drives straight through
>this continues until they arrive in Luanda, embark on a ship and frick right back to Lisbon
He also mentioned shooting a Zebra near the Namibian border with his G3, and grilling it. I should pester him to digitize his pictures.
My grandfathers were both in protected profession during WW2. But my great uncles were apparently quite interesting.
>Great Uncle Teddy
>Goes to Singapore as a rubber plantation manager
>Handsome and charming he absolutely Chads it up in the Raffles and cuts a swathe through Society girls
>Japs attack
>He volunteers and joins some kind of militia
>Then the entire militia gets absorbed by the newly arrived Australian division for some reason
>Fights rearguard action for some time
>Goes into the bag with other Allied troops when Singapore surrenders
>Spends 4 years in Japanese POW camp, ending up in Changi Jail
>Tortured by Japanese, nobody in the family seems to know why, he never really talks about it only reason family knows is because of scars on him
>Never really talks about it, hates the Japanese for the rest of his life to the point of walking out the room if something about Japan comes on the news
>Never married or has kids, seems to have been badly affected by his time Japanese captivity
>Great Uncle Lionel
>Was in Counter Intelligence
>Records still sealed in 2010 last time my mom looked
>Don't know what he did, but figure it must have been pretty spicey
>Only one story is known about him, apparently he was on a beach all night in winter waiting for a german u-boat to drop off a spy
>The u-boat never came, waste of time, got frostbitten toes
Interesting that a German spy would get shuttle service to Britain, I guess he must have been a double agent pretending to be spying on Britain but really just feeding his intelligence handlers whatever shit Lionel gave him
ask the publication for access to its physical archives
t. former newspaper reporter
>Be Grandad
>driver for a radio fire coordinaton jeep in Korea
>MOS is phased out pretty quickly because they were easy targets for the perfidious asiatic
>most of his career is spent driving jeeps in non-combat roles
>be inna SEA country (I forget which)
>Driving down the road with two other marines including a lieutenant
>sees massive snake the size of a downed tree
>tries to hit it with his jeep (as is custom back home in Virginia, where the snakes are smaller and the trucks are bigger)
>this flips the jeep
>jeep is completely totaled, laying on its side in the bushes in a crumpled heap
>snake slithers into the underbrush no worse for wear
>they all scramble onto the side (now top) of the wreck and prepare to slay the beast with their pistols
>it never comes
>walk the rest of the way on foot
My grandparents never talked much about the war. But one of the stories I have:
My gramps (mother's side) was a German scout on the Eastern Front. He was riding a horse along a dirt path when he suddenly saw a PPSH (he kept calling it a Kalashnikov when he told the story) sticking out of a bush aiming right at him. He jumped off his horse into the mud and crawled all the way, flanking the bush, where he found the gun without anyone around. He was captured years later, spent some time in Siberia. He later made a wooden replica of the PPSH for the grandkids to play with. He died in 2020 at age 98, right before kung flu came around.
>He died in 2020 at age 98, right before kung flu came around.
Kung flu (actual cases) was already running around USA in late 2019, I personally caught it that November. And if sewage studies are to be believed, it was already in West Euro by the Summer of 2019.
>Grandpa was a Communist Sympathizer merchant seaman during WW2.<
>from 1940 until early 1942, the local Party cell would buy guns in the US on the cheap and send them over to Algeria and Morocco to fellow Commies on neutral ships.<
>Grampa had more than the normal number of passports and seamen’s books, helped him run guns to the French Resistace<
/kx/ tier story but it's the main one my dad has told me
>be my dad
>1993
>"you're going to Panama for training!"
>"Didn't we just invade them?"
>"Yeah but it's all good"
>Dad goes in for jungle warfare training as a paratrooper
>They are supposed to jump into the jungle, meet up at a rally point
>stay for a few days then hike out
>the rally point, as it turns out, is a weird building that my dad still has a hard time describing
>slowly other dudes trickle in
>They are there for a a day, then shit gets weird
>they hear what sounds like talking in the jungle but it isn't in Spanish
>then a huge flash of blue light
>the wildlife after that became more hostile than they had encountered, even walking through the jungle
>they're sitting around this building, someone got dehydrated, medic starts an IV
>a monkey steals a needle from the Medic's bag
>stabs a guy with it
>snakes are crawling from the jungle onto the concrete they are all standing on
>they finally leave
>they hike for god knows how long
>find a village
>there is already a glowie in the village waiting on them
Dad still won't tell me what happened after that. He never said "glowie" or CIA or anything, he just described a guy in jeans and a polo shirt with a tactical vest who explained he was there because that was the most likely area they'd have hiked to.
/xk/ /bestk/
my table salute you for their next dg oneshot
Panamanon here. Did your dad tell you what area was he in training? I presume the Darien Jungle. I've read tales of those blue orbs on /x/, but never seen one myself. My mom grew up on the middle of the country and once said she saw a giant while playing in the jungle.
>Panamanon here. Did your dad tell you what area was he in training? I presume the Darien Jungle. I've read tales of those blue orbs on /x/, but never seen one myself. My mom grew up on the middle of the country and once said she saw a giant while playing in the jungle.
Did your mom describe how that giant looked?
Unfortunately no. She is deeply Christian and probably believes it was a demon so there's no point in asking her as she would tell me that speaking about demons increases their power. Kinda like Chainsawman lmao
Her mom (my grandma) got choked by a duende apparently after grandpa had brought some "gifts" from a trip to Mexico. They later burnt them and the imaginary friend of my aunt also disappeared after burning them
I'm the guy who posted the /kx/ story.
No, my dad still to this day has no idea where exactly he was. He had a map but it was of a relatively small area and didn't even have the village he eventually rucked to on it.
So here's the thing, my dad said it looked like a new building but it was built like a very low, flat, concrete circle. Almost like a bunker. He and the rest of his platoon were camped out on top of it. I called him and asked and he said that at the time they felt like they were on top of a huge helicopter landing pad.
Funnily enough, he did say the outside edges of the building were "built like a jigsaw puzzle" so, frick if I know.
>>the rally point, as it turns out, is a weird building that my dad still has a hard time describing
Ask your dad if the building had irregular stonework. Not square blocks, but each stone being irregular and individually cut to fit into place.
If it had, the building was likely at least 5000 years old.
Sure I got one
>Be my great grandfather
>Head off to go fight in WWII
>Marry great grandmother via proxy over seas
>get sent to Normandy...
>gets assigned in first wave
>ends up on tail end of first wave
>sees people getting mowed tf down on the beach before even leaving the boats
>people start jumping overboard, immediately drown from having too much gear on and sink to the bottom
lightbulb.jpg
>strips down to underwear and jumps overboard and swims to shore
> Swims to shore, finds a rifle from a fallen brother
>Never talked about much after that.
RIP great grandpa Earl.
Imagine being mowed down by a conscript wearing nothing but a rifle, a pair of boxers, and a frown. What a way to go.
My family was in the Indonesian colonies at the time. Great grandfather was captured and put to work on the Burma train rails. Eventually died from disease while being shipped of to somewhere to Manchuria/Northern Japan. Grandmother was put in an Indonesian concentration camp. She hated Japs and told my dad he would be disowned if he ever bought a Japanese car.
