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?

Oh and between 1939 and 1995 even the Sunday silence wasn't national. I mean they did it at the cenotaph and if you were in a church you'd do it, or if you wanted to do it personally you could I guess, but otherwise people didn't observe. Certainly people in airports and train stations and the like didn't.

But I suppose "Every year since 1995 the UK falls silent for two minutes because a Tory PM couldn't control his cabinet members' predilection for rent boys" isn't as good a story as "Every year since 1918 the UK falls silent to remember its brave heroes".

There's a lot of forgetting, in this tradition of remembrance.

My Polish grandad (as a teenager) was rounded up by the nazis and forced to fight as canon fodder on their behalf. He was captured by the British and put in a POW camp.

The Polish then came through the camps and took those willing for the Polish defence, so he then fought against the Nazis on the allied side.

He ended up training in Scotland and settled their after the war.

it’s a very interesting history and lots of documents showing him fighting on both sides of the war, and he was virtually a boy.

Thanks for the explanation, @BruceHellerAlmighty , even though it’s depressing. 😂

I remember doing it at school on 11th November, don’t really remember the Sunday one.

Lol yeah depressing and also a bit ridiculous - two party leaders trying to out-silence each other. If only they'd actually been silent!

We didn't do it at school but then we were papists so we wouldn't. Too busy flinging incense around and being silent and sad in mass about our original sins etc.

My granny was a young nurse in the Red Cross in the Netherlands in WW2. She said she used to help very injured soldiers ‘go’.
“To the toilet?”, we’d ask as children.
It was only later when we were adults that she explained she would help euthanise soldiers who had little to no chance of survival due to their wounds. You know, go go.

When the Netherlands was occupied, she said they would try to eat anything they could during the Hongerwinter in 44-45. People would die from ingesting tulip bulbs, especially small children, and the population of stray cats & dogs around The Hague quickly vanished as they were caught & eaten.

She did however have an affair with a dashing British soldier - resulting in my Dad - after she left her violent, Nazi sympathiser husband. A shame he was already married! So his best friend stepped up to the plate, they got married & had 50 great years together! However, although I know of Dad’s real family & he met his sister once in his 20s, doing a DNA ancestry sample would probably open a can of worms.

When my Dad was dying in May this year, around his death bed his brother told us a tale about their older sister’s husband. I remembered this Uncle as a child, seemed like a nice German bloke. My sister & I found out that good old Uncle X was much older than our auntie, and was a decorated (by Adolf himself) Luftwaffe pilot, and my Auntie has basically married him to stick 2 fingers up at her mum, my granny!

We always had 2 minute silence in school when the 11th fell on a weekday and also on the nearest Sunday at Church right the way through 80s and 90s.

It was a big thing then. It was the one day a year we didn't have assembly first thing so we could do the silence (complete with last post and reading out of names connected with the school who had died in ww1 and ww2) at 11am.
The church service was also moved later as well as normally finished the service before 11 and was always a full parade service for brownies etc.

I remember wanting to get my poppy early in the hope I could get one with a leaf as not all had leaves on back then.

I don't doubt your own personal story but sufficiently few people did by the mid 90s that The Sun had to campaign long and hard to bring us round to their way of thinking.

WW2 and great-grandparents. Bless you. My grandparents were teenagers in WW1 and coming on to middle age in WW2. My grandfather hit the sweet spot as he was too young by a year to go fight in WW1 (although he did say MANY lied about their age so they could go), and was considered too old to be sent overseas to fight in WW2 so was given a service role domestically instead. So I never got any stories of active service in the trenches but plenty of how things were at the time here and about the men who did go and never came back or came back very different people, some physically and many mentally. Funnily, I also got stories of the Spanish flu pandemic they lived through as well as rat plagues necessitating swathes of housing to be demolished and the Great Depression where bread and dripping was a luxury etc. They were much better people than we are, and just got on with things without the hysteria and moaning, like chalk and cheese with the young people of today.

I’m pretty ancient, so I know something of what my DF did. Royal Navy, 2 years in the Battle of the Atlantic, very lucky to survive that - tiny little ships, , 50:foot winter waves, German subs constantly trying to torpedo them. At one point he shared his cabin with a rat called Oscar.

Later in the Far East, involved in the last action against the Japanese. His ship took in some of the skeletal prisoners of war from Changi jail in Singapore.

DF was a very jolly type but hardly ever mentioned anything about it. I remember the film The Cruel Sea (about the Battle of the Atlantic) coming on TV - he quietly left the room, wouldn’t watch it.

DM was on her own in London during the Blitz. During DF’s few brief leaves she said they used to lie in bed and talk about all the lovely food they’d have once the war (and rationing) were over.

I have one my grandads war diary. He was in from the off and was part of D Day and then a desert rat in Africa.

He was on a firing squad (horrific) he also won a medal for bravery after catching a German tank at the end of the war.

My grandpa only told me 1 story from the war. He was part of the invasion of Malaysia. He said they met no resistance when they landed. He noticed a beautiful bungalow at the edge of the beach. A Japanese officer went inside and blew himself up in it.

