howdy all.. i just thought i'd like to share this with you...two doors down from me ( i live in south dublin) is this guy Leo, hes in his 80's i'm sure. i only moved into the street a year ago. i found out that "he was in the war"..i'm sure that phrase has pricked many any ear up! ..any ways...i see him now and again...but when i found out the above out i confronted him immediatly..."hey Leo, hows it going?..hey someone told me you were in the war?!"..."oh yeah, i was, six years in the army, oh yeah"..."wow , were did u serve?"..."ah , all over the place, eygpt, was there for awhile"... "really?" "ah , all over"..."what regiment where you in?"..."the irish guards.."i bet u have a few stories to tell?!"..."ah sure its all in the past, to many memories, bad ye know, ye know, they were all just young lads"... any heads out there with some nextdoor neighbour vet that they chat to?..i'm still working on mine,,,i'll get the stories out of him yet....i've heard he likes bass!...wild turkey worked on a vietnam vet i once met....these blokes have great stories to tell...and a wealth of information to share....love to hear some feedback...karlo
My grandpa is a WWII Navy Vet and sometimes I'll just sit down for an hour or two and talk to him about his experiences during the war.
My father was stationed in Wurzburg during reconstruction. He’s had some interesting stories that include transporting convicted Nuremburg Trial prisoners. We have recently been organizing his service photos from a storage box into albums. I’ve decided to include a biography of his experiences. Our first discussion lasted four hours and ended with him on a troop ship headed for Bremerhaven Germany. My father-in-law was in the 202nd Anti Aircraft Artillery Semi mobile Battalion in the Philippines. He speaks very little of his experiences, but has shared a few very interesting stories. I don’t bring it up much anymore as he has nightmares resulting in broken windows, stripped bed and falling of the bed. It appears he’s had some direct hand-to-hand combat. Several years ago, a distant friend shared his stories from the Pacific.
I had the pleasure of speaking with a P47 pilot yesterday at the Frontiers of Flight museum in Dallas, Texas. He gave a very detailed account of his experiences supported by photos, including some taken from an on board camera.
Unfotunately both my grandfathers who served are now deceased, but I was talking to my grandmother the other day about something I don;t even remember what and she told me that my grandfather had walked the Kokoda trail twice during the war. I was stunned I had never heard anything about this before, I had to ring Mum and one of my uncles to confirm the story, I wish I had known earlier. I have over the last few years tried to find out more about all my family that served during WWII, Korea and Vietnam but as some of you will know it is hard to get some of them to talk about it and others it hard to get to shut up. Mixed bag gotaa keep working on them though.