Ill share one I recently got told whilst working out family records
>be my great great grandfather in germany
>WW1 happens
>get drafted pretty fast
>end up in france
>get taken prisoner by the british
>spend years in a POW camp
>get really angry they call you Fritz because thats not his name
>no other complaints about being in a POW camp
>end of WW1 get released
>WW2 happens
>get drafted again
>taken captive by british again post D day
>spend rest of war in POW camp
>say this camp was better than the previous one due to them getting his name right
Not sure if your grandad is really lucky or unlucky. But if the worst thing that happened was being called Fritz, he didn't have a terrible war.
>Chinese POWS
lmao holy shit. The japanese had some kind of an insane racial hatred of the chinaman
>had
Great-grandfather
>born in 1871
>his dad is a real bastard, belt whippings all day every day
>runs away at 14/15 and joins the army despite being too young
>either they don't know he's underage or don't care
>get sent to Sudan to fight the Mahdists
>get sent to South Africa to fight the Boer
>leaves army, gets married, becomes a telegraphist and postman, have 7 kids
>joins up again in 1916 despite being too old
>either they don't know he's over age or don't care
>come home and be a telegraphist and postman
I never knew him, he died in 1949, apparently he never really talked about Sudan, credited his survival in South Africa to learning to look around cover rather than over it (as Boer's would dome British soldiers with alarming regularity, the tall helmets were pretty conspicuous, pic related but not him), and survived a gas attack in WW1. He saw a lot of conflict and had a pretty tough life but he was apparently a gentle man, and my grandfather always spoke fondly of him.
He was luckier than his sons who both died during the war, the older (my great great uncle) died in an air raid in the last few months of the war. He came back from great Britain to find his name on a list for a mass grave
In the battle for the same city my grandfathers father got handed a rifle despite being barely able to walk due to back problems and he died a day later probably not even able to fire the thing or take cover. Total waste of life but that's how it went back then
Man im moronic and replied to the wrong post. Far too late for me to be on here.
Great Grandfather fought in the first world war as cavallerie officer at the beginning but quickly changed to artillery and commanded a battery of siege haubitzen.
After the war he opened a big Konditorrei with a bowling(Kegelbahn) place and one of the first cinemas in the area. Literally a giant place even for todays standarts in the 1920 in Saxony.
The worst memory from the war wasnt the giant fields of dead meat( He took many photos and they look like the worst assaults of russia but on flat terrain with no trees.) but when he was on home leave and his warhorse fled to him on the way to the butchers as they were not needed anymore but their meat was. He had to send it back as it did belong to the empire and not him.
He later joined the NSDAP and was a prominent local member until the war began. He fought in Africa as an artillery commander and his unit was one of the last ones to make it out of Africa. I still have his maps from the campaign with old see though plastic tools for navigation and calculation and such. Pretty cool stuff. He later was stationed in Italy where he took controll of a city as commander. He was ordered on many occasion to execute local rebels and terrorists, so he ordered the prisoners to be executed but drove away to inspect the defences of the city. As he wasnt there in person the execution could not be started and was delayed indefenitly, he did this a few times. I know it sounds like some comedy trope, where he probably got the idea from in the first place as he was a cinema owner, but his local secretary coroborated the story later on when my grandma went there to know what her father did in the war. My grand father was pretty afraid of going there as he fought in france during the war and probably saw some nasty shit ( he even showed my father the bullet holes in a wall that were still there, some americans shot at him when he and his commander fled in a kübelwagen during an battle)
He later died in 1944 due to a supposed shrapnell injury to the head.
He probably wasnt on the best standing with the party members at this time and it happend on the way to a christmas party he was invited on by the high command.
He got thrown out of the party after the invasion of Poland as he complained about the treatment of poles and hitler in general to the wrong "friends".
My grandma told me that suddenly the neighbours stopped talking to them and they were not allowed to play with them anymore. Funnly enough this contiued after the war aswell as they had a lot of property and the father was in the party. Real morons but what can you expect in a soviet occupied state
These are great stories, lads. Keep them coming.
My dad paid a Russian air crew in Coca Cola to let him and his coworker photograph the wienerpit of a MiG in the early 90's, at an international air show. Don't know which model because he died a couple years ago. Always weird to remember that a guy like him was a spook. I miss him dearly.
OP here; great stories! Keep 'em coming lads!
My great-grandpa spent all of WW1 building coffins in Britain, and his brother was exploded in a trench somewhere.
oh and too add to this they were only allowed to sign up if they rescinded their native status (this was in Canada)
My granddad's brother (I guess my great uncle) Joe was Army in the Pacific during WW2.
I only met him a couple of times and once he started talking religion and about how he became a Christian, and later a preacher.
He was a sergeant and the first big bombing attack he was in (I don't remember if there were many before that he witnessed) he said they were in trenches they had dug and the planes started coming in and he was just overcome completely with fear. He said he ended up out of the trench -not sure if he was knocked out/climbed out/etc and he had to start praying. The other guys he was with were yelling at him to get down and get back in but he said he couldn't until he got done praying. The other guys were yelling at him the whole time. Eventually he got done crawled back in the trench/foxhole and all was good.
He also talked about later how they loved to drink coffee but at night when they would hear the Japanese planes coming they would have to put out their small fires as soon as the heard them because the pilots could hit any spot of light they could see.
Once in an attack he crawled down in hole (I don't remember if a crater/cave/trench/ditch) he had to crawl back into the roots and stay until morning. The next morning when the sun was up he realized he had been sleeping in a hole full of bones.
I never heard him tell other stories apart from the bombings.
He was a preacher and visited prisons until his 80s when cancer finally made him too ill and eventually took him.
--
I was still teens when he talked to me about it so it was sadly just 'cool story bro'
Growing up I always heard stories from other family of how they hated when Uncle Joe spent the night because he would wake them up with his screaming in the middle of the night.
No real story here but my grandma's younger brothers told of a old black farm hand, Slim, that worked and later lived out there on the tobacco farm (NC/SC stateline) until his passing I guess in the 70s or 80s.
They said that during WW2 he was in the army and was in a unit that would handle the bodies after the battles were over with a mule cart. I guess relatively safe, but still sounds like one of the worst jobs imaginable.
I don't know if he had no family left, nowhere else to go, but I sure I hope that he had some good years before moving out to the farm, cropping tobacco sucks.
There was always moonshine there ever since prohibition (it paid for the farmland), so I figure he was there just sitting under the trees and drinking it away like the rest of them.
I can think of few jobs more grim than moving corpses in a war with as many corpses as WW2
You can? Name them, then.
Any job that involves hanging out around you
damn dude, damn!
My biological German grandfather was conscripted in ww2 at 17. He escaped from two burning tanks, losing a testicle in one (if he had lost both, I would not be posting this), and had a high-stakes military tribunal to explain how they were destroyed. He turned out to be a total bastard though, kicking my pregnant grandmother and leaving her after she supported him through college.
My German step-grandfather had an even more interesting tale. He was a low-education general practitioner country doctor, and was drafted to serve as a medic on the Eastern front. He claimed to have been a total pacifist, and refused to carry a weapon until they threatened to court martial him. He carried an unloaded pistol in response. His story had a similar element to in that his unit was being barraged by a Katyusha and he had a mental breakdown, ran out of their trench and started angrily shouting at the artillery to stop while explosions rained down all around, but somehow survived.
