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[Bundbuster]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Bundbuster) on Mon Jul 1, 2024, 04:23 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Even though you never knew him . . .

His life still touches you.

Pretty damn good legacy, I think.

[Bundbuster]

3. You're right, Peggy

His life has always touched me. Thank you for that thought.

[nevergiveup]

2. This makes me so sad.

I too had an uncle who served in the Pacific. He enlisted when he was 18. He went missing for 2 years after the war and the family thought he was dead but he did finally return home. He never ever during the rest of his life mention the war.

It is wonderful that you are honoring your uncle. May this beautiful brave young man forever rest in peace.

[ggma]

4. A grandson of mine is related to a Tuskegee Airman

Ralph Orduna. He was lucky enough to spend time with him before he passed away. I wish I had met him.

gg

[ananda]

5. My dad's first cousin was shot down by a German sniper...

right after the war ended and he was part of the
guard in Berlin or somewhere like that.

It was so sad. He was a very handsome guy and
wonderful person, I'm told.

My dad made it out. He was a flyer on the St. Lo,
which was kamikaze'd and destroyed by the
Japanese... while he was in the air... lucky
son of a gun, I'll say!

[Bundbuster]

8. What a terrible, senseless loss

Killed after the war ended. His family must have endured very deep grief.

[ananda]

9. Yes, my mom's brother has a story too.

He was a captain in the army under Mark Clark.

He was wounded in Italy and got the purple heart.

Anyway, while in Italy he took up with a contessa
and apparently promised to marry her after the war.

Well... after he married my mom's best friend in CA,
later on he got a letter from that contessa asking
him about his promise. My mom would say, my
brother the cad.

Also, while governing one of the northern provinces
in Italy, he had an affair with his laundry woman.

I was very surprised by the these stories because
when I visited him and the cousiins, he was such a
fuddyduddy, and a little eccentric in a good way.

That was California in the sixties, when everyone
went New Age. My cousin taught me about ESP
and stuff like that.

Well, I digress, but...

[COL Mustard]

13. I think the St. Lo was an escort carrier

Their classification was CVE. The sailors said it stood for Combustible, Vulnerable and Expendable.

[ananda]

31. That is right.

It was a small carrier destroyed by kamikaze.

The fliers in the air, like my dad, had to land
on the beachhead in Saipan, which MacArthur
had just taken.

They flew missions from there for two weeks
and were then sent home because the planes
couldn't be maintained there.

Then Truman called them back to Saipan to
fly a mission to firebomb Tokyo, which didn't
happen because he decided to nuke the two
other cities instead.

Then they all went home for good.

[cornball 24]

6. My Uncle Walter was a gunner on a B-25 in the Pacific. While on a night mission,

the crew and plane went down and were never found. Although I was a little kid, I remember his coming to our house on the night before he left for service. Years later, My mother told me I way too young to remember anything about that night. I then described to her every detail of his visit. She was in amazement. I truly believe that even at a very young age, one can recall something of incredible importance and significance.

[DFW]

7. Quite a legacy indeed.

My dad was drafted and entered the army in early 1943. He had to take early graduation from college, and due to his knowledge of French (I think) was sent to France. He had radio duty at Patton’s camp the night Patton had his fatal accident. Things have changed since. His grandson, my nephew, learned how to speak and write Arabic in college. He is currently stationed in Kyiv (they don’t wear uniforms in his line of work).

Funny post-war story: after Germany surrendered, we had a gazillion GIs in Europe and no way to get them all back at once. So, the US military was pleading for Europeans to take GIs in for a few weeks or months. My dad’s officer came to his unit and asked if there was anyone who liked to sail? No one said anything, but my dad was alert enough to ask “how come?” The officer said, “well, there is this rich family on the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland…..” That was as far as he got before my dad quickly said, “I like to sail!” He stayed friends with the family, and when I was 18, they put me up for a few days in their villa when I was passing through. That sailboat was still docked at the pier on their lakefront property. I bet my dad was in no hurry to leave!

[Bundbuster]

10. An interesting, travelled family you have, sir.

Maybe an influence on your international lifestyle now?

(Me) Lake Geneva? "I love to sail!"

[PatSeg]

11. What a remarkable face

Such a handsome man.

[Bundbuster]

16. His legacy lives on -

My brother (in his younger days) could have passed for this uncle's twin.

[PatSeg]

21. The photo blew me away

I assume because he died so young that he never married.

[Bundbuster]

24. Just 22, not married

His death destroyed my grandmother, who never got over the loss, even on her deathbed at 97 y.o. War carries infinite damage way beyond the direct casualties.

[PatSeg]

34. Yes it does

I've often said that I cannot imagine raising a child just to send them off to war at a very young age. I've come across photos of soldiers from World War I and World War II who look like children.

[PatSeg]

23. Here's my dad in 1945

He was married with three children so he didn't get drafted until the end of the war. As a result, he never went overseas.

I just finished restoring and colorizing it a week ago. I had never seen the photo until this year. I can't recall ever seeing such a sad look on his face until after my mom died.

