Share your family's war stories

Author Topic: Share your family's war stories  (Read 2280 times)

I'm very interested in peoples' family war stories, so I encourage you all to share them. I don't have many myself, as my only relative that served in combat was my great-grandfather. He was a Lt. Col flight surgeon in the Pacific during WWII. He was shot down and my grandfather was only a child at the time, so I don't have any stories of him.

Share your stories. Any conflict, any nation, any type.

sorry, it's classified

no seriously, it is.

sorry, it's classified

no seriously, it is.
Then how do you know about it?

Then how do you know about it?

family secrets are a bitch because if it's cool enough, you wanna tell everybody, but you can't

let's say it's got something to do with the A word and WW2

does arma 2 count because me and fire vine got an army of russian orthodox priests

my grandma's brother survived in vietnam by deciding not to sleep in a bunker, slept under a truck. the viet cong exploded the base that night

My grandfather was on QA for the Talos Missile Project during the Korean War.

Just found this out as I was digging through my families history

Great grandparents were born in Germany. Moved to Ukrain and owned a blacksmith shop primarily making carriages for horses. They became the richest family in town.

In 1935 my great grandfather was involved in a train accident and lost both of his legs below the knee and they gave him wooden legs.

Shortly after the birth of my grandmother in 1941, my great grandfather, who translate Russian to the other German families in town, discovered that the Russians were planning on shipping all the German families to labor camps the following day. My family and the other German families in town dropped everything and left that night.

My family went to Poland, and being treated as Russians, were put into a German camp for a year. After that they moved to western Germany and lived in a monastery for some time.

They then relocated to an apartment in Kitzingen, Germany in 1944. In 1945, the allies bombed the stuff outta Kitzingen killing over 700 people.

one grandpa in vietnam w/ navy, another for army
my mom almost got her ass pulled into the gulf war but she ditched asap when she saw it coming because she had a baby to deal with and was expecting another one

My grandfather fought in the Rhodesian Bush War with internal affairs, I believe it was his job to protect many of the villages from terrorists in the region, often by putting up fences and wire around the PVs. I remember him telling me that before entering the village, he'd tie a log to the back of his truck and drive it in a circle around the village the night before, which would make it easy to check for footprints in the morning to see if anyone had entered or left the village. It was important because often times terrorists would infiltrate into these villages overnight, kill everyone in the village, and then wait in the houses to ambush security forces as they entered.

He didn't see much combat himself because it wasn't his job, that was more for the RAR. I remember him telling me about how he saw the RAR operating in a valley when his convoy was stopped by military police due to the presence of terrorists in the valley. He said that they used to deploy by flying helicopters low to the ground, but not landing, they'd jump out of the choppers like 10ft off the ground while it was still moving.

My grandfather used to make conveyor belts before the war (and after), and he was very good with rubber. He said that they used to put conveyor belts on the bottom of their transport trucks which would make them more resistant to anti-vehicle mines. He told me about a man in his unit that, at some point, drove over one of these mines and survived, but he said the whole truck was blown way up into the air, to the point where he could see over the trees. Scary stuff

Since he was with intaf and wasn't on the front lines, they didn't get much of the good gear, and with the sanctions imposed on Rhodesia, it was hard to get good gear in the first place. Because of this he was only ever allowed to carry two magazines of ammunition with him, and then a bunch of ammo. In basic training he said that they would blindfold him and make him practice loading the magazines blind as fast as possible so that it could be done in a stressful situation at night.

He used to tell me about the Selous Scouts lol. They were essentially the special recon for the Rhodesian security forces and would spend months in the bush tracking down and killing terrorists, so naturally they were a bit 'detached' from society. He said many of them would come back home but would have to spend a week away from home before returning to their families to 're-adjust'. He told me about this one time he saw a couple in a country club, pretty pretentious rich white people place, and they were playing 'freckles' at the bar. Needless to say it wasn't very popular in the loving county club lmfao

Interestingly enough my family doesn't have many photos at all of the time they spent in Rhodesia. Camera film was one of the items they couldn't get due to the sanctions, lol. So all that we really know about Rhodesia is just the memories and stories he passed down. Unfortunately he passed away last month in April, and many of those memories died with him. Before he passed he gave this necklace to my grandmother:
https://i.imgur.com/0Bq7Ul4.jpg
And asked her to give it to me. Apparently he made it himself in the bush, rope and all. Pretty cool.

1) my mum's grandparents from her mothers side of the family hid french resistance radios and equipment in their house and didnt get caught

2) i think it was the same great grandparents that were sitting on their balcony since many people live in apartments in france, and they saw national socialist troops marching down the street when a few french resistance fighters ambushed the troops and gunned them down, they only saw the bodies afterwards (all guns stolen from the troops) as they darted inside to cover

3) my mum's grandmother from her fathers same side of the samily in paris had to steal stuff and do ration ticket fraud (claiming she had more children than she actually had to get more rations) to feed my grandfather who was born in 1941 because of the food shortages under german occupation, she got caught but was never sentenced since all court officials felt sorry for her because she was so thin

4) my dad's father's brother (my great uncle) was around 10 years older than my grandfather and lived in chambery and got major ptsd as he was probably 7 or 8 years old when the allied troops accidentally bombed the town centre hoping to sabotage a german army base nearby and consequently had panic attacks every time he heard a plane

(part of the town centre aftermath)
« Last Edit: May 30, 2018, 04:10:59 PM by JumboMuffin »

my great grandpa was a tank driver in world war 2, and his tank got disabled so he had to hide in a hay bail for a night, and i guess he was bitten badly by ticks and mites during the night

does arma 2 count because me and fire vine got an army of russian orthodox priests
bitch i literally taught you how to play arma 2 three days ago

my great grandfather was on the western front and castrated a german who raped women in the village his company took

I never got the chance to meet my great-grandfather, but he was present at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. I’m told he saw some of his friends burned to death in oily waters.