He was captured by the Soviets, but didn't come to hate them. He saw the Russian conscripts were being treated literally like animals by their superiors, so he understood why they treated the prisoners so bad. He claimed to have survived well by eating what food he was given very slowly, over an hour or more, rather than gobbling it up quickly like other hungry people did. He passed out and was thrown in a mass grave at one point, but just got up and climbed back out. He escaped the camp, and walked all the way back to Germany. He said he never would have survived if not for the incredibly magnanimous help he received from Polish civilians.
My grandad killed a dozen German fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain.
He was the worst mechanic in the Luftwaffe.
My uncle was in Nam. He was always super quiet about it around the family, other than talking about mundane shit like the food and the barracks and whatnot. When I was 15 I was at a party with family and friends and that was one of the first times I ever got drunk. My uncle was there, ten-times more drunk than me. He sat down next to me at the campfire and started talking about his various experiences in combat, right out of the blue. Kinda what I expected to start; what adrenaline is like, what it's like to see your friends die and to have bullets and shrapnel whizzing past you.
But then he started talking about killing. Said his first kill was "some dumb asiatic kid with a Russian bolt-action from WW2". Talked about seeing this little spec sprinting across a rice field and taking a few pot-shots at it, didn't realize he'd even killed someone till the next day. He said it feels incredible, like a second puberty. Talked about how you'll never know what you're capable of until you've killed another man trying to kill you. Said something along the lines of "I used to question God's ways until I took a life. Then I understood."
I don't THINK he was a psycho. He made it clear that combat is the rush, not just the killing. That entire conversation feels like a fever dream now. I was horrified as a teenager but now I think about it with a bit more nuance. Wish I would have talked to him about it more. He died a year later.
>"I used to question God's ways until I took a life. Then I understood."
IFYKYK
your uncle was telling you the truth
I was the only boy in the family for a while, the younger generation I mean. He probably wanted to talk to a man my age about that shit for ages. At the time I thought he was just pushing me to join the military but now I realize he was probably just looking for some comradery.
>Be my grandfather stationed with the RAF in Singapore during the 1960s
>Is sent out to Borneo as there is a fear the Malaysians will invade
>Tasked with convincing a tribe that only recently renounced cannibalism that if they see the Malaysians come over the mountain they must radio the RAF
>Parachutes into the jungle
>Finds the tribe but they are initially apprehensive so he decides to play a popular song at the time called The Twist with the accompanying dance which involves twisting at the hips
>The tribesmen love this and all do the twist along with him
>He managed to explain to them the situation and they agreed to his proposal
>The Malaysians invade over the mountain, the tribesmen radio the RAF and the Malays are bombed to smithereens
>And thus Borneo was saved
Damn I fricked this up I got Malaysia confused with Indonesia.
my grandpa was accidentally jettisoned alongside the Fat Man
This is an account of my (great,great...nth) uncle's experience during the civil war fighting first on foot for the army of northern Virginia, then later on horseback as recon and raider's. Has quite a lot of different experiences, from large scale battle, to being a POW, to raids/recon. It's available on library of congress and even google books.
That's awesome. It's a real blessing to br able to look so directly into the mind of a direct ancestor.
Indeed, it includes hijinks like visiting his sister's house in N-Va while "behind" lines, only to have to run out the back door as union soldiers come "asking" for supplies and horses. He came back and finished his breakfast after they left. The house and farm is still in one side of the family's possession. They have a Starr .38 double action revolver that was supposedly his.
>dad's dad was in a Pacific in ww2
>cleaned up ships after the bikini atoll tests
>died not all that long later
>my dad wasn't old enough to remember him
I am named after him
gotta quiz my grandma on it sometime
my dad has his id card from the tests
Great uncle
>joined paras during WW2
>but too late to see any shit in Europe
>was posted to Palestine post-war
>despised the israelites for doing shit like hanging steel wire across narrow roads hoping to decapitate soldiers in jeeps
>despised Arabs for taking every opportunity to mutilate dead bodies
His opinion was basically that Arabs were savages whilst israelites were deeply underhanded and wicked people.
>His opinion was basically that Arabs were savages whilst israelites were deeply underhanded and wicked people.
Arabs are chaos darkies, israelites are passive-aggressive chaos darkies.
My great grandpa inhaled enough mustard gas that you could hear him breathing from a hundred feet away, from what I've been told. That's all I really know about him.
My grandpa (pic related) served as both a marine and a sailor. Not sure in which order. He was in the pacific and his boat was hit with a torpedo on at least one occasion. I don't know much else as he died in the early seventies.
On my mother's side, my great(...) grandfather was a notable pioneer. His settlement was attacked in the middle of the night by Crow indians despite the "friendship" he shared with their chief. After getting his family to safety, he returned to the settlement for livestock and to help stragglers but was attacked by braves. They chased him into a swamp and his horse became stuck. He shot and killed several redskins before they eventually overran him, cutting off a finger for each of them he killed before finally decapitating him. His skull was later found in a tree and identified by his wife. If he hadn't secured his family, including his infant son, before being killed in battle then I wouldn't be here.
>for further reading: https://www.earlyeatonvillewashington.com/p/chapter-4-our-founder-t.html?m=1
>He shot and killed several redskins before they eventually overran him, cutting off a finger for each of them he killed before finally decapitating him. His skull was later found in a tree and identified by his wife. If he hadn't secured his family, including his infant son, before being killed in battle then I wouldn't be here.
neat story, reminded me of this
>His settlement was attacked in the middle of the night by Crow indians despite the "friendship" he shared with their chief
>cutting off a finger for each of them he killed before finally decapitating him.
>His skull was later found in a tree and identified by his wife.
why am I supposed to feel sorry for these store brand steppeBlack folk again?
I'm a Frog with some Polish and Italian descent.
Great-great-grandpa :
> Italian submariner in WW1, escaped the sinking of his boat because he got bitten by a dog and was stuck in a naval hospital
No idea about the others
Greatgrandpas :
> French
was a stoker on a merchant ship before WW2, served on a sub at some point and then on one of the Free French ships screening the landings on D-Day
> French
Tunisian Pied Noir (French colonist in NAfri), was a fireman in Tunis before the war, served as a mail runner on a motorcycle in the Vichy forces, survived strafing by a plane while riding his motorcycle
> Pole
immigrated to France in the mid 1930s as a farmhand. Forced laborer at a V2 assembly and launch bunker in Northern France, escaped and came back with PTSD and a missing finger, never wanted to talk about how he escaped and what he had to in the process, but it seemed pretty dark. Meanwhile the village his wife and kids were living in was almost raped, massacred and burned to the ground Eastern-front style by the SS in retaliation for local Resistance activity, but they settled for the one next door
>Italian
airman, hardcore fascist who followed Mussolini all the way to Salo, immigrated to France after the war with a fake ID.