My Dad is Irish so his parents were involved in the war ,
My mum's Dad failed the army medical so was part of the home front and sadly died of a heart attack at the age of 41 just a few years after the war ended,
They took in two evacuees my mum was three when the war ended she remember, s very little ,apart from she had a micky mouse gas mask
My step Grandad was in the war though he was stationed in Africa ,and was an Army cook

My grandfather had a large arable farm during WW2... An American plane The Sir Baboon Mcgoon crash landed on a huge field opposite the main farm.. It had to stay in situ till it was repaired.. A very long runway had to be constructed to enable it to take again. Grandad had to have a hedge cut down too...

GD was a miner so not called up (reserved occupation.) He used to work 10 hours down mine, wash and then go out for a shift as Home Guard patrolling the beach. He was a good shot as he'd been shooting rabbits for the pot since he was 10. I'm not sure when he ever slept....

GM was looking after their 2 children (baby and toddler). Had to often sleep with them in a leaky Anderson shelter whilst air raids were overheard. They lived in the NE and their town was bombed pretty heavily.

In contrast, when my DS was small I used to worry about if he would wake up when his mobile stopped playing music...it's a totally totally different world. The older I get, the more admiration I have for my grandparents generation. I wish my GPs were still here so I could tell them. GM has been dead 30 years and I still think about her almost daily...

@Grumpyoldpersonwithcats
So sorry to hear your grandfather was in Changi. My grandfather said very little about what happened during the liberation. I know he told my mum a few stories and always said what he witnessed was horrific. He thought the Japanese were the most sadistic people on the planet as the torture methods he saw were unbelievable.

It's amazing how they classed people as so fit after the war. Both my grandads were classed as fit too. My grandfather mentioned above suffered throughout his life from the aftereffects of malaria amongst other things and my other grandfather struggled to find decent work as he had many ailments caused/caught during the war and he always looked ill and much older than his years. My dad told me his parents were both always out working low paid jobs trying to keep their heads above water.

My grandparents were fleeing the Japanese and my Dads little sister died, he never talked about her until he knew he was dying. He hated the Japanese and refused anything made in Japan in the house.

My husbands Grandfather was in the army and was part of the D day landings, we followed his route through France once and got embraced by a French restauranteur when he asked why we were there and given free brandy as the Brits had liberated his Father, that was actually a very moving moment.

His other Grandfather was a top civil servant so was a reserved occupation and was involved with disaster planning at the highest level.

I had the privilege to meet two women who had both survived living in mainland Europe as teenagers during WWII one was from Belarus and the Germans had hung her brother in the town square along with many other men. The other was a German who was grateful she was liberated by the British, she actually married one of her liberators. She was embarrassed she was German.

@PissedOffNeighbour22
He spent his first year as a POW in a number of smaller camps, which he said were much worse than Changi.
Unsurprisingly he also suffered with multiple health issues towards the end if his life.
It was my father btw not my GF.

No I'm not. I'm just curious to understand the history.

I do know some people who survived Changi and their experiences were horrific.

My Great Grandfather was a fireman in East London during the 2nd WW, he died before I was born but my nan (his daughter) said she hardly saw him for the entire war as he was basically on call and on duty

Great grandfather turned a picture of hitler around to face the wall but was scared son would report him to hitler youth so turned it back round the other way when he was in the house. He did not want to fight and support the nazis and continued to work on the mines so was permitted not to fight. Was taken outside and lined up with other men and a neighbour was shot in front of him by the nazis. He cycled 150 miles to collect my Nan who was sent to Austria as a child and would ride behind the American and British tanks. My Nan told me how some of her friends ‘disappeared’ when she was a child.

My Nana s family home in Poland was seized by the Russian army and the family were transported to Syberia for Labour. They were all split up at some point and they lost the parents to disease.
She travelled with her sister through what is now Iraq to somewhere in Africa to a refugee camp and recruited by the British WAFs.
Im loving reading these amazing stories of personal accounts.

I have family letters sent home during the war and my grandfathers letters to his dad.

My great grandmother died from 'shock' the day after the Belfast Blitz in April 1941. Almost 1000 people died that night when the Luftwaffe bombed the city. My grandad, her son in law, was a fire watcher.

My other grandfather was a fitter and he worked in a Liverpool shipyard during WWII. He sent money home every week to my granny in Belfast.

This thread has inspired my to find out some more information about them all.

Have name changed as this is especially outing, but he wrote his memories up and they are preserved online by the bbc. He was a child/teen during the war and at school when a planet crashed. Trigger warning: graphic details

www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/18/a4056518.shtml

Paternal GF was gassed in First World War but survived (until 87!) so was in home guard (dad's army) during WW2. Paternal GM did some nursing during both wars. Maternal GF was too young to serve in WW1 and too old for WW2, but also served in home guard. Maternal GM was knocked off her bike by a bomb falling in the next field over, but not hurt.
DF was evacuated from London twice during WW2, once to family and once to friend of family on a farm. This set