Interesting Conversation...

[RASelkirk]

Went to grab the door yesterday at the DR's office for an older gent with a walker (he pretty much shooed me off saying he could get it just fine). Come to find out, he was 98 years young and had worked on building the Burma Road in WWII. Not many of this "Greatest Generation" left and, at 65, I was quite proud to have met him!

Russ

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[Jonzie]

I sure would like to have a conversation with someone like him the stories of his life.

[speckles]

I still see few ww2 veterans in my office.. anyone over 85, I ask what they used to do in life... almost everyone of them says military. Starts the conversation. Met a guy who ran the marine boats on the to Japanese islands during landings. Met a guy who was the head of a mortar team. He proceeded to tell me what those things did to people, oddly with a snarky grin. Met multiple bomber crew on germany. Met a guy who drove the express route through France after the invasion. He said non stop driving. Met a guy who was in the Ardennes forest and still has neuropathy from the cold. And my most favorite guy: friend of my in laws : Edgar Harrell - uss Indianapolis marine. Tells the story just like it was yesterday. Every single one has an unbelievable story and I could sit and talk for hours. Fantastic souls!
Now, since I live near a army base I also meet wives of soldiers who were in the post war Germany and moved to the US. 2 ladies were in the hitler youth.... one lady didn’t talk much. The other was more than happy to discuss. She said bombings would destroy everything and the children would hide in the school. She described picking up body parts as her job😳. When asked if the people decided not to help? She said ohh no! Dare not or you, family, and neighbors would all be made examples of.

[Gil Boyd]

I did have a lengthy conversation with an ex River Kwai survivor many years ago now, as we were talking about the film with Alec Guiness.

He was Royal Army Service Corps when he was captured in the roundup what was the fiasco of the Fall of Singapore. Most were sent to the bridge from there and the Railway which had to be cut out of solid rock by hand.
He was a proud but resentful man, he never knowingly bought anything Japanese and hated them with every breath in his body. He survived but he said an interesting thing. Those men from units that were at the peak of their fitness when caught invariably died first, through lack of enough food and were often diseased first after mosquito bites and struck down with Malaria.
He told me tales of savagery by the guards for pure fun, when someone went for a drink of water and had too much, they stuffed a hosepipe down their throats into their stomachs and then danced on their swollen bellies. He found it very hard to continue without getting choaked up, talking about men and good friends he had lost as if they were still beside him.
So cruel an existence and very hard to imagine.

[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

One of my friends is 99 and was a Merchant Marine during WW2. His ship torpedoed and sunk. In the water for a few days. I didn't know the VA doesn't cover Merchant Marines.
At 95 he was the national racketball champion for his age group. But he got hit in the eye with a ball and lost his sight in that eye, so he quit. He still runs our Thursday poker game.
Quite a guy with a lot of stories. Just had his 72 anniversary, his wife is 94.
There is still a lot to be learned if one is willing to take the time and listen.

This is Calib and Nancy with my wife Barbara and I celebrating me surviving chemo a few months back. They still drink beer and wine, the Pepsi was mine.

[RASelkirk]

I regret not getting to know my Uncle Jack better, he was an LST crewman in the Navy at the end of the war. My Dad missed it by two years but Jack was born in '27 and made it in towards the end. I remember he had a flag, sword & sheath, and a big glass (fishing net float) ball. Our family was never really close with Aunts and Uncles, I met my Uncle Bob and his family for the first time at my Dad's Funeral service in 2016 and Bob is his age!

Russ

[Jonzie]

This is Calib and Nancy with my wife Barbara and I celebrating me surviving chemo a few months back.

Thanks for sharing hope all is going well with you.

[Jonzie]

I regret not getting to know my Uncle Jack better,

My fathers uncle JR told me he was helping bring supplys in two weeks after the Normandy invasion, at the time I did not keep the conversation going and looking back wish I had.

---------- Post added at 05:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:32 PM ----------

He found it very hard to continue without getting choaked up, talking about men and good friends he had lost as if they were still beside him.
So cruel an existence and very hard to imagine.

I cant imagine going through some of the things those brave men endured and how I would feel if in there shoes.

[Paul S.]

Growing up, every adult male I knew, my dad and uncles, neighbours, teachers, business men, professionals and even the Irish-born priest (ex-British Army Commando) who baptised me with very few exceptions had served in some branch of some allied nation's armed forces during WWII, and more than a few who had served in WWI. More than a few women I knew had served as well. Most rarely talked about it when I was young. I think, for so many of them it was a common experience, something they all shared and experienced in their own way, and they had no need to talk about it. Then too, it was the culture then. You dealt with something and then moved on - what was the past, was the past - live for today and tomorrow. I can only guess that many of them had their own personal 'ghosts' event, places, people, horrors and tragedies that haunted them, their memories, and their nights.

As I said, the priest who baptised me was an Irish-born, and had fought as an Army Commando in the British Army. My father was a gunner and served in the islands. My godfather was an RAF pilot who flew Spitfires until he crash landed in a potato field a week before potatoes were rationed in Britain. (He claimed he was the reason potatoes were rationed.) He moved on to Mosquitos and at war's end, to Meteors. One neighbour served aboard a destroyer during the Normandy landings. Another was captured at Singapore, spent the war on the 'railway'. (He had serious personal problems throughout his life.) A family friend spent the war hunting and sinking U-boats as an Wireless Air Gunner in Coastal Command. Another, one of the happiest and friendliest men I knew, was a Gunner who fought in the Middle East, North Africa, and New Guinea. My scout leader, a police detective and Canadian ex-pat who also served in the Commandos during the war told us about raiding the German coastal defences in France in preparation for the Normandy invasion while elaborating on the uses of a knife.

The father of a girl I dated had been a Colonel in the Italian Army running a POW camp for British POWs until Italy surrendered and the Germans interned him and his staff in his own camp. The mother of a girl I dated had served as a radar technician in the RAF. A French and German language teacher I had at high school had been a nurse in the Wehrmacht during the war. (She and her sister were conscripted because they were medically trained despite actually being Hungarian.)

[Gil Boyd]

Paul,
Similar background mate, and probably why we are all into Milsurps of all denominations!!

Of course with an ex Military background to boot and all the experience that brings and the countless courses you apply to do, brings a lot of "operational" knowledge to this site and others for the benefit of those who didn't actually serve but can see the history and down right brilliance in developing weaponry at a time when the chips were down for all countries in bothe world wars, and other serious conflicts since!