What stories do you know about your (Great?) grandparents experience of WW2?

[HappyPeach]

Inspired by my other thread, I realise I know nothing about my grandparents war experience. Other than one Nan was in the WRVS, though I don't know what she did. All my grandparents died years ago so I can't ask now. I wish I knew their stories. What do you know about your relatives experiences?

One worked at Bletchley; one served in the navy and learned a trade; one worked in a munitions factory; seven were evacuated.

My grandparents were polish residents living in one of the areas that was invaded early on. They fled before the troops arrived but my grandfather, a chemical engineer returned and was captured. As an intellectual he was sent to one of the Siberian prisoner camps where 2 thirds of the inmates died before the rest were released, one being him.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was attempting to escape Poland and flee to the UK. She spoke german and managed to talk her way out of a number of situations convincing occupying forces she was german. So many storys from her.

Getting on a train but lacking the papers so were told to get off, she then just went to the back and got back on.

Fleeing a town that was being bombed, walking towards the next town only to have it bombed in front of them while they hid in a ditch. She eventaully made it to the UK but discovered her husband had not made it. She then LEFT the uk again to find him. By this time he was fighting for the allies in italy so she went to find him there.

They returned to the UK after the war and had 4 children :) this thread has reminded me i need to read her autobiography manuscript!! She only died in 2002 at 95!

Ha - that would be my parents! I didn't know my grandparents.
My mother would have been a young teen, was in Ireland and her stories were mainly about food shortages, and how she could never pass by lemons in the shops as an adult as they never had them back then.
My father was about 10 at the start and was eventually evacuated, but before that experienced bombings. He didn't really talk about it, but I remember once we started to watch a war movie and he couldn't do it - he left the room. His brother was killed in the war at 19.
He did talk about never feeling he had a real home again (his mother - who was divorced - left him in England and went abroad for work).
I think we have no concept of the times that generation lived through.

My maternal grandfather was a RAF pilot. He was top of his course, which meant he really should have been a fighter pilot (and statistically dead) but because he was so gifted and had a lovely mild manner he was chosen to be sent on loan to the USAF in washington state as a pilot instructor. By the time he came back to the UK he was too long in the tooth to be a fighter pilot and so he flew as a glider tug pilot on the Rhine crossing and also sorties into Norway dropping supplies and Reconnissance agents behind enemy lines. He flew his plane through the Fjords getting badly shot up, and limping home, sadly his tail gunner, only a teenager, was killed. My Grandad always felt personally responsible for this. He threw his medals in the bin during one of his many house moves in his postwar civil service career. He was only just 24yo on VE day, it's crazy to think how young he was.

My paternal grandfather, crashed his motorbike under a lorry during the 1930s putting himnself into a coma for 10 days, as a result he was not fit to fight, his profession was also protected I think. During the war by day he worked as a mechanic on the buses, then he went up on to the roofs as an air raid warden and then after the raids (Bristol) he went out as an Auxillary fire fighter to try and deal with the aftermath. The fireservice has a protocol of always sending the 2 fire engines by different route in case of road blockages, one night the other fire engine didn't turn up, as it took a direct hit from a bomb.

One of my Mum’s cousins came over on the Kindertransport and lived with my great gran. Another of her cousins was in a concentration camp (Theresienstadt). He escaped and managed to get back to the U.K. He would never say how. My great gran and great great gran were German and had to register with the police. The entire extended family was on holiday in Budapest, visiting relatives there, when war broke out, and somehow managed to get back to U.K. even though some of them had German passports. They stayed in London throughout the war. One of my Mum’s German cousins was a POW somewhere in U.K. and the family used to send him parcels. The child who came over on the Kindertransport went back to Berlin after the war. His mother had married a Pole and had forged papers, so survived. My great grandmother’s sister disappeared from their village and was never heard of again. DD2 is named after her.

DGF1 - coal miner, so reserved occupation. DM spent a lot of her schooldays in the bomb shelter as they were in the middle of the coal fields. DF also had a small holding and grew food for family- DM was one of 8 kids. There were a few stories about piglets which were the runt of the litter who may or may not have been reared without being declared to the Ministry of Food.🤔The butcher had a share as well.
GF 2 - carpenter - served WW1 in Royal Engineers or its precursor was gassed quite badly, never talkedaboutit. Spent WW2 doing reparations on damaged houses and later in the war was building pontoons in Poole Harbour for D Day landings.
GM was housewife, but like others invited Canadian servicemen based in the area for a meal after Church. Several kept in touch as did their families. One lady wrote me a lovely letter about her dad's memories of my dad and his parents after dad died. Another became a politician tried to persuade me to work in Canada as I was in a shortage occupation at the time.
I think my grandparents also had gifts sent from Canada, including food, in the early post war period as well.

All I know from my maternal grandfather is what he confided in my Dad who was in the RAF when he and my mum married. The only bit my Grandad would talk about openly was his time with the USAF as an instructor, which he really enjoyed. He was very traumatised and carried huge survivor guilt.

Ww2 my grandfathers were both in reserved occupations.

Ww1 my great grandfather got a Victoria Cross (inspiring my name change)

Fathers side... mining village. So reserved occupation. But even superficial research has thrown wierd stuff im.not pursuing out of respect for my father. .

Motbers side. My grandfather, prewar, was a Nazi supporter after a Youth trip where they were given the hard sell. (Employment, infrastructure etc).But he then went on to the Far East side of the war, POW, became a lifelong pacifist mainly concerned with Catholic/Protestant ideals amongst the Scottish youth. He was honestly a good man. My grandmother was a school girl during the war, lost a brother, supported my grandmother.