[KS Toronado]

12. My Uncle Albert was a B24 pilot

who was shot down while bombing the oil refineries around Ploesti in Romania. Badly burned, the
German Doctor who done his skin grafts was secretly anti-Hitler and they became life long friends.

Spent a Thanksgiving with Uncle & family early '90's when another of his friends stopped by for the
weekend, another retired WWII Air Force full bird Colonel, this one a Tuskegee airmen.

Watching these two guys who obviously meet after the war carry on with their BS and tall tales of
years gone by was very interesting and enjoyable. They carried on like grade school buddies.

[Kaleva]

27. A now deceased neighbor might have seen your uncle's plane shit down

He was a copilot on a B24 and he told me of his experiences during the bombing of the Romanian oil fields. As they began their run, he saw B24s ahead going down in flames.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

14. My husband's uncle was lost on The Indianapolis. He had a pregnant wife at the time.

My husband’s dad came from a big farm family so this brother, Lois, was 16 or 18 years older than my father-in-law.

Lois’s son (my husband’s cousin) was born about a week after the Indianapolis went down. My husband was born 25 years later. I always thought it was weird to have cousins old enough to be your dad.

This picture. He was just a baby.

[Bundbuster]

18. The Indianapolis - that was the worst, most agonizing loss.

And it never should have happened. Since reading all about it 60 years ago, I've never been able to get the nightmares out of my head.

[OnlinePoker]

15. One of my Mom's step-brothers disappeared over the North Sea in an RCAF bomber

My grandmother waited for news that he might have been rescued or was in a German POW camp. One month later a telegram came and she thought that was the news. Unfortunately, it was to inform her that her only other son had died on take-off for his first mission when his bomber's landing gear collapsed and the bomb load exploded. They only ever found the body of one crew member from my first uncle's plane who washed ashore in Norway.

[Warpy]

17. My extended family all came home

which is remarkable since one was a pilot and tended toward hot dogging all his life.

My dad was the first one to go overseas, a civilian engineer working on hush hush stuff with the British from 1939 on.

My mother's family by that time were aunts with old uncles, so nobody went anywhere. My mother was a metallurgist, also working on secretive stuff. She learned to fly small aircraft but never did much with it. The post war years landed on women like a ton of wet cement.

Today is my dad's birthday. He'd be 107. I still miss him, although he's been gone a long time now.

[Bundbuster]

20. There aren't many WW2 vets left

I was very good friends with a former Navy battleship sailor who spent a year in heavy action in the Pacific theater. His stories were spine tingling, and he finally wrote a compelling memoir. He regularly travelled to reunions of his shipmates, smaller and smaller in number each time, until his death some years ago at age 94. One of the finest, most giving persons I've ever encountered.

[WarGamer]

32. Not many at all...

Assuming a 16-17 year old got into the service and served in 1945, we're talking 95 years old today...

[kskiska]

19. My dad was shot down while piloting a B-17

and bailed out over Germany Several of his crew died. He was captured and spent 13 months in Stalag Luft 1.

[CTyankee]

22. My cousin was a paratrooper, jumped on D Day, lost in France for a few weeks, turned up in Paris.

He had been hiding out in farmhouses barns, fearing discovery, and our family didn't know where he was or whether he was alive or dead. I was far too young to understand what was going on, but I did have a black and white photo taken of him with me and my brother. He is wearing his uniform pantsleg bloused in his boots and his cap has a little insignia that I am told identified him as a paratrooper. He adopted a stray dog that he named "toute suite."

[malaise]

25. My mother's only brother was in the British Army

He survived the war but died in a motor cycle crash in London.
He was a young man in his 30s.

[Bundbuster]

28. British soldiers paid some bloody hell in that war.

A lot worse than Americans in the European theater. Even British citizens, with 5 years of bombings and air raids. Amazing how they all kept their shit together in the worst of times, united and loyal 'til the end.

[malaise]

30. That stiff upper lip worked wonders

[Attilatheblond]

26. My grandmother carefully kept track of my dad's and my uncle's points while they were overseas

Imagine her surprise when Uncle Joe showed up at home WAY before she expected him. Turns out the math was wrong. The points she was tracking were fictitious, the sort of things the military did when the real points could not be given due to covert operations. Uncle Joe was racking up points faster than allowed to be known due to him often being behind enemy lines, laying out communication lines in Italy.

He said his only regret was he never got to meet lovely ladies in Italian towns. LOL

[Swede]

29. My dad's cousin was killed in the Battle of Ortona.

He was in the RCRs (Royal Canadian Regiment). He was 21.

[3Hotdogs]

33. The ones who never came back.... and the ones, like my father-in-law and uncle who came back

but were never quite the same.

