Topic: WWII vet

[LadyVirginia]

Our DAR chapter recently had a meeting with a speaker who was a WWII vet. He's 88 and honestly he seemed younger. He was so interesting.  I felt like I was hearing a little bit about my dad.  My dad was in his late 30's when he got married so the big war in our family was WWII not Vietnam. (Mom was quite a bit younger than dad but her brothers served.) Anyway, dad shared a few details but he died in his early 60's so I never got all the stories.  This fella was born a year after my dad and served in the army and he ended up in Europe.  He told stories about being a high school graduate and getting on the train with his entire (male) senior class to report for service a few days after graduation. He was able to grab one of those giant red Nazi flags which he showed us.  It was still in excellent condition.  It was odd seeing something like that in person.

I was captivated by the stories this vet told. My father was so proud of his service.  I wish I knew more from dad but I'm inspired to at least research his unit and learn a little more about where they were in Europe.


Dad. 

[RickZ]

Back in Catholic grade school the nuns once had a classmates' dad give us a little talk.  He was a survivor of the Bataan Death March; it was then I learned why the dad (who I knew as an usher at church) walked so stiff:  The beatings.  That talk was seared, seared into my memory.

I think these are the stories kids do not get today from eyewitnesses to History and which are so important to having a society having a core base of common knowledge.

You want to be sick, see this clip of a woman asking kids at top schools about the Holocaust.  I didn't miss a question, unlike these brainiacs.  In my mind, they have no excuse even if they weren't 'taught' about it in school as there are things called libraries; hell, there was even a miniseries from the late 70's they could watch on YouTube, starring, among others, Michael Moriarity, a 'conservative' in Hollywood.  Scary stuff and explains why the young vote for a 'cool' totalitarian like Owebama:  Ignorance.

College Students' Knowledge Of Holocaust

[oldcoastie6468]

I once worked with a guy who was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. He said only that; he never talked about it, though.

Barney has passed on now........ 

[AlanS]

More than pathetic.

[Alphabet Soup]

I had a neighbor who was both a Holocaust and concentration camp survivor. He even wrote a book about his experiences escaping the Germans. He was a mechanical engineer by trade and had worked (as slave labor) in one of the manufacturing plants building airplanes.

[Septugenarian]

I once worked with a guy who was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. He said only that; he never talked about it, though.

Barney has passed on now........ 

I had Chem professor who was a Bataan survivor.  I swear he never gained back the weight that he lost there, gaunt!  I also had a friend who was an 18 year old tank commander in the Battle of the Bulge.

[LadyVirginia]

It's hard for me to imagine that people don't know what the Holocaust was.  But I bet all those kids could tell you about slavery and discrimination!

Just yesterday my brother asked me if I remembered some blue bound volumes mom kept on the bookshelf in the family room.  I did.  In fact those books (all 30 of them) made a great impression on me as kid.  They were all about WWII with plenty of pictures.  I'll never forget the pictures of the dead or emaciated. The piles of wedding rings or shoes taken from the victims. I would stare at those black and white pictures trying to grasp what I was seeing and understand why it happened.  (Turns out my brother still has those books!)

[Alphabet Soup]

It's hard for me to imagine that people don't know what the Holocaust was.  But I bet all those kids could tell you about slavery and discrimination!

Just yesterday my brother asked me if I remembered some blue bound volumes mom kept on the bookshelf in the family room.  I did.  In fact those books (all 30 of them) made a great impression on me as kid.  They were all about WWII with plenty of pictures.  I'll never forget the pictures of the dead or emaciated. The piles of wedding rings or shoes taken from the victims. I would stare at those black and white pictures trying to grasp what I was seeing and understand why it happened.  (Turns out my brother still has those books!)

I'm sure that they could talk all about it.....but they couldn't tell you a thing. It would be like listening to Mr. Mackey:

"Slavery is bad...m'kay?"

[Libertas]

My recently departed Uncle landed in Normandy and marched all the way into Germany, never said anything to anybody about it, ever.  Just imagining what he did and what he saw along the way is frightening...I'm sure the reality was several orders of magnitude worse.  At a personal level we can understand why one would not talk about such things, but we have plenty of first hand accounts of what people saw, and to ignore their message, or to be ignorant of these events is to condemn yourself and others to repeating the horrors.  The Left has been successul in perverting the history of our nation and of the world intentionally, so as to indoctrinate into their twisted mindset and create a populace of dupes ripe for manipulation by the next tyrant.  Makes me fire-spittin' mad!  The enemy within must be expelled or death and destruction is all we have to look forward to.

