Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
My grandfather was pretty rich from real estate in the coastal province of Zhejiang in China until the Japanese invaded. He and his family relocated to the inland wartime capital and worked as a telegraph operator for the war.
The Japanese took everything from everyone back then, and nothing was the same afterwards. Coupled with a civil war right after and things were pretty crappy.
My grandfather was an American in Papua New Guinea. He never really talked about except for one night that I remember. He painted a coconut, with the husk still on, and mailed it home to his wife. She kept it all her life. Grandpa said he was a machine gunner and his job was to shoot the Japanese out of the trees.
He did bring home a Japanese flag his whole platoon (or unit or what not) had signed. They had fought the Japanese out of a town and took the flag they left behind. Grandpa said he had a pet parrot would ride on his shoulder and stay on his tent ridge. He said at mess time it would hop on the table and walk up and down the table eating food off of people’s plates.
It was mean to other people, but it liked grandpa. All in all, I think he saw and did things he would rather not remember. Like I said, he never wanted to talk about it.
My grand uncle was part of a “clean up crew” in the Philippines after the battle of Leyte. So after all the fighting was done, they’d send his unit in to clear out the bodies of the fallen Japanese. He said that they would loot their bodies (take “treasures” like knives, swords, gold off the teeth) and then put their bodies on a giant landing craft (the kind that open up on a beach), and take them out to sea to dispose of them. He says he’ll never forget watching the sharks just go to town on the dead. Haunts him to this day.
The intention was to give them a sea burial since the Japanese left their dead upon retreat. It wasn’t meant to desecrate the deceased further.
He never said much but he did talk once about throwing explosives of some kind in a river to catch fish. He was in the south Pacific as a Marine.
I just remembered another one, he did not smoke so he traded his cigarettes till he had enough for a typewriter so he could type his letters to his wife and my mom his daughter who was born after he went to war.
My grandpa very rarely talked about it, but he was in the Pacific in WW2. He caught malaria and was sent to a hospital ship to recover, and the Japanese sunk the ship. So he floated for like 10 hours clinging to the wreckage, with active malaria, before finally being rescued. And after all that, he re-enlisted and fought in the Korean War also.
My grandfather joined up in 1943 when he turned 18 years old.
He was stationed on a Pacific island where he basically became a Radar O’Reilly. His family were Mennonites, so he was a conscientious objector.
He was a medic, clerical worker, cook, ditch digger, driver, and anything else that he was asked. Most of his time was spent cleaning up after everyone else and watching for air raids by the Japanese Air Force.
Something sweet:
My grandparents saved all their love-letters sent back and forth during that time.
They had just met and had fallen in love before his departure. So they carried on their romance and developed the relationship through beautifully written letters.
Those letters expressed every emotion – from the realities and horrors of war to the abiding hope they’d be reunited safe & sound. They were married not long after grandfather’s return.
My grandfather befriended a German family during the war. They would cook him meals and the mother would wash his clothes. One day hey loaded up a box with eggs and used toilet paper to make sure they didn’t break. The next day there was a note in his laundry thanking him for the eggs, but an even bigger thank you for the toilet paper. They hadn’t had any in years.
My grandfather would talk about the training, time with his unit while being transported, but mostly about a little kid he was helping feed in China after Japan surrendering. He would just think aloud about what happened to him and if he was alright.
He never talked about combat. I did walk into his house once and the history channel was on showing a USMC graveyard on Okinawa and he was crying.
Grandfather was drafted- broke his femur in basic training.
Spent the entirety of WWII behind a desk in Oklahoma processing logistics and supply chain management requests.
My grandfather was in the Royal Navy, in the Arctic Convoys, delivering much-needed supplies to the Russians in Murmansk. Winston Churchill described the Convoys as “the worst journey in the world”. My grandfather initially put his life jacket on as trained to do – when one of the older sailors laughed and told him “don’t worry about it son, you’ll freeze to death in under a minute anyway”.
They’d often have to chip away the thick ice on ships to prevent them capsizing. His ship was involved in numerous battles against larger, heavier-armed German ships, as well as u-boats and planes. He told me how his ship had to use its last remaining torpedo to scuttle fellow crippled Royal Navy ship, HMS Edinburgh, which was carrying heaps of gold bullion from Stalin – to prevent it slipping into enemy hands.
My grandad was also in PNG and Borneo but not with the AIF, the CMF.
He said they used to bayonet dead and dying Japanese because they would play dead and shoot them in the back if they walked past. He had zero remorse about it.
All he said was hunger drives men to eat bark off trees, trying to boil it to a soup or just raw. He had so much praise for the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels though, they saved the nation according to him.
Editors note: The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels were indigenous locals in Papua New Guinea who served as war carriers and brought supplies to the Australian Army. They were insanely crucial to the war effort.
My great grandfather (and his son, my grandfather) both served. Great grandad though was a tank mechanic and at Tobruk and El Alamein he was part of a recovery crew to go out and get knocked out tanks to strip for parts or patch them back up. Apparently they used to have to hose out the old crews bodies with waste water and sand. Fucked him up mentally.
My grandpa had been in premed when he had to go to war. His ship got hit by the Japanese. They hit the medical quarters and all of the doctors were killed. So there was a guy that needed emergency surgery and my grandpa had to do the surgery. There’s a photo of him performing surgery with one of the other guys holding the surgical textbook open for him. I think it was an emergency appy so I guess pretty straight forward but I’d have been scared shitless.
I had an Great Uncle who was part of the occupying forces in Germany. He loved dogs, and purchased a full blooded German Shepard while over seas. He couldn’t keep the dog with him so he had a German Family look after the dogs. Meat was hard to come by, so every week or so, my Uncle would bring the family meat to feed the dog.
It was only after getting the dog home my uncle discovered the dog absolutely loved sauerkraut, and didn’t quite know what to do with the meat. It turns out the German family was taking the meat for the dog, and eating it themselves, and feeding the dog sauerkraut.
On a lighter note…