In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
That's special. I'll have to steal it.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
That's special. I'll have to steal it.
My Dad was too young to serve in WW2, but two uncles served, and I was surrounded by veterans as a child in small-town Quebec. Some would share their experiences, others never spoke of them. As I grew up more conversations happened and I learned. One guy was a tail gunner and survived a crash landing in England after the plane got shot up over Europe and the hydraulics wouldn't allow them to drop the bombs , or lower the landing gear. He said he was fiercely praying as they crashed through the English hedgerows next to the airfield. The pilot deliberately avoided the groomed grass field in case the bomb load went off. My godfather was a bomber pilot in the RCAF, yet my dad had to teach him to drive a car after the war.He was flying bombers pretty young. The janitor at my school had been a POW in a German camp in North Africa, and hated anyone German, although he admitted the younger ones he knew weren't even involved. Lots of stories from people who are all gone now, but I'll never forget.
My Grandfather was in the pacific theater during WW2. A machinist on a battleship who lied to enlist early.
My Grandmother was the daughter of a Japanese (race, not subject) teacher on the Korean Peninsula, then a Japanese colony. She told me the story of how she and her mother escaped the peninsula after the Japanese surrendered.
Not having much to tie me to the European theater of WW2, I was wholly unprepared for my visit to Auschwitz when I moved over here in 2010. That place tore my guts up, and they've never been the same since. I don't think anything in the world could have prepared me for that...
... and anyone who fought to stop that would never buy a beer in my presence.
Someone on here mentioned that the veterans of D-day had an attitude of "we had a job to do" and I remember one of the interviews on the series "Band of Brothers" where one of the veterans addressed that sentiment "Before we found that camp", he said. "It was professional. We had a job to do, and so did the Germans. After we saw that, though... it was personal".
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