Grandpas, both Algerian war :
>Mom's side
Tunisian Pied Noir, was a skilled typewriter repairman before the war which kept him away from the frontlines when conscripted. He was stationed at Algiers HQ, fixing typewriters, going to the beach and pranking NCOs with his bros. He survived three terrorist attacks and was briefly interned during the Algiers coup because all Pied-Noir were suspected of being coup sympathizers. After demobilization, he came to mainland France for the first time in his life and he worked on a USAF base before De Gaulle expelled all US troops
>Father's side
mainland French, killed three FLN fighters with a SMG during a reconnaissance mission ahead of a convoy, preventing an ambush. Got a medal and severe PTSD
>be my grandpa
>4th Marine Division stationed on Maui during WWII
>doing some training exercise out in a field
>something sparks a grass fire, it spreads extremely quickly and isolates my grandpa
>blinded and overwhelmed by the heat and smoke he realizes he’s a goner
>at the last minute someone picks him up and carries him away to safety
>grandpa looks up and nobody is there
He maintained for the rest of his life that it was his guardian angel that saved him.
Also
>same grandpa
>childhood friend also joined the Marine Corps and fought in the pacific
>got taken prisoner and was eventually killed and eaten by the Japanese
My grandpa kept the article about it from his hometown paper for his whole life.
Not a family story, but /x/ related
I had a sergeant who swears that in Iraq he saw valkyries pulling soldiers out of a burning humvee that had been hit by an IED.
Brother was in the pizza(let s not make It Easy for to trace him) air force, pilot
After more than 10 years he earned around 2.5k a month, less than One of our truck drivers, when he got a brain cancer the armed forces tried to Fire him.
The cancer was likely correlated with the job, he died and now his 2 year old has no dad.
I fricking hate this country the west and the world.
That's sucks, anon, but be a good uncle.
>let's not make it Easy for to trace him
Pisa right?
>be an uncle of mine
>be in Santiago, Chile during the 60's-70's
>be a P.E. coach
>schools plagued with marxists
>Salvador Allende is elected
>the Government formalizes their ideological agenda in education and all other branches they control
>marxists concentrate their ideological agents and militants in the country's major cities
>Allende funds and arms guerrillas in the slums and rural areas, defunds the armed forces
>1973
>Chile's armed forces overthrow the marxist regime and establish a Military Junta
>they begin to hunt any possible socialist agent
>The soldiers concentrate their efforts in the major cities but later on they reach every hamlet and corner of the country
>anyone accused of being a commie is detained, taken to a Unimog and then you know the rest
>some suspects would be kept in prison or in improvised prisons, like stadiums, for months or years
>20+ prisoners in every cell
>prisoners are transferred from place to place
>those to be transferred have less chances to make it back home, and more chances to be interrogated and then killed
>teachers and educators are on the spotlight
>most commies and public workers flee to minor towns or leave the country, educators too
>those who choose to stay in the major cities are captured and interrogated
>uncle notices it's all so fricked
>thinks fast and gtfo from Santiago to a little town with his mother
>she's a socialite and got contacts with the Army
>she offers him a job as a coach in the Military Academy, in Santiago
>he accepts and trains the cadets in many sports
>gets better paid than ever before as the Junta raised the salaries for the armed forces
>and because the regime fixed the economy
>uncle is such a chill and light hearted guy everybody love him
>also he's a good coach and they win lots of contests and championships worldwide
>uncle marries a hot b***h and they have children
>but he spends too much time at his job until he quits it just to stay home with his family
Cont...
>shortly after retiring from the Army his wife breaks up with him
>few years later he dies of an untreated cancer
>uncle just gave up on life
>years later
>be his son (my cousin)
>raised as a Pinochetist and a supporter of the military Government of Chile
>join the Military Academy of the Army of Chile
>he becomes a black beret (paratrooper) commander and gets trained under Pinochet's regime
>trained with the most hardened generation of soldiers
>prepared to combat in a regional war against three countries at the same time during one of the most tense periods of the country's history
>specially prepared to invade Argentina if the war begins
>and shit is 10 minutes away to hit the fan until the Pope intervenes and calls both countries, preventing the disaster
>but neighboring countries keep menacing Chile and sparking conflicts and the Chilean armed forces must stay in shape to confront an invasion in multiple fronts
>paratrooper cousin marries a hot b***h and have children
>retires from the Army with honours after more than 20 years of service just to spend more time as a man with his family
>his wife leaves him
Timeline does not add up, what tense period are you talking about 1982? He would have been 9 at most.
What's the moral of the story? Spend more time with your wife and kids?
the moral is that shitty people gets cucked and dies alone
Bros before hoes
You're right. I screwed up by not mentioning when did my cousin was born, and he was born in the late 50's, not during the 70's. So he's my oldest cousin, just a decade younger than my father. This guy was already in the Army when shit was about to hit the fan in the region for several times and so he had to be up for the task during all of his time serving. As a side note, that generation of soldiers were so well trained and disciplined, Blackwater contracted a lot of those veterans during the invasion of Iraq, when Blackwater was good. My cousin opted for staying home and enjoying life, but his wife was a b***h so when she left he met another girl and started a new family.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-87890-2007-07-10.html
Don’t get into politics so you won’t get gulaged when the government gets replaced.
My dad was in the Marines and got 2 rounds of Anthrax inoculation because they misplaced his records. I was born with a heart defect. God bless America
If his sperm was good enough to make you, it was probably good enough to make you healthy. Shit like that is usually genetic anti-lottery or the mom.
Also a lot of it is back in the day people just fricking died from it before anyone knew what was wrong. That’s why in the Middle Ages and Roman times, life expectancy was basically the same as modern times if you only look at people who survived childhood.
My greatgrandma (who is Finnish, just like I am) was working on a ship travelling from Finland to UK and Germany and her father was the captain of the said ship. On the way to UK the Germans bombarded the ship and when travelling to Germany the Allied bombarded the ship. Eventually the ship got captured by Germans and functioned a while under German command. My greatgrandma then worked in the kitchen of that said German ship and the German soldiers aboard the ship, with the said Germans constantly coming up to the kitchen window to promise her everything, trying to get her to come to Germany with one of them. My greatgrandma was already married by then so she always refused to have any contact with the soldiers, since her husband (my greatgrandpa) was in Finland, conducting his own duties. I wish that I would have asked her more about the war.
Can you imagine how many situations with other peoples she would not have been allowed to keep her honor? Have to remember this type of thing so I remember to hate the israelites for what they have done to such an honorable people. (Not saying it's the gold standard but it's a fat cry from the supreme evil they're portrayed as)
>germans kidnap and harass finnish woman
>DAJOOOOOOOOOOS
>anon's tale: the germans were constantly flirting and trying to convince grandma to move to germany
>~~*state-funded*~~ history books: The germans would have developed the ability to smell a woman in a 2km radius, once engaged, they would hold her and rape her for 8 hours, only to the decapitate her and pass her head as a fleshlight
Yeah I get what he meant
I still cringe when I remember how I lectured my grandpa about how evil nazis were, only for him to remind me he was actually there...
My great grandpa was a pilot in the luftwaffe during the war. Unfortunately he died long before I was born. Would’ve been fascinating to hear from someone who was there, besides a israelite who only survived because the zyklon machine broke each of the 15 times he was supposed to be gassed.
