This parent story of coincidence starts at the final days of WW-One and ends shortly after WW-Two: My Father was a teenager at the end of WWI in Netherlands (NL). His parents permitted a young Austrian girl to stay with them in neutral NL for about a year until well after 11/11/1918 to recoup from malnutricition suffered during WWI.

Fast forward to WWII: Five doors down from our house lived the German Ortskommandant (City boss). He had a family but was transferred to Normandy shortly before D-Day. A new commandant comes in. He had no family living with 'em and everybody hated him. A year later, well after our town was liberated (thank you Allied Troops) and the war was over, my Father received a letter from Austria written by the person who stayed with his family in '17/18. She hoped everybody survived the war. In the letter was a picture of her and her husband. My Father immediately recognized the husband as the second Orts Commandant! My Father wrote her back and told her of his "discovery". No reply was ever received.

My grandpa, Eddie, dropped out of high school at 16 and joined the Marine Corp. He was at Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, and Tarawa. I saw Saving Private Ryan with him, and he talked a lot after that. He thought the movie was too hollywoodized, and that the best scene was when the guys are trying to save their friend, but dies.

Eddie said the beach scene wasn't bad, and that they couldn't make it any worse or the audience would walk out. The movie couldn't capture everything: vibrations rocking your body, ear drums aching, eyes strained, the taste of bloody salt water in your mouth, the warmth of your own body fluids running out, the smell of burned sand and flesh. He said Tarawa was the worst battle he was in, guys behind him were floating into the boat's propellers and bullets were riddling around him. At night he was attacked Japs, got bayoneted, but he smashed one of their heads in with his rifle. Their body was still there in morning, with the brain and eyes falling out of the collapsed skull. Later, when they were under artillery fire, one guy just got up and started screaming and jumping, and a shell landed near him. His whole body flew in the air, and it glittered cause there were hundreds of pieces of fragments in him.

Eddie got malaria, and was sent home. The weird thing is, every seven years he kinda went crazy. He'd put on his old Marine dress blues, get on a bus, and go to his brothers house. It acted really weird, out of it, but didn't do any harm. After about a week he was normal again. The doctor said it happened cause of the malaria, who knows. He said he would have joined the Marines again, but he'd never want to go through combat again. He only told me a lot of this stuff, because he's a history teacher, and he understands that if know tells the secret truths like combat, less people will understand. He has a great loving for history, but he passed away years ago.

Thank you all for posting your stories, I love reading them! Keep posting! Urge all of us who can to interview all of those who were involved before their stories are gone.

My maternal grandfather was 17 when he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve in 1943. He spent some time out east in Halifax and was then transferred to Scotland. From there he was part of the crew of the landing craft LCIL 299 which was transferring the reserves on Juno Beach during Dday. I know from research that his boat hit a mine enroute to Juno and he had to spend some time on the beach. Unfortunately he never talked about his experience, if we did question him, he shook his head and start crying mumbling about bodies and heads in the water.Needlessly to say that is far as we ever got from him. Really regret not asking him more, maybe not about the landings but with other things such as if he did convoy work or such.

On the other hand, my paternal grandfather who was in his 30's during the war, was originally born in Italy but had been working in Germany since 1935. He was working in Cologne I believe in an ammunition factory with Russian POWs (but I have to confirm this, maybe its a translation thing). He said he remembers waves and waves of American bombers flying over head as they were going towards somewhere to bomb and watching the planes overhead dogfighting (I think that this is the word for it) He said that he and his friends would go dancing at night and since most of the men were at the front, there were plenty of ladies to dance with :-) I know that he told me that he was drafted into the Italian army but he fled and went back to Germany. Met and shook hands with Mussolini three times ( I swear that this is the highlight of his life :-)

I plan on interviewing him this year ( with my dad acting as translator) to save these stories for myself and for my children. If there are anymore interesting ones, I will definitely post them. He turns 94 in about 3 weeks and he still thinks that Mussollini was the greatest thing to come out of Italy since pizza, God Bless him!

M

hi everyone..im new here..and this thread urged me to sign up..i so much enjoyed the stories posted here..very powerful stories..in relation to the thread there's a short animation based on the recollections of a WWII US soldier that was part of the Battle of Bulge..it's as powerful and moving as the stories posted here..here's the link check it out

Germans in the Woods by Tim Rauch | Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation

I am Brazilian and had one Brazilian grandfather that almost fought in Italy, however, the war ended before he was sent there.

This story is worth of a movie.