[The_REAL_Ecumenist]

35. My Maternal Grandfather was among the African American troops who Liberated the death camps in Germany

He, along with other black soldiers, was sent into the camps because the surviving prisoners would KNOW that the Americans has arrived to free them. That decision was made after comand realised that sending white soldiers in would freak them out due to the fact that the people in the camps would mistake them for the Nazis returning to "liquidate" the survivors.
I remember listening to his use "SPICY" language, (he was TEXAN, lolz), to talk about how the German civilians who lived around Mathausen claiming that they had no idea what was going on. He would say, " How the hell could the people who lived around the came claim they didn't know what was going on? Hell, we SMELLED the GD camps from at least a mile away and could hear the cries & moans from at least a 1/10th a mile away. I will NEVER forget what I saw, Mary(the name he called me)." He said that when he walked up to a woman that looked like the walking, skeletal dead and when she saw him, she fell into his arms, full of tears. He couldn't understand what she was saying BUT he felt her undying gratitude.
He had photographic "encyclopaedias" that were about the death camps, Sobibor, Mauthausen, Theresenstadt, Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, ad nauseum, because he wanted his children, grandchidren, etc to NEVER forget what happened and do everything we could to NEVER let it happen again. During the Civil wars in the Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia & Kosovo & the camps that were set up INFURIATED him because he saw first hand the horror of death/concentration camps.
Horribly, although my grandfather & other people of color fought for and supported the Allies during WWII, the Nazi POW's were treated better than they were. However, he NEVER stopped loving his country. He grew up in a SunDown town. So, there's that...

My youngest brother, Jerry, ( an Army vet), served in Kosovo & Bosnia-Hercegovina. He was a military policeman who, along with other MP's, guarded a refugee camp full of men, women and children. He got close to a few young boys & occasionally playing football, (Soccer) with them. He along with the other soldiers warned the children NOT to touch anything that looked like toys because the fascists who were committing "ethnic cleansing" were using bombs disguised as toys to kill children. UNFORTUNATELY, one day as he was going about his duties of guarding the camp & watching the boys play ball, one of the children stopped to pick up what he thought was a toy plane, (the creeps who were committing these AWFUL war crimes by dropping IED's disguised as toys had changed the look to more colorful almost indistinguishable toy bombs) and bent down to pick it up. BY the time he'd gotten over to the "toy bomb", (it looked like a plane, BTW) 3 pther boys crowded around them. Unsurprisingly, the bomb went off. It killed the 1 little boy who was closest to the IED instantly, (the blast blew his chest open), before Jerry & the other MP's could get to them. The boy next closest to boy whonpicked the "toy" up was gravely injured, his left arm, shoulder & part of his chest blown off. In the din of the screaming parents, service people calling for medics etc, Jerry held the the gravely injured little one in his arms as they waited for the medivac copter. Sadly, that baby bled to death in Jerry's arms. He broke down because he was very close to the 4 boys , especially the 2 who died. There was a Newsweek photojournalist in the camp who ran to the scene and aimed his camera to capture the images. The body was taken from Jerry and placed on the Medivac & the 2 other boys who were injured BUT not as badly as the 2 closest to the Toy Plane IED. When he looked up and saw hat the photographer was about to do, he pointed his weapon at them and ordered them to put the camera down....which they did. The outcome, however, is that he became alcoholic for many years and was Dx with CPTSD. He was medically discharged and although he's no longer drinking, he's not right, poor thing.

I'm proud to be the niece of my uncle Phonzo, who served in Vietnam, a great man & who I love with all my heart. My mom's oldest brother also served in Vietnam and was missing in action behind enemy lines for 2 years. He was smuggled out of north Vietnam from 1 Catholic orphanages to another orphanage, hidden in carts pulled by water buffaloes. My grandpareants, (his dad was my maternal grandfather who helped to liberate Mauthasen) and they were over the moon to have their first child back. I am the great niece of a Korean war vet, Great Uncle Sonny who was my maternal grandfather's youngest brother, who was at the Battle of the Choisin Resevoir. He was one of the many troops who were affected by the extreme cold and almost lost his feet to frostbite. He could were nothing but house shoes for almost 2 years. Like my brother, Jerry, he also broke and was "strange" for the rest of his life, may he rest in peace.

I'm the proud cousin of a Navy Seabee, (Chris), who served at sea in the late 80's/ early 90's. I'm also the very proud wife of an Air Force vet, who served 11 years & ended his service by putting in communcation infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, (Ali Al Salim & Al Kharj), & Kuwait in late 1996-1997. there were still minefields in the desert & SCUDS being fired at his encampment. When he went to Kuwait,( Al Jabr & Camp Doha), he went down the Highway of Death and the driver was driving 900 miles an hour because there were still Iraqi snipers, IED's and minefields along the road. When he got to the bunkers they wanted him & other military contractors to work, there were STILL blood splatters on the walls from the bunker busting bombs. He wasexposed to burn pits & has had 2 episodes of aggressive skin cancer, ad nauseum. He also has been diagnosed with CPTSD, SEVERE CPTSD! He has night terrors, (lots of fun for a wife, trust me ) and any number of emotional issues. I LOVE him and I'm working him, his psychatrists, therapists, doctors & others to help him along.

I've lost 2 friends to the civil war in Mozambique and although they weren't in the military, (they were Peace Corp Volunteers), I honor them because they went into an active war zone knowing they'd be in danger, I honor them on this day. I am proud & sad because so many people suffer unnecessarily for the greed & hate of small people who shouldn't and in all actuality don't matter.

[Bundbuster]

36. For some families, war is truly Hell.

It sounds like yours has suffered for generations, wish it could be different.

... ...