>american education is bad
that's just a side effect of low iq
>be grandpa in the Italian Regio Esercito
>be stationed in Dubrovnik to guard an air strip
>don't do shit except play cards and shoot at Croatian guerrilla trying to steal supplies
>1944 Mussolini got disgraced, escaped to Salò and declared all soldiers now responded to himself and Hitler, not the king
>German unit comes to secure airteio
>"You vill love ze Fuhrer or you vill be arrested"
>Captain objects that he and his men swore fealty to the Kingdom of Italy and his king, not Mussolini and certainly not Hitler
>almost everyone is arrested and sent to concentration camps
>grandpa ends up in a camp where they make prisoners build trains
>if you agree to collaborate you get a paper slip and a nicer camp to stay in with less guards and option to stay in town for a couple hours every day
>grandpa does not take the option choosing to stay in the prisoner camp and getting beaten by guards
>in 1946 having survived the camp he has to walk from Germany to Italy because infrastructure is gone
>managed to get home in one piece and married grandma
>the suffering of Italian soldiers who went through the same thing was largely ignored because they were considered just more axis troops
We managed to get a medal for him and his name engraved in a church where many like him are remembered. He died 18 years ago and he almost never talked about the war
>walking home at the end of the war
I've heard that quite a lot. I guess they just did what they had to do to get home, but still, the endurance of those men is admirable.
> Ancestor used to live in Alsace
> Fights for France in 1870
> France loses the war, Alsace becomes German and so does he
> France doesn't give anything to him cause he's now German
> Germany doesn't hive him anything because he fought for their enemy
> He gets into a drunken fight with German soldiers and flees to France
> France now gives him a medal for his courage
We still have his sword and medal
>be my greatgrandpa
>dibubidibabidi
>get enrolled to fight the austrians in wwi
>get spanish flu while in the trenches
>get tied down to the cot so as not to jump off when trembling
>get better
>get austrian soldier captured
>get his gun as a souvenir
>get 16th birthday
>get victory
>get sent back home
The rest of his life is not war-related but still pretty interesting
>get swole
>get the gulf of naples swam across, several times, for fun
>get engineering degree
>get atlantic crossed by boat
>get engineering job
>get promoted to middle management, then management
>get disgusted by politics
>get idea to return to engineering to do field work throughout the country
>get approved
>get hooked by most beautiful girl in town in one of the trips (my greatgrandma)
>get married
>get field and a mortgage
>get hyperinflation but mortgage doesn't get indexed
>get rest of mortgage paid with literal coins
>get kids
>get lung cancer
>get boy enrolled in engineering just like dad
>get lung cancer
>get to meet our lord and saviour
Save for the cancer, he had a pretty enviable life. I wish I was half as based as he was.
Also from that side of the family
>be greatuncle
>be unfathomably handsome
>be at military service
>have to do rope climbing shit in the first day
>coach sees his perfectly cut and combed hair, waxed moustache, and shaved chin among the crowd
>>hey the cute short b***hboy standing in the back, let's see you do it
>actually stands up from the bench, 6'2"
>gets to the rope
>does an arm-only climb all the way to the ceiling with legs out perfectly square
>climbs all the way down again, still square, in perfect form
Of course, that was the only time he got called a cute short b***hboy.
Not war related but still /k/, he was pretty good with a gun and cold shoot a poker card on its edge. From 20 yards away. Bending over and shooting between his legs. Again, I wished I was half as based.
my grandpa was the first projectile launched from the Gustav Cannon
my great grandpa fought on the italian front in WWI, then back in czechoslovakia he aided a communist terror campaign, then fled to poland, then fought against the bolshevik in an elite unit then became a policeman and beat up ukrainians (he was orthodox himself) then escorted the polish national treasury to romania and returned to his homestead in annexed territory where he aided some more communists then the communist denied him pension after the war because he wasn't a policeman during WW2 because THE FRICKING VILLAGE HE LIVED IN WAS ANNEXED TO GERMANY.
All these stories are bullshit. Nothing ever happens.
Everything is happening every time. Your belief is not necessary
My great uncle wrote a book about how he bombed the krauts
My grandfather was a gunner in a blackburn Skua and managed to shoot down a dornier flying boat, which got him the first allied aerial kill of World War 2, which is pretty neat.
https://www.baesystems.com/en-uk/heritage/blackburn-b-24-skua
https://live.warthunder.com/post/960057/en/
Of course trhe only source I could quickly find was on the fricking War Thunder forums
>be my grandad
>ww2 RAN commando
>gets blisters on his back from paddling 20kms every day
>week before he's due to go on the Jaywick raid they burst and get infected
>has to go to a military hospital
>so tanned he looks like a jap
>not allowed to say what unit he's in
Not that it existed anyway
>gets held under suspicion of espionage
Another one of his
>after missing Jaywick he signs onto m special
>coast watcher in New Guinea
>gets ordered to arm some local village against the japs
>right as he's about to hand over the Enfields the Aussies donated his native guide runs up to him
>tells him the village turned
>buries the guns in the jungle somewhere
I wish I knew where he left them...
The phantom shitter of the 11th MEU:
>be sailor on USS Essex in 2020
>carrying a battalion of muhreens who haven't left the ship in over 200 days due to covid.
>people are growing insanely bored and there incidents like people brewing alcohol in a water fountain, fights over someone's gf nudes being printed and sprinkled around, and a literal cum cloggage in the showers.
>One morning, we awake to learn that somebody took a monster shit on the shower floor in one of the marine berthings.
>No big deal, it gets cleaned up
>The next morning, the exact same thing happens, monstrous mud shark in the shower
>judging by the size and consistency it had to be the same person
>Berthing gets punished and a shower watch is established to prevent any more outlaw shitting
>No poop incidents for a few days until the main incident happens
>A fat brown log in the water fountain outside one of the officers' quarters
>This time it has a note
>"I'm going to shit on the deck"
>Captain flips out, established 24 hour ARMED deck watch and tells the crew and marines that the shitter will be caught and thrown in the brig
>Have morning deck watch, keep eyes peeled for any poo bandits when buddy comes up to me with a photo
>You see, outside the captain's office is a scaled down replica of the USS Essex
>A giant, eight inch turd laid neatly on the deck of the replica Essex
>We never found the phantom shitter.
True story
>This time it has a note
>"I'm going to shit on the deck"
lost
>a shower watch is established to prevent any more outlaw shitting
As expected of the storied and proud United States Marine Corps.
Frick. Reminds me of the Stadacona A-Block phantom shitter. They even had signs about "civilized human CAF beings using proper feces receptacles" or something to that effect.
