Re: What did your family do in WW2?
When I was growing up it seemed that every adult male with the exception of my Grandfathers (exempt because they were farmers) had been in one or another of the military services. Everything from Air Force to Marine Corps.
One aunt was a Nurse posted to England. Most of the women worked near home and were nurses or teachers.
One Uncle commanded a bomber squadron . One served with Pappy Boyington. One was a combat engineer who fought on New Guinea . One was a Marine who fought through most of the island campaigns. He said Tarawa was the worst of them all.
Some were at Normandy all the way to the occupation. Some from North Africa all the way to Italy at the end of the war.
It seemed as though someone was at every major battle fought by the Americans in the entire war.
One was killed on Bougainville.
For most of his service my dad was on one of the smallest ships in the navy, an LCI. Most of his stories were about the terrible storms in the Pacific. When the war ended he was in route to Japan with a full load of troops for Operation Olympic.
My wife is German. Her Grandfather was an Aircraft Engineer for Messerschmitt. He did a lot of the work on the Me 262. On the other side of her family they were ethnic Germans living in the Ukraine. Her grandfather was drafted into the Russian Army, given up for dead, and her Grandmother fled at the end of the war with 6 children, on foot from around Kiev all the way back to Germany. They arrived in Dresden and left there only hours before the bombing.
Most of her parents stories are of the hardships and privation during and after the war.
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