The older persons here will probably have had the honour to talk with men from WW2.
Any anecdotes of what they said to you?
Here is one.
A friend of mine when I was at the bank (1976) . He was at Dunkirk. He seemed pretty old in 76 so must have been 30 'ish at Dunkirk.
He told me that when standing in the water up to his middle, a boat came past with the shout of "any engineers". He thought he would take advantage of this and shouted out "I am an engineer" (he was not).
He got in the boat.
From his cap they worked out he was not an engineer and threw him overboard.
He said when he got back to England he got a camp bed and two cigarettes. Easy life.
martin :)
My Grandfather (one of Monty's boys) told far too many tales, which led me to think they wern't real anyway, about his time in North Africa.
One that springs to mind was of his men finding an antenna sticking up in the sand. Nothing else just a long spindly metal stick. As the BSM (Battery Sergeant Major) he directed the minions to dig and find out what it was attached to. First they found a box body top, then a truck roof and then deeper and deeper until they had uncovered a complete radio direct finding truck. The equipment inside had been smashed and it looked like it had run into very soft sand and the crew being unable to extract it had abandoned it. This was the source of many souvenirs and revellery until it was confiscated by the RMP (Royal Military Police) as an intelligence asset.
Further to that My father was a national serviceman who served for many years in Germany and the far east during various emergencies together with being in Aden until its evacuation (family tour so yes I was there as a small nipper) and had many tales to tell.
Fond memories
Derek
Too late for WWII
A family friend who passed several years back now did part of his National Service in Egypt I believe. He told us how he was on a vehicle patrol out in the desert which got hit by a dust storm. When the storm had passed they spotted some old wire and a battered signpost ahead of them... as they passed it on the far side they saw a Danger Minefield sign...
I have known two Arnhem vets, but neither would tell me about their experiences.
My mother was an air raid warden during the blitz in central London. She told the story that she was the last person inside St Clement Danes in the Strand/Aldwych on the night it was fire bombed by the Luftwaffe. It was her job to ensure there was no one left in the building. In recognition of her courage the church made a cross on a plinth for her from the remains of the door. We still have this.
Rather more famously one of my father's close friends was Stuart Archer, who was in bomb disposal. He was reluctant to talk about how he won the GC for many years, but as he got older he opened up. He was in south Wales in 1940. Details of his award can be found on Wikipedia. Latterly he was seen a great deal on TV as the leading light of the VC and GC society. He died in 2015 aged 100. My second name is Stuart after him.
John
When I was a nurse on an Acute Renal Unit, a patient was admitted who was German with one leg.
Naturally I struck up conversation with him and it turns out he was at Arnhem where he lost his leg. He was involved in Grabners attack.
Of course, I only had his word for this, but as a young 20 something, I believed him hook line and sinker!
My dad was in the Far East in the Royal Navy 1944/45 and talked of the kamikaze attacks. My two uncles also served in WW2, one was at Sword Beach on D Day as an 18yr old Marine piloting landing craft, he said very little! The other was in subs in the Mediterranean, he loved the navy and stayed in until the 1950's.
The main story they told was of their cousin who was killed on a cruiser during Russian convoys.
Dave
My dad told me once his REME recovery group used two Scammell recovery vehicles to pull out of a field, in Normandy, one of the first King Tigers to be captured intact. The crew had abandoned it, set the demolition charges (which failed to go off) because of the weight and situation it was very difficult recovery. He didn't say much about his time in the desert, Italy and Normandy. He talked a lot about his time in India after the Japanese surrender initially working for David Niven and later running a power station in Karachi (now in Pakistan) until the British left India.
Best wishes,
Martin Buck
My Grandad survived 4 weeks on the Western Front after being wounded by a mortar round during a night attack on his listening post. This was all my Grandad told me.
The German raiding party captured one of his comrades in the action but left behind one of theirs as a captive. This part of the story was provided subsequently by the curator of the Anglian Regiment Museum in Bury St Edmunds. Grandad was a "Cambridge" Suffolk.
My father served in the Blues in the late 40's and whilst on duty at Horseguards one night he heard the unmistakeable sound of a trooper marching slowly past but unseen in heavy boots. He reported it to his NCO in the morning and was told that everyone hears it once or twice.
As a RMP Corporal a few years later he trained Dingo Scout Car drivers. One driver was instructed by my father to go "straight across at the roundabout". His orders were followed exactly and the flower bed on the roundabout was ruined.
Mike
Father in Law, 1 Field Regiment RA, El Alamein to Athens via Cassino.
Wife's Uncle, 2 South Lancs KIA Normandy 1944
Grandad, 22 Dragoons, discharged wounded 1944
Two Liverpool Uncles MN both torpedoed at least once on Atlantic convoys.
The other Liverpool Uncle Royal Sigs dispatch rider 44-45, one of the first into Belsen.
Fairly average British family...
A few favourites. My father was telling me, then aged about ten, about arriving in the front line just in time to meet Rommel's first offensive. "So you retreated back here", I said, pointing to the map. "Retreated? Is that the word? If the Suez Canal hadn't been in the way we wouldn't have stopped running till we got to India." He had a lot more stories about the siege of Tobruk.