>be my father
>elite Chinese commando
>planning raid to schuttle the USS Essex to gimp the US response to Chinese invasion of Taiwan
>have been training on mockups of different parts of the ships for six months
>have six spies on board who we get weekly reports from
>night of the raid
>emerge silently from our individual submarine pods
>deck of the ship is swarming with armed Marines
>FRICK! they know about our plan
>call off raid
>entire invasion gets called off
>at the end of the week get our reports from the spies about the phantom shitter
>hfw
>Pop-paw joined the Navy to be an aviator in the 50s
>he's deaf in one ear from when his father hit him in the head so hard he ruptured his ear drum as a child
>cheats on every hearing test by memorizing the hand waves of the homosexual in front of him
>gets caught by a doctor right before he actually gets to go to flight school
>Navy makes him a non-rate but still let him near aviation
>gets stationed at Walker Air Base in Roswell, NM
>said it was sweet, he drove a tractor to tow airplanes into their hangars and to the flight lines
>he'd get off work at 4 everyday and would meet a QT at the local diner and would get a burger, shake and, fries for two quarters
>one day is going long
>speeds up to finish work
>he's going like 14 mph instead of 9 like he's supposed to
>Chief dresses him down when he gets done
>says the planes can generate lift at 12mph
>taken off duty, sent to the Meteorology school
>Pop-paw is a weather savant
>like he does this shit better than anyone
>a computer model can't beat his calculations until 2010
>since he's so hot shit they put him on a counter submarine task force
>they have him mark on a map where he would hide subs
>they had him doing this for 4 years, they'd just drop depth charges and mine the areas he marked
>"They never told me outright if I was right, but a chief sent me some photographs of chunks of metal that floated to the surface"
>gets stressed out and decides to not reup and goes to work for the NWS
Joins the NWS
>he's sailing around South America on a research ship
>NWS then says they have a special assignment for him
>he gets put on some island that apparently formed from bird shit
>there's a CIA broadcast station and Cuba is over the horizon
>he's just a weatherman lmao
>briefs the cia chief everyday on their forecasts
>Bay of Pigs invasion is imminent
>commanders meet on the island to get their weather brief from pop paw lmao
>it fails
>gets sent back to the research ship
>does a few trips to Antarctica and the Arctic
>pulls ice cores to analyze global temperature trends
>they're missing a few 100 thousands of years of data
>scientists at the main lab just jam all the charts together to make a single line
>this is where the theory of global warming comes from
>pop-paw becomes the very first climate change denier
>>they're missing a few 100 thousands of years of data
Did he ever talk about why? Makes me think of that map from Turkey that accurately showed the coast of Antarctica without any ice.
Great Grandpa was going to be on a plane that dropped the A bomb on Japan, so the story from my uncle goes.
>Corporal Lauderdale served with the 234th Base Unit from Clovis Army Air Base, New Mexico. He was one of eleven airmen killed when B-29 Superfortress #42-6210 crashed, during a training flight, 5 miles northeast of Harmon, Oklahoma.
>First ancestor in Canada wins land for fighting in the Peninsular campaign in the Napoleonic wars. Possibly fought in the war of 1812 aswell though there's no records I could find
>Grandson moves to Saskatchewan.
>One of his sons dies at Vimy ridge in WW1
>Other son is my great grandfather
>My grandpa enlist RCAF at 16 (lied about age)
>Bomber command
>Was a tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber
>Was present at Dresden
>War in Europe finishes
>Switches to army and does paratrooper training
>Preparing for invasion of Japan until the nukes drop
>Serves another two years in the Canadian Navy after the war
>Military tells him to finish highschool
>Offered free university education and program to become an officer
>Says no and becomes and alcoholic doing various resource extraction jobs in western Canada for the rest of his life
>Dad joins Canadian military at 17
>Goes to Royal Roads and is an officer in the navy 11 years.
>Only deployment was Haiti and anti piracy in the Caribbean and South Pacific
>Ends up working high tech the rest of his life.
>Gramps fought in Pacific
>Took many war trophies
>Kept them above his fire place in the basement
>Crown israeliteel was the Type 97 that he took off a jap sniper who killed what he described as an absolute bastard of an NCO
>Gramps flanked the prick and shot him out of a tree
>Called it the best day he ever had in the service
>Great Great Great Grandfather is Confederate Cavalry captain.
>Serves under General George S. Patton, grandfather to the other George S. Patton.
>Great great great grampa anon is shot straight through his ass, crippling him.
>Allegedly dragged off the battlefield by his slave, Edmond.
Picrel is his actual rifle with his name engraved in the stock. It's a clone of a 1854 Lorenz rifle, which was commonly used by the Confederates.
My family found a ledger from back in the day that had all the names of the slaves we owned, and there was indeed a slave named Edmond.
>shot straight through his ass,
Like, it went buttcheek to buttcheek? Or did they literally ripped open a new one in greatgreat-anon?
Buttcheek to buttcheek
>know grandpa was retired Navy but didn’t know what/when
>he never talked about it
>I never asked
>he never talked to my mom about it when she was a kid
>he dies when I’m 18
>hawk of an aunt swoops in and takes/sells anything of value and anything related to his service
>digging through paperwork I learn he enlisted right after Pearl Harbor
>was a mechanic on the Enterprise
>worked his way up/shortage of men enabled him to be an enlisted pilot
>was on the Enterprise the entirety of the war, flew out of the Enterprise on combat missions from late 1943 onwards
>flew all throughout Korea
>flew all throughout Vietnam
>retired in the late 1970s, one of the last enlisted pilots left out of the base he was stationed at when he retired
>never told a soul outside of his Navy buddies
>never asked him so never knew
>will never learn any details or have any artifacts or handmedowns from his near 40 years of service due to family greed
I miss Norm almost as much as I miss my grandpa
>be my great grandpa
>enlisted into our LatAm shithole civil war
>they're fed before the train departure
>milk was spoiled or something
>everybody puts their asses outside the windows to not shit inside the train
>families gathered around the tracks to wave goodbye
It must have been a one in a lifetime sight
Grandpa spoke German and had a photo with Von Braun from the early 1940s.
Said he worked on military engines but he was not in the military.
Apparently he left the country after the production facility was bombed and went to Switzerland and many years later Italy.
Other grandpa had a small hotel in North Italy, German took it over because it was in a good position over a river however they paid rent for it and never stole anything.
Germans spent their time digging trenches and building strong points on the river bank that were never used.
They left in 45" as the Americans advanced.
They dumped a lot of weapons and military equipment before leaving which grandpa just hid in a hole behind the hotel and they are still in that hole today.
However the Americans only arrived at war end so for several months the area was under the control of Russian backed commie partisans that stole everything they could from the hotel even children bicycles. He was just a bit too young for the war. His dad fought for the Italians in Greece and Russia but survived.
>Grandfather starts his career with the navy as a Motorman
>in his words, "Given the opportunity" (told) to drive trucks instead
>his job is now driving supplies that came from over the hump to their end users, usually the Chinese (both Nat'l. and commies)
>works around a bunch of brits and their various units
>gets to meet some Gurkhas one day
>they're escorting Japanese POW's to the rear for internment
>they're on foot, so the march should take a day or two, not expected back to the front for at least three or four days
>next morning, Gurkhas are back, no POW's
>"Hey, what gives, where's the soldiers you were taking back?"
>"Oh,they resisted, had to shoot 'em."
>this particular group of Ghurkas are no longer asked to escort POW's
>be my mom
>be little girl
>live in Italy just across the border from Slovenia
>birthday is June 28
>invited all her friends over for a big party and picnic
>midway through the party, Yugoslav tanks try to retake the border checkpoint and are attacked
>fighting erupts
>mom and her friends spent the rest of her birthday watching tanks duels and airstrikes before the adults found them had them hide in a cellar until the next day out of fear that the fighting would spill into Italy
great-great-uncle was supposed to be an anarchist volunteer during the spanish civil war
flee to french after they lost, and never heard again during ww2
Grandfather was in the Nationalist Chinese army in WWII, as part of the army grouping (dunno what the actual term was) that was guarding Chaing Kai Shek (not as special as it sounds, as there were a shit load of people and its not like he knew the guy. He was selected partially because he was from the same province). He was basically a child "soldier" as he was in his teens, though AFAIK he did no fighting. His primary duty was writing orders and dispatches since he learned calligraphy, and there was no such thing as a Chinese typewriter. He ended up in Taiwan with the rest of the KMT after the civil war ended and became a schoolteacher. Yeah, I'm thinking the standards were pretty damn low back in the day since he wouldn't be super educated by our modern standards. But he knew how to read and write which was sadly pretty good back in the day. Got a good retirement out of it though.
