About now back in 1944 my father and my S.O.s father were about to change their lives forever

[HereSince1628]

Neither knew the other, both were somewhere in the southeast of England about to make a channel crossing to France that the world would never forget. Growing up it seemed like they had because neither made much of their stories. Neither I or my SO have any memory of even a mention of it as we grew up. Surely they had brutal memories, but they kept that horror to themselves.

So, here's to an appreciation of never told memories of what it took to walk up onto ships knowing that Hell on Earth was the next port of call. Here's to men that quietly kept that hell all to themselves, and acted like 1950's family life was the way it had always been.

[uppityperson]

1. Great appreciation to them and all how helped the Liberation

My best wishes to those that survived and hoping they found peace in themselves beyond the horror.

[Va Lefty]

2. Starting at 12:41am this morning

and continuing for the next couple days, XM Radio channel 4 (The 40's) will air real-time NBC's original radio news bulletins of the invasion

[renate]

3. what incredible bravery

:patriot:

I have so much admiration for those soldiers. We owe them so much.

[ulysses]

4. agreed, but

as a sort-of student of history, I sometimes wish that they'd kept a little less to themselves. My dad's dad saw action in WWI and his brother-in-law got caught up in the Battle of the Bulge, but not much of that experience got passed on.

[HereSince1628]

17. One night at my father's house I got up and turned off "Platoon" or something

like that and I said to my father "I really don't need to see a movie about that." He looked at me for a minute with an expression somewhere between annoyance and surprise and I thought he was going to complain about me turning off his TV but he just said, "I understand." It was one of the few times in my life I think he really did. Some things seem to be best communicated in silence.

[texanshatingbush]

5. My dad, too, was in the Normandy Invasion.....

29th Infantry, landed on Omaha Beach Easy Red.

I remember my dad telling only a few stories, most humorous. Toward the end of his life, however, he told a most poignant story about the night he spent in a small stable in a wooded area in France, where he and a fellow injured soldier had been left behind the still-moving-forward front line, for medics to pick up later. My dad had a leg injury. The other fellow, named Wade, had been "gut-shot" as Dad said, and Dad spent the night holding Wade in his arms, trying to comfort him and keep him warm and assure him everything would be OK. As dawn broke, they heard movement and muffled voices in the misty woods, couldn't tell if they were German or American. Then it became obvious they were American. The medics attended to Wade first, since he was so badly injured. They lifted him onto a stretcher and placed the stretcher on the hood of a jeep, to transport him to a field hospital. Dad watched as the jeep drove away around a bend and out of sight. Suddenly, a huge explosion from an artillery shell rocked the area where the jeep had seemed to be heading. Dad never found out if Wade and his rescuers made it. Part of the fog of war, I guess.

I recently stumbled upon a great book which documents those times. Paid 50 cents for it. How cheap important lessons of history have become. The book: "Ernie's War--The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches", edited by David Nichols. Gives one a real insight into what people went through--whether in London dealing with the Blitz, or traversing the flotsam and jetsam of the bloody beaches of Normandy.

Another GREAT book for understanding the regular, ordinary people caught up in war, the lives they came from, the lives they lived (and sometimes died) in war: Stephen Ambrose's "Wild Blue".

These voices of the past make me wonder if we as a country today could make the sacrifices made by that Greatest Generation. It's obvious that we no longer believe in shared sacrifices..........just as it is obvious that the cowboys in office have led us away from the moral high-ground which has heretofore always been the choice of our country.

[Greeby]

8. Speaking of Stephen Ambrose

Another of the Band of Brothers has passed away, Captain Ronald Speirs :(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Speirs

[democrat in Tallahassee]

6. My dad was at Omaha Beach + 10; they landed 10 days after

the initial invasion. The liberated Nancy, France.

[FogerRox]

7. My Dad served in the Pacific, electonics tech on an Escort carrier

Radar operator. He told me about watching one of the huge US battleships 16" shells flying threw the air on his radar screen. Thanks to all the other 12 milllion men & woman whos served in the US Military in WW2.

[eridani]

9. My uncle did island to island fighting in the Pacific

Just like your father and father-in-law, he never said one single word about his military experience. Some are able to push it all into one compartment of their brains and shut a door on it forever--others are not.

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. My grand-father was in the Pacific theatre.

Never heard a word.

[Swamp Rat]

10. Many in my family have served. n/t

:kick:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Two of my uncles came ashore at Juno Beach.

Canadians. Both survived the war unscathed. I hardly knew them because my grandmother had to adopt them out to Canadians after she immigrated to Canada from England and her husband, my grandfather, was killed breaking horses for the Canadian Army. She had immigrated to England from Ireland, then to Canada, then to the U.S. with her 4 daughters, including my mother.

