Hi all just curious, if you could be anything in ww2 what would you be? for example a paratrooper, an officer of any rank commanding however many troops on any front, a tank commander/gunner/driver/radio operator/loader, a fighter pilot, a grunt, a commando..... the list is endless. and what battle , and battalion and so on so on? I would be a machine gunner in the Australian 2nd machine gun battalion which was attached to the Australian 9th division at the Siege of Tobruk in 1941
I heard about a GI that ran an Army brothel on an African rubber plantation. That'd be a good job, but I'm sure he had other duties.
I always wanted to be a Navy officer, which I did, serving on two cruisers and an amphibious assault ship, so I'd probably be doing the same in WWII.
Young me: LRDG*. Old me: aide to Admiral Nimitz. *I originally misspelled an four letter acronym. DOH!
Since you asked what I would "Want" to be I'd be a USAAF fighter pilot. But with my luck I'd augur in during Basic.
I think I've answered this type of question before, but here's my answer again: Officer on a U.S. Battleship-preferably some duty where I'm behind a lot of metal. That way I'd see action and do "my bit" for the cause but still have a good chance of returning home alive and with all my appendages!
..I was just reading about that--again--someplace in Italy....I think a company was the spearhead/fighters...but the engineers had some arty/mortars/etc to deal with .....they were not ''too safe'' .....rear area Antwerp got some V2s ...... V2ROCKET.COM - Antwerp - City of Sudden Death ...I think the 8th AF had more deaths than the whole USMC in WW2? but how many personnel did each have?
..After the Pearl H attack, the BBs did not see much action, I thought..especially after Guadalcanal .....then at Surigao Stait, they had all the advantages
Don’t know if I could perform like he did, but, I was always told that when under fire or in any shipboard emergency, that a cook was to help the corpsmen as much as they could. I had a chance to do that in 1967 when the U.S. Naval Deperming Station, on the Elizabeth River, Lambert’s Point Norfolk, caught on fire. What a mess that was.
I still think my idea of running a brothel in Paris would be a money maker. French officers until June 40. Lots of Germans until 44 then all those Americans with lots of $$$$$.
Miller was a steward, basically house boy for officers*. But yeah, he'd fall into the same response paradigm as the cooks. They could be drafted to pass ammo or man fire hoses as well. "Unskilled labor" was to muster up where they could be drafted for whatever. *After the war, when the services were integrated, Filipino volunteers were used in that role. I was on active duty when they were given their chance to show what they could do in other jobs. I helped a young man pass his exams for EM3 (Electrician's Mate) and shortly there after I saw him do some of the damnedest magic as he kept the lights on in our cruiser, then sailing in confined waters. We could have been on the rocks. Well done, that man.