One of my grandads was in Africa (one of the desert rats) and was also at the battle of Monte Cassino. My dad didn’t meet him until after the war, and it was a very unhappy relationship by all accounts. The other was a policeman so a reserved occupation - he seemed to spend most of it on bomb duty.

My Mum was 7 in 1939 in Southampton where Spitfires were designed and built. She wrote her memories up and filled a couple of school notebooks.

I think the most striking memory was a German plane coming down low and strafing with machine guns when she was out with her Mum (daytime). Her Mum threw her over a low wall into a garden and pulled a load of sunflowers down over her. Don't think flowers have much capacity in bullet protection........

Her parents were approached by an American serviceman they had come to know, he wanted to marry my Mum. She was 14, but he said where he was from (South) that was a good age to marry. She had barely spoken to him, he was her parents friend!

There’s a diary that was started in 1939 and runs past the end of the war, so a lot of the details are captured there. It covers some major family events in that time like births and deaths too. I also remember one relative speaking a lot about their army experiences (in England/Scotland). Another served overseas and refused to speak of it at all to their children or grandchildren.

Name changed as outing

My Grandmothers one was a secretary I think not really sure where or what. The other was a physiotherapist with the Queen Alexandra nursing Corp

My Grandfathers one was at university doing Medicine, which was a protected occupation so he could carry on training . Later on he was training in a hospital in London and was on incendiary duty, so was putting out fires on roofs during the blitz. My other Grandfather was in the RAF in Egypt and Burma

All I know is one of my gp’s signed up for WW1 at 14 and also Ww2, fighting at Ypres and the Somme.

reading between the lines I think he had serious MH issues and PTSD as a result. My mum never spoke about him much at all. Couple of veiled comments about shell shock and how so many were shot for “cowardice”.

he did survive both wars but I get the impression it left him broken and he died very young, long before I was born.

DGM1: in East End of London, DF briefly evacuated but DGM decided she couldn't bear it and brought him back. A lot of poverty and bombing
DGF1: no idea
DF: Schooling badly effected as they were continually being bombed so he moved school >10 times. Had happy memories of playing in bomb sites.

DGM2: in occupied country. Worked in the resistance, arrested and spent rest of war in prison. When she was released my DM, who was v young, didn't know who she was
DGF2: in occupied country. Spent his time being an alcoholic and failing to bring up large family effectively as a single parent. My DM ended up with rickets, and has hideous memories of having to hide money from him.
DM: Earliest memory is hiding from Germans shooting in their house. Life long trauma from her childhood. Actually hates Sweden the most for being neutral.

My grandfather bombed Dresden

Through work (NHS) I met a awfully awfully posh chap who escaped from Stalag Luft III. He had dementia so would tell his story every day given the chance.

He was a linguist and was a reconnassaince photographer, shot down over France. The pilot (his best mate) was killed. He was put in to Stalag Luft III. He wasn't involved in "The Great Escape", as he said he 'would have been dead' if he had been. After "The Great Escape" the Germans decided in order to avoid a repeat incident that they would seperate the remaining prisoners, whilst in transit to a new camp he managed to escape. With his fluent French he was able to join up with the resistance and they got him back to England. He (and his kids and grandkids) remained friends for life with the resistance fighter (and family) who got him home.

He died over 20 years ago and I still can't believe I met someone who was actualy there when "The Great Escape" happened, I feel privileged to have heard his story.

My grandad was wanted as a ploughman in WW1. Other one was too young.
Ww2 one drove ambulances and the other was a policeman. Grandmothers were looking after their children

Great grandparents? My grandfather was too old for WW2.

He did serve in WW1 though.

On my dad's side, a grandfather fought - possibly a more "interesting" war than he ever admitted although he was a very gentle soul. His brother was killed around D-Day. On my mum's side, a great grandfather who went - along with his three brothers - to the Somme. By some miracle, all of them returned.

Maternal grandfather a miner so reserved occupation. paternal grandfather would love to know more but he only gave very limited details towards the end of his life that alluded to him being a secret agent. We do know he was in the army and was a skilled linguist fluent in French and German and generally brilliant mind (double first from Oxford) so it wouldn't surprise me.

My Mum remembered walking home (presumably the morning after an air raid) and their house wasn’t there anymore, it was a pile of rubble!

My grandfather died in the Atlantic after his ship was torpedoed by a U-boat. Nearly the entire crew died, except two people who were picked up by another ship. It was February, the water would have been freezing so if the explosion didn’t kill then, they’d have frozen to death in the water. No bodies recovered. It makes me sad thinking about it. ☹️

DM was born the year WW2 started. She talked about it was her job to feed the chickens - the eggs supplemented rations.

DF was 9 when WW2 started. They both lived in a town, bombed because Rolls Royce had a factory there - making the plane engines. DF often talked about finding ammo in bomb sites.

My grandfather applied to join the navy; but as he was a bacteriologist and pathologist in public health, they told him, he was more use at home.

My other grandfather worked in heavy haulage, planning safe routes to carry big loads (like a steam train) about - I think that was a reserved occupation too?

Both my grandmothers were SAHMs.

They were all too young to be involved in WW1 - being born around 1900.

Grandad didn't like to talk about it much. He served with his elder brother in North Africa and then Italy. He and his brother stopped an Italian woman being raped by some other soldiers, which made them rather unpopular. They also used to smuggle food into a convent orphanage for the kids.

50-odd years later, when he was dying, he asked to see a priest. The priest who turned up was Italian, and on secondment from the Vatican. It turned out he had been an orphan in that very convent during the war.