My grandmother (aforementioned grandfather's wife) was a Han Chinese Taiwanese native (as opposed to one of the aborigional tribes from Taiwan from before the Chinese showed up in the Ming and Qing dynasties). She was just a kid when WWII ended, but has a cool story from it regardless, since she and her family was in Japan for the end of the war to work (Taiwan was a Japanese colony for 50 years since the end of the 1st Sino Japanese war). Specifically, they were living in Hiroshima. So she is a survivor of a nuclear bombing. She's actually my only remaining grandparent. Sadly none of us have super powers (super autism maybe for me). She described it as as bright as the sun, and the shockwave blew a door down onto her. She was only 6 years old (yeah, if you're wondering, there's a 10 year difference in age between her and my grandfather) but the door was stopped by a chair so she didn't get smacked full force. After the war, they were repatriated to Taiwan. There was a lot of martial law and repression by the KMT newcomers, so their marriage was a bit Romeo and Juliet too.
Sure:
>dad was RMP in 1980s in Germany
>near US nuclear bases that had a rapid reaction force of RMP, US MPs and guys from nearby units
>massive woodland all fenced off with big signs saying DO NOT ENTER
>one night call comes in of gunfire near nuclear base
>whole rapid reaction force is scrambled thinking it’s some KGB op or the Russians finally starting shit
>driving up see a car parked near fencing with British army reg
>dad and buddy pull over to investigate
>short way up find some moron squaddie firing a homemade rifle
>radio in and the entire rapid reaction force descends on this tard
>guy shits himself and is arrested
>turns out he was planning to sell it to some Irishmen on his next posting
>had no idea the base was nearby
>his CO said the guy is genuinely a low in tard
>got used a punching bag by RMP till he was sent back to UK for jail
Got more as well
please share
Dads first murder
>gets a call one morning that a woman’s body was found in the woodland behind the married quarters
>it’s a popular dog walking/running route and she was walking the dog
>get there and the dog is this massive German shepherd that won’t let anyone go near the body
>dog handler hauls the dog off while they investigate
>clear she was raped then murdered
>CO tells my dad and his partner to go get her husband and bring him to station
>go and grab him, driving back dad moves rear mirror to watch him as normal while they chat
>Taff my dads partner says he doesn’t get how anyone got past the fricking dog as itd easily down you
>dad looks in the mirror and sees this fricker death staring him back
>get to station and he’s radiod to arrest him
>turns out she wanted to divorce him or some shit and he couldn’t take it
Next I’ll do the German creeper story
German creeper story
>dad regularly has to take people to BMH (British military hospital) as a lot of people he arrests are drunks with cuts etc
>gets chatting to nurses while Dr Butcher works on them
>him and taff usually chatting them up for dates
>nurses say their residence wing is haunted
>wut
>dad and taff decide to investigate because dr butcher is enjoying making the stitches hurt on the guy
>this keeps up for a while
>keep investigating and eventually find a hidden loft
>find a bunch of peepholes into different rooms like showers
>obv some creeper and the nurses can sense him
>wait up there for a while
>old German guy waddles up
>scare the frick out of him and cuff him
>turns out he’d been recording them for weeks
Was that base cursed or something? It sounds like your dad saw some crazy shit on a regular basis.
Maybe it turns out it was a former SS barracks. They actually found behind the gym a bunch of SS stuff and weapons. One day they spotted a bit of the mortar between some bricks in a gym wall was gone. It wasn’t outside light so they figured must be a room. CO agreed so they knocked it down. Found rifles, MG-42s, ammunition, grenades, uniforms and flags all out like someone was preparing to get ready to fight.
MY WHOLE FAMILY WAS A RICE FARMER LMAOOOOO, DID ABSOLUTE JACKSHIT DURING THE WAR.
except my granddad, he's a chicken farmer
My grandfather was in the Royal Navy at the landings in Sicily. On the second day they were running supplies onto the beach when a nearby American landing craft hit a mine and began to sink. A 2nd American landing craft came over to pick up survivors then left the scene, but a bunch of survivors were still in the water. So my grandfather's landing craft heads over to help and they notice that all of the Americans drowning in the water are black. The 2nd American landing craft had picked up all of the white guys and left the blacks to drown.
Named after me great uncle Arthur who was the tail gunner of Wellington. You could argue that bombing German civilians was a war crime and that's based.
Grandpa fought in the 100th infantry division, fought in the Battle Of The Bulge, then later house to house fighting in Germany. My uncle in Texas got all his medals, bringbacks and dress uniform unfortunately.
Great grandpa, german tanker. Was a leatherworker (we owned a trade shop) and hobby videograph. He fought on the east front immediately since he was basically snatched out of his shop and trained in a rather short time. He took around 25 hours of video material across russia and a vacation in occupied france later on. After returning he was almost immediately captured since they got immobilized with no outside support. He died in captivity somewhere around 47, reasons unknown. After the fall of the soviet union we got contacted by a random polish man who bought his entire kit and belongings at auction. He sold us the video and his watch back for the price he paid for everything, so a good deal for that guy. The video‘s are in the public domain, good chance you have seen stuff in documentaries before, it‘s free to use. We also still have a tape of him fricking some french prostitute, we didn’t donate that.
>We also still have a tape of him fricking some french prostitute, we didn’t donate that.
I myself didn’t even see it. I could ask my father to see it now, but i was a child back then and it wasn’t all that appropriate
Wait a sec, if he died in Soviet captivity, how are you here?
He already had a son and a daughter. My grandma survived by keeping the shop up since the town wasn’t bombed and she later got into good ties with the occupation, so she made a living. We still had the store up till 2018. luckily they were deeply enrooted with the city so my grandma had much help.
>We also still have a tape of him fricking some french prostitute, we didn’t donate that
TFW you realise he shot a porno to show to the lads
Probably. We don’t have a journal, documents or anything. The video‘s are mute, so who knows. He mostly shot landscape, eerie feeling atmosphere as he films over no mans land. I have one distinct memory of one of the clips beeing him next to their tank with his mates sitting on it. It was next to a creek, on a small bridge accross it. The rest around him was devastated, wet craters and seared tree‘s. The last contact of him was a letter telling his family he was leaving for the east again. He even acquired new film and equipment along the way. His wife didn’t even know he took the camera since he told her he sold it before leaving
Did he record any war crimes?
Not that i know of. Think of how long it took to set up a camera, there isn’t active combat footage, it‘s mostly stuff you‘d use as B-roll. Exploring the place after fighting was over and bodies were gone. We sadly know nothing about his time there. They were a competent group, no extremists or risk takes, just some late 20 early 30 guys who got called up in the last years
My dad was part of the french 2nd foreign parachute regiment during the 70s, but he rarely wants to talk about it.
My grandfather was in the Ghost Army with a bunch of artists and Hollywood types. He was a songwriter himself. Ran around Europe, 1000 guys pretending to be 30k troops.
His company got overrun when somebody called their bluff and he had to hide with a Belgian family until he could join back up with the Army. After that he worked as a cook until the war was over.
He brought back a Luger, sadly gone by now, and a painting of himself done by one of the artists.