I only met one of the boys, who had immigrated to the U.S after the war. Nice fella, with a very, very, stiff and proper English wife who he had met while awaiting the invasion in England.

[Pacifist Patriot]

12. My great-uncle is still in Normandy.

I visited his grave in 1985.

RIP

[TheCentepedeShoes]

14. My dad was in

the S. Pacific in the Merchant Marine. :patriot:

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. My dad was D-Day + something

He never talked much about the war. All I know is he was a battalion medic, a sergeant, was in France, Germany and Czechoslovakia and was among those in the Medical Corps sent to the Nazi camps near the end of the war to do what they could for those still alive. I still have some photos he brought back from that — decayed corpses, still laying on the ground.

No wonder he never talked much.

I miss him.

:patriot:

[murielm99]

20. My dad never talked much

about his war experiences until recently. He is 81 now.

I think what got him talking was his visit to the WWII memorial. He had a reunion with some of the survivors of his unit. One of them is taking an oral history of survivors' memories.

My dad was part of a unit of replacement troops for Merrill's Marauders in Burma. They fought the Japanese there, from behind enemy lines. They suffered many casualties, and also lost troops to malaria and other diseases. They are considered the first army rangers.

When my dad's time in Burma was over, he went to China as an MP. I remember when I was a kid that he talked more about his time in China, and his visit to India. I understand now why he did not talk more about combat. But I am glad that something got him talking.

I never understood why they sent my dad to the Far East. He grew up in a German-Lutheran farming community in Minnesota, and he is a fluent German speaker. The army has always been fucked up.

[Oeditpus Rex]

22. When did he go in?

By his age, I'd guess it wasn't early in the war. If that had been the case, I'd say they ignored his language skills because they needed infantry, infantry, infantry. But since he probably didn't go in until '44, I dunno why they wouldn't want a German speaker in the ETO. :shrug:

But you've probably heard the old saying, there's a right way, a wrong way and an Army way.

[murielm99]

23. Actually, he went in in '43, late in the year.

He was 17, and his dad had to sign permission for him to be allowed to enlist.

He received his training, and went overseas in 1944.

[Oeditpus Rex]

27. Is it possible they just didn't know

he was fluent in German?

You'd think with D-Day approaching, they would've grabbed him for +1 or so for help with interrogating prisoners. :shrug:

[murielm99]

29. I could ask him.

You know, I never have asked him that!

They had to know something. He lived near a German POW camp in Minnesota. During the war, my grandparents had a couple of the German POWs help them with farming during the day. At night, the young men went back to their camp. The rules were very strict about fraternization. My grandparents were checked out thoroughly before the young men were sent to them.

Farming was a big priority during the war. All food commodities were needed. These German boys were helping our war effort, and being treated humanely at the same time.

My father attended a school of agriculture, a residential high school in Minneapolis, from the time he was 14 to age 16. Then he was kicked out of school for smoking on campus. Grandpa was furious. He made my dad come home to farm. Of course, that only lasted a year. My dad went to war as soon as possible.

But you would think they would know a bit about his background, given that his family was cleared to work with prisoners. I will have to ask him where he enlisted. I don't think he went all the way to Minneapolis for that. There had to be a more local enlistment place.

[never cry wolf]

16. Great appreciation, my Dad was in the south pacific

in the navy on D_Day, 6-6-24 was the day he was born, he passed a year and a half ago on halloween... happy birthday dad.... miss you tons....

dammit, tears are streaming.....

[truedelphi]

18. My Dad talked a lot about the war

By the age of two or so, I started hearing about it.

I owe my being a pacifist towards his attitudes.

once when I was eight or so, the nuns at my school were talking about how brave our fathers had been for fighting.

That evening I met my father at the train station where he commuted in from the city.

"Daddy Daddy! You were a hero!" I cried out as I ran to greet him.

I'll never forget this: he turned almost white. Became deathly silent. I knew him very well, he had never hit me, but I thought he might this time.

"Where'd you get this nonsense?" he finally sputtered.

I relayed what the nuns had said - the Germans were all fascists and needed killing, the American GI's were brave and wonderful.

"Don't believe every thing you've heard," he answered. "I think that if we had stayed in that war longer, we'd have been as nasty as them."

Started shaking his head. "War is the ultimate de-humaninzing experience."

This part gets me chills up and down my back when I remember: he finished his sttement by saying

"That was the war where I had to go and shoot down my cousins. Honey, never forget that if a country has thugs pull the rug out from under it, bad things will happen."

My father died the summer of 2002. Ninety years old. He voted for Gore in 2000 - said he had a bad feeling about Bush. Gore was the first Democratic candiate that my father ever voted for.

my mom didn't speak to him for two days afterwards!