Great-Uncle Reg had two fingers missing. He told me that they'd been shot off by a sniper, and told my brother that they'd been cut off by a Prussian Guardsman's bayonet at Ypres. Later his wife told us about the accident in Tredegar steel works in the 1920s...
Reg and a comrade were assigned as a burial party disposing of long-dead bodies. Partway through a German barrage descended. "So what did you do?" "Do? We was in there with 'em!"
No active service anecdotes in our family but some interesting ones nonetheless. Both my grandfathers were invalided out of war service so their experiences and those of my Grandmothers were all about the Home Front. My Grandad Bill worked for the MOD and was involved with checking in on a multitude of small engineering firms on war contracts. Family tradition has it he later worked on the Centurion project where they actually made a 1:1 scale wooden mockup of the tank. As a skilled cabinet maker he was part of the design team... My Grandma worked in one of those firms where among other things she checked the tolerances of ammunition being machined. They had experiences of the Blitz and the Coventry raids.
Never got much out of my dad: did tell me that the flamethrower of his Wasp had a gruesome result on the unfortunate victims. He'd wanted to volunteer for submarines but got conscripted into the army.
Both grandfathers were in WW1. One was groundcrew in the RFC. Told me he went up in aircraft occasionally. Despite multiple layers of clothing it was freezing. His airfield was straffed by the Red Baron. After the war worked at Vickers in Elswick.
The other (paternal) was in the RE. Ended up in the Middle East in Mesopotamia (Iraq). Told me that he'd once seen Lawrence of Arabia; what was he like I asked; little bloke on a camel was his laconic reply.......
Seems he learned to swear in Urdu judging by his treatment of Indian door-to-door salesmen......
Neil
I'm with Neil. My parents were both in the war (WWII) but neither were in the forces. My dad was seconded to the Admiralty as a quantity surveyor and spent the war at Invergordon in the north of Scotland. My mum volunteered at 18 as an air raid warden. She live off the Strand in central London and her beat was around Charing Cross, Covent Garden, the Aldwych and so forth. She was on duty throughout the height of the Blitz. She was the last person in St Clement Danes church in the Strand on the night that the Luftwaffe bombed it. Incendiaries hit it and burnt the church out completely. She was responsible for ensuring no one was inside. Today it is the RAF church. Apologies if I have posted this before.
John
I believe my other grandfather was a volunteer fireman. However his volunteering was relatively short-lived. My Grandfather's abiding memory of the blitz is their house being hit during a raid. His father was a proud gardener and bewailed the loss of his precious vegetable plot among the wreckage. As his son was carted away in an ambulance all my grandfather could recall his dad saying was "What about me bloody carrots!"...
My grandmother's house was also hit during a raid, but not seriously. An incendiary hit their roof leaving a hole, but bounced off and set their garden fence alight. My grandmother and her sister piled out out in their nighties to put out the fire. They were tasked with filling sandbags and were reluctant to waste all their hard work so sprinkled sand on the fire somewhat ineffectually. She recalls how her dad shouted to them "Use the bloody lot... it's not a salt cellar!". They spent days afterwards listening to the rain pinging into a tin bath they'd placed under the hole. A lucky escape.
My grandmother later visited her older sister who happened to be in Coventry. She was caught outside later that evening during a raid while on a train. The train stopped and since she was the only passenger the fireman ushered her onto the footplate and they proceeded in the relative shelter of the cab.
I have mentioned my dad and uncles service in WW2, but both grand fathers who served in WW1 with the Kings Royal Rifles and Middlesex Regt then re enlisted for WW2. One serving as a Red Cap and the other in the ROAC. I remember my nan saying the one year they were all home for Christmas, was just like the scene from a John Mills film (In which we serve). :D
D&B
My mother tells me one story from an air-raid on Dundee, near the docks. Her father was with the 8th Army and so not present. When she and her mother heard a series of nearby explosions, despite there having been do siren, she was ushered into a cupboard under the stairs where they both huddled down under a table, put there for that purpose, and covered their heads. Eventually all went quiet and they cautiously emerged to find the kitchen soaked and covered in broken glass from my grandfather's home-brew which he was hoping would be complete for after the war. The time it had been left was a tad longer than expected.
My grandfather never spoke of the war at all. It was only after his death, when I was given his campaign medals, that I learnt he'd been with this formation. He'd fought in North Africa and Italy as a gunner.
Derek
Ben is now the custodian of grandfathers, fathers, Hilary and my medals, all of which sit safely in two secure Quality Street tins in his bedroom.
D&B
My Father served in North Africa and Italy; his 21st birthday party was rowing in a leaky boat from Kos to Turkey, evading the invading Germans. At 21, my mother was on the top level of a bus at the station when a passing doodlebug finished its run and tipped down; it was heading directly for the bus and my mother resigned herself to dying when the eggcup of fuel that would have been thrown forward as the nose tipped down kicked the engine into life, raising the nose so it flew over the railway station and exploded on the far side of the station.