[LadyVirginia]

My dad only told the funny stories like when they found a cow wandering in a field.  Guess what was for dinner? Or when he marched through France with a French last name on his helmet and people would run up to him to give him flowers and hug him! I'm sure they were happy to see the Americans in general but he said they were excited to see his name. 

My uncle never said one word.  And to a kid it was very mysterious.  He spent 6 months in the hospital in WVa and since the family didn't have the gas ration coupons or money they weren't able to visit.

My mom remembers laying in her bed at night (very small house) and hearing her mom cry because she had 2 sons serving.

A few years ago mom was working at a retirement center as a nurse and one of her patients was a concentration camp survivor.  Mom said it was chilling to see the number on her arm.  The poor woman would have nightmares.

[RickZ]

There's a marker type sign in the small and almost dead town of Pocahontas, VA.  On it are all the sons from that burg who served in WWII, with stars beside some names indicating they did not come home.  My Dad and five uncles are on that plaque.  My family was lucky, all six brothers survived the war.  They have all passed now.  More Eyewitnesses to History gone.

[LadyVirginia]

There's a marker type sign in the small and almost dead town of Pocahontas, VA.  On it are all the sons from that burg who served in WWII, with stars beside some names indicating they did not come home.  My Dad and five uncles are on that plaque.  My family was lucky, all six brothers survived the war.  They have all passed now.  More Eyewitnesses to History gone.

Oh, my! Six.  How hard it must have been for your grandparents to get through each day.

I've read that just about every family had someone serving or knew someone serving during WWII.  Now there are many people who don't know anyone in the military much less served.  I think that's affected our culture.

[oldcoastie6468]

There was a WWII paratrooper at the Vets' Day gathering today. He bailed out and landed behind all the action. I noticed that he had an "Honor Flight Chicago" insignia on his cap.

[OldSailor]

My Dad was Army Air Corps stationed in New Guinea.  A private at the time he had trained as an armorer before shipping to the Pacific but was used as a fuel truck driver.  He said that since the Japanese were still in New Guinea at the time and flying combat missions in from Rabaul things would get "interesting" from time to time.  He related that once he was crossing the field in his truck when a Jap plane was strafing, he said the 20mm shells it was firing at his truck looked as big as softballs.  He bailed out and dived into a ditch, his truck kept rolling and eventually came to a stop in a ditch a little further on, unscathed.  He had a few things to say about cross-eyed pilots.

His photo albums had photos of some of the people he served with and aircraft he serviced including two P-38 Lightnings flown by Tommy McGuire and Dick Bong, taken at different times of course.

He was part of the first AAF detachment sent into Clark Field in the Philipines right after the Japs moved out, RIGHT after.  He said they had left stragglers behind, some deliberately and others simply because there wasn't enough transport for everyone or couldn't get to the evac point in time.  He said it took a long time to get them all and they were a threat until they were cleaned out.

IIRC he was still at Clark when the war ended. 

Dad   

[Magnum]

I wrote this about my friend "Snuffy" in April when he passed away and posted this.

A couple days ago a man I greatly admired and was proud to call my friend passed away.

When I was a kid I worked at a golf course and I got to know Snuffy who was a member there. I was honored that he took the time to share with me stories about his experiences in WW II. He was a survivor of the Bataan death march and saw and experienced unimagined brutality by the hands of the Japanese soldiers. One of the remarkable characteristics of Snuffy was his kindness. He had a deep love of God and country. He often stressed to me that you have to learn to forgive and not let hatred ever get a stronghold in your life...............


"He was born May 18, 1918 in St. Paul. He was drafted into the Army April 14, 1941, assigned at Fort Lewis, Washington as a medic in the 194th tank battalion and sent to the Philippines. After the American surrender, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese April 9, 1942 on the Bataan Peninsula. Survived the infamous Bataan Death March. From April 1942- Sept. 1944, he survived the brutal conditions and treatment at POW camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan. He stayed at Bilibid Prison in Manila until Dec. 13, 1944, where 1,620 American POW's were crammed in the hold of the "Hellship" Oryoku Maru for the journey to Japan. He was one of the 402 who survived to the end of the war. After the "49 days in hell", he arrived Jan. 29, 1945 at the slave labor prison camp Fukuoka 17 in Omuto Japan across the bay from Nagasaki. There he worked 12 hour shifts at the Mitsuimiike Tankuo coal mine until the end of the War in Aug. 1945. Harold was also a member of the organizations: Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, Veterans of Foreign War, American Ex-Prisoners of War, and the Knights of Columbus."

   



I am sad and will miss Snuff, but also I rejoice because I was honored to know him and was a better man for it. I too rejoice because I believe he is in Heaven with the Lord.


I was told my Great Uncle Benjamin and his family were killed in Austria but he went down fighting because he would not give up his farm and fought to the end.

Ops, sorry some think there was no such thing as the Holocaust. I bad


Band of Brothers- Liberation of Concentration Camp

This is why Israel's motto is NEVER AGAIN!

[LadyVirginia]

Mag's post about his friend being a POW reminded me of a story told by the vet I heard speak recently.  He and his wife went back to France 2-3 years ago for a visit.  They were driving around the northern part of France and stopped in a small fishing village, pulling in front of a "hotel" that looked like it had maybe 8 rooms.  As they got out of the rental car a huge Mercedes pulled up behind him and out came two Germans--one about the age of the vet and a younger guy.  They were salesmen for a German drug company.  They all ended up in the dining room together and by nights end they were sharing a table and wine.  Turns out the old German had been  at Normandy but was captured.

He joked with the US vet that while he was a POW at Ft Hood learning English and eating good food the American was slogging through Europe.  Asked if he'd been back to the US he said he'd been many times.  He loved America.

The next morning when the US vet went to pay his bill he was told the old German had paid his bill and left a note.  The note read: I owe you.


 

[Pandora]

Aw shoot, LV; welling up here.

[Libertas]

I had a history Prof who was a second generation Japanese-American living in Honolulu, he was a little boy out playing Sunday morning Dec 7th when the Jap planes came in...after that he and everybody else he knew were rounded up and shipped to the mainland for internment for the rest of the war...he did not like it, but he was not overly bitter or vindictive about it, it just was.

But that always stuck with me...these people were citizens, the vast majority not engaged in treason against us...we didn't round up the German-American's...if they did the entire upper midwest would've been desolate...but the Germans didn't sneak attack us....and FDR, a Democrat did this...how easy would it be to conduct another roundup?

In my Prof's place at that time, would I act different?  I dunno, but this place and time...anybody trying to pull that crap gonna pay a steep price.

[LadyVirginia]

Aw shoot, LV; welling up here.

I did too.

I had a history Prof who was a second generation Japanese-American living in Honolulu, he was a little boy out playing Sunday morning Dec 7th when the Jap planes came in...after that he and everybody else he knew were rounded up and shipped to the mainland for internment for the rest of the war...he did not like it, but he was not overly bitter or vindictive about it, it just was.

But that always stuck with me...these people were citizens, the vast majority not engaged in treason against us...we didn't round up the German-American's...if they did the entire upper midwest would've been desolate...but the Germans didn't sneak attack us....and FDR, a Democrat did this...how easy would it be to conduct another roundup?

In my Prof's place at that time, would I act different?  I dunno, but this place and time...anybody trying to pull that crap gonna pay a steep price.

I told the vet's story to my historian daughter and she said the same thing as you about the Japanese.   We treated the German POWs well and yet we rounded up the Japanese Americans.  Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised that it had a lot to do with Germans being European (and more like us) and the Japanese not.  German POWs in the US were put to work on farms and such and they often formed close bonds with the people they worked for to the point of maintaining contact long after they were returned to Germany.

German POWs on the American Homefront

Thousands of World War II prisoners ended up in mills, farm fields and even dining rooms across the United States
(Of note: they bring up the closing of Gitmo and how no one wants terrorists in their backyard.)

Apparently the majority of German prisoners who spent the war years in Texas remembered their experience as one of the greatest adventures of their lives.

Further, by bringing Axis POWs to the U.S., the Allies inadvertently defanged even the most ardent Nazi POWS and created “Little Ambassadors”. First, Nazi loyalists among the Germans saw that the wild and rabid anti-U.S. propaganda that they had been fed didn’t fit what they saw in America. Second, all German POWs learned by example what democracy looked like on a daily, personal basis. Third, after the German capitulation some were chosen for special “re-education” to counter lingering post-war Nazi ideology once backs in Europe. Fourth, most German POWs took with them to Germany news and views of America which, by and large, spoke well of the U.S.—the land of their victors and former “enemies”.

           Conversely, the Third Reich’s almost exclusively ungenerous, heavy-handed and often arbitrary treatment of U.S. POW—more of whom came from Iowa, per capita and in raw numbers, the any other state—generated ill will of at least indifference regarding Germany’s post-war fate and spoiled most of an entire generation’s ability to respond to German culture or people in rational, sympathetic or welcoming ways.

[AlanS]

Sadly, the last surviving WWII veteran I knew died 2 yrs ago. My uncle was an amazing man and did share a few stories with me. I'm sure there were plenty more where those came from.

RIP, Uncle Frank.