[rockymountaindem]

19. Thanks for posting

:patriot:

[5thGenDemocrat]

21. My wife's father, Capt. John GW Finke, was one of the first officers onto Omaha Beach

Commanding "F" Company, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. He and Capt. Ed Wozenski (leading "E" Company) came ashore more or less simultaneously, about 800 yards off-target and right under a German machine gun position.
Capt. Finke had already been shot through the shoulder in North Africa and clipped in the head by a machine gun bullet in Sicily -- and would be dropped by a mortar round about noon on D-Day. He'd go on to win a Distinguished Service Cross during the Rohr River campaign in November 1944 and retire as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1962. He's buried at Arlington.
John
There's quite a bit of stuff on the web about Capt. Finke, should you Google his name -- and even more on Captain Wozenski.

[rasputin1952]

24. There was no guarantee that the landings on D-Day would

succeed. The sacrifices made that day, were made by men who were not fighting for Country, nor Mom or the girl next door, definitely not for apple pie...they were going into a fight that they knew was important, they did not know if they would survive, or come back to a hospital ship ripped to shreds and wishing they had been killed.

Initiative saved the day at Omaha Beach, untold and innumerable acts of individual bravery were commonplace. Men attacked when they knew they would be killed or wounded, propelled forward by pure adrenaline.

A destroyer Captain, seeing the carnage on Omaha Beach, brought his ship into within inches of grounding his vessel, and his gunners were remarkable shots. They trained their 5" guns on pillboxes, and drove shells into the slits. Deck and superstructure were hit by machine gun bullets, but they kept up the fire, the remarkable action by this crew saved untold numbers of American lives.Men crawled forward to place charges under barbed wire, one by one, they were killed, but more kept coming. These men had a bravery that most of us cannot comprehend.

They died on Landing Craft, the were cut down in chest deep water, they were slaughtered when the ramps went down to discharge them and they were cut to ribbons on the exposed beach.

These men fought for each other, the nobler causes of war espoused by generals and admirals were no where in their thoughts. They fought to save their buddies, their pals, their brothers in arms. The landings at Normandy was the catalyst that would break the Nazi hold over Europe and Asia. These men, these brave men, aged from 18 to 40 fought one of the most decisive battles mankind has ever fought. Every person on this planet owes a debt of gratitude to what these men did, they changed the world.

Whether that change was for better or worse , we shall see in another 63 years. If we can finally put an end to warfare, sometime in the future, a profound reason that this would come about, is the bravery, the honor and the sacrifice so many paid for with their lives.

As we are losing these great men at an alarming rate, if you see a vet, thank him/her. Today, we can be here because of what they did so long ago. They were of American, British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, French, Polish and others that were willing to do what they had to do, if for no other reason is that it was the right thing to do.

:patriot:

[kskiska]

25. My dad was in Stalag Luft 1 at this time in 1944

awaiting news of my birth in August. He'd been co-pilot of a B-17 shot down over Germany in April of '44 during a mission after bombing a Messerschmitt plant. He wouldn't be released until May of 1945 when the war ended. He's 86 now, and still hangs out with vets every day at a small airport in Connecticut.

[MurrayDelph]

26. My dad was in the tank corp at Normandy

His brand-new tank had a defective flotation collar, and sunk like a rock. He spent the invasion treading water.
Other transports offered to give him a ride to shore, but he answered "Are you nuts? My gun is DOWN THERE!"
He came out of it with a busted eardrum from the explosions, but he came out of it.

Been gone about three years now. Miss him.

[TahitiNut]

28. My dad was a Navy SeaBee in the Pacific, 2 uncles in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific ...

... one uncle landed at Omaha and was later in the Battle of the Bulge, another uncle was in North Africa, another uncle was in the Army in the European Theater, and another uncle was Army stateside and on his way to Europe. My father's mother had a 5-star service flag in the windoow and my mother's mother had a 2-star service flag in the window.

[maine_raptor]

30. Two uncles served in WWII.

Both have passed on now. Uncle Dave, whom I am named after, flew a F4F and a F4U in the Marines in the PTO. He was part of the Cactus Air Force at the 'Canal and had 6.5 kills to his credit. He was wounded in the foot in late '43 and shipped back to the States where he spent the rest of the war training new fliers.

My other uncle, Bobby, was a bombardier on a B-17. He was shot down during the Schweinfurt raid of October 18, 1943 (62 planes were lost that day) and spent the rest of the war as a "guest" of the Germans.

I grew up during the 50's and heard some of their stories (not all, I'm sure). It was from such tales that my fascination with WWII air combat was born.

I salute those men, and all the others who in the air, on the ground, and in the water fought the good fight.