>great grandpa and grandpa
>Living in Trieste close as can be to the Tito commies
>Grandpa is 11 years old, born in '32
>Great grandpa fought as an Ardito in WW1 and got his leg blown up
>The Tito fricks start rounding up Italians to shove down big holes just because
>Great grandpa with a blown up leg and 11 year old grandpa flee towards the northwest, eventually after a few days of walking they manage to get out of the critical zone
>They come into contact with a German armored unit
>The German soldiers give them safe passage to Udine, they give my grandpa some honey bread
>He says it's still the best food he ever tasted
Not surprising he's always liked Germans.
>My Great Grandpa Adam fought in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during WW1, 58th Battalion.
>Promoted from Private to CSM (1st Sgt) in four years.
>Wounded three times.
>His Distinguished Conduct Medal citation reads like a war movie script.
>Nobody in my family knew this because he never told anyone. He gave his remaining service items to my grandparents, who he followed when they emigrated to New York in the 50s.
>My dad took these items to keep them from his dipshit cousin, who would have pawned them for booze money in the 90's.
>Neither Dad nor I ever met him, but according to my oldest uncle, he was 5' 3" tall and had a great, booming voice like James Earl Jones.
>He never drank, smoked, and very rarely raised his voice or swore at anyone. He was a kind man and devout protestant Christian, probably asking God to forgive him for all the Germans he single-handedly killed.
>I cherish his service items and keep them in a much nicer display case now, next to the comparatively lame shadowbox from my own peacetime USMC service. And yes, I fixed the ribbons.
>mfw the other WW1 and all WW2 veterans in my family are German/Austrian, so who knows, Adam could have shot or stabbed one of them.
>Picrelated speaks for itself.
It's me from
Time for a story from the German side of my family:
>Be Great-Great Uncle Siegfried from Bavaria
>Conscripted into the Waffen-SS late war.
>Become Kradmelder assigned to the Totenkopf Division in '44.
> Shows up for the disaster in Hungary, then retreats westward.
>Surrenders to US Army
>Sees Kameraden being handed over to Soviets
>Very motivated to escape from POW camp.
>Sleeps in the woods during the day, walks home at night.
>Hides out for a while.
>Is a grumpy, mean-spirited butthole for rest of his life, probably because his former Heer buddies qualified for pensions, Bundeswehr service, and other state benefits while he got nothing.
>Becomes a car mechanic and functioning alcoholic.
>Takes off work to attend Sepp Dietrich's funeral
>Becomes even more bitter and depressed.
>Dies of a heart attack in the 70's from smoking and drinking too much.
>courcelette 1916
the somme, 2 miles from the river
part of canada's opening move
possibly witnessed the very first tanks in action
>paschendale 1917
third battle for ypres
worst battle for ypres
gets hit 3 weeks before it's over
>cambrai 1918
has watched the tide of war turn
rides the wave as it crashes down on the germans
>1918
victory
the end of the great war
after all the horror and glory, makes it back home
lives out the rest of his life pondering the futility of words
F
My grandpa's cousin was in the army corps of engineers in Italy. He was tasked with setting up and maintaining phone lines. His last name was Borghese, and he was stationed in Rome in his distant relatives villa called, not surprisingly, Villa Borghese. He spent the whole war fixing wires, drinking wine, and fricking Italian women. My grandpa was freezing his ass off in Bastogne at the time, and his other cousin was in jungle he'll in New Guinea.
That reminds me of another story. Grandpa's cousin's daughter was getting married in the late 70s to a douchebag hot shit peacetime Marine. He was wearing his dress blues, and was drunkenly going on and on about how he was the deadliest guy in the room, and how he could kill anyone there with his bare hands. Nevermind there were several WW2 combat veterans in the room, including his new father in law. After a while people were getting obviously sick of it, so the father in law told him to cool it. He responded with "I'm a fricking killer, you can't tell me what to do" and his father in law beat the shit out of him in front of everyone at his own wedding, despite being in his 60s at the time. The sad thing is, he knew damn well his father in law was a Marine who served in New Guinea, and saw intense brutal fighting against the Japanese. His last words to the guy were "Son, you don't know what a killer is". Their marriage only lasted a few months.
>great-grandpa Vilho
>Local wrestling champion
>Skilled plumber (did plumbing jobs for half the houses in his town
>Signal troop in WW2
>One day setting up cables or some other radio stuff
>Russian artillery out of nowhere
>Most of his platoon gets hit
>Ducks for cover and thinks he is going to die now
>Somehow amidst the panic and fear he is able to crawl out of the area
>Survives
>Smacks a hippie on the face in the 1970s 😀
My grandfather was part of the Canadian Infantry that helped liberate the Netherlands. Every year up until his death he would receive letters from Dutch people he met over there and their families, he visited there a couple times after the war and he said they were incredible generous and hospitable.
>great-gandpa Väinö
>Lived in a border town on the Russian border
>Operated a gas station with his wife
>Member of the civil guard and wartime designation is to delay enemy's advance until army mobilizes
>War begins
>Family is evacuate, wife is last weeks pregnant
>Lost their gas station
>Väinö gets hit in the knee
>Skips out from the hospital because he couldn't get his army wage there
>Half-crippled for life
>Relocated to an industrial town post-war
>Work in a weapon factory until passing away
>Five sons in total
>One buys a red Volga-car in 1960s
>Beats his son with his cane for this
Yes, my family has vehemently hated Russians even before the Ukraine war. My father even called them a cancer when visiting Tallinn.
all of this is second-hand because i barely talked to the man when he was alive and 90% of it has jack dick to do with the military but whatever
>grampa was in korea, marines i think, apparently did frickall but drive trucks and sit in the motorpool the entire time
>still managed to have a lifelong hatred of asiatics by the end of it apparently, or maybe he was just always like that
>takes his service experience and becomes a logging truck driver in central washington, does this for many years
>goes through two or three divorces, pretty sure he had a kid or two with each still, my biological granma was wife 2 or 3 i think
>after he retires he ends up using those same logging roads to get "hitchhikers" up to the US-Canada border, unsure if it was out of needing money or general boredom
>final wife is just as much of an evil, gambling drunkard as the ones before her (who knew finding a good partner in injun casino country is hard!) and in less than a year after having a bad stroke and before he dies she lets the safe containing his will get "stolen", wrecks both of his cars, and burns through all of his money
>karma catches up to her and she is currently undergoing her own problems with strokes despite still being younger than he was when he died
Not my family but we are friends with an old Bavarian woman who’s dad was in the war
>her dad was a road engineer who mostly worked on building the autobahn
>gets sent to Poland to build roads
>he gets on well with the poles and the polish nanny looks after his daughter
>mostly locals on his crew, actually tries to care for them
>war going badly for Germany and Russians pushing closer
>he gets a letter saying he’s been conscripted
>polish nanny says she will take his wife and daughter to forest where the partisans will take care of them
>the partisans look after them, says she used to sing polish songs with them eating soup
>meanwhile her dad is assigned to an armoured unit
>one day pulling back the breakdown on the tank
>he gets out and works on it, they all stay inside
>he goes for a piss behind a tree
>russian plane goes over and bombs the tank
>all his buddies up in a fireball
>says frick it and walks back to forest
>hangs out with the partisans until the war ends
>heads back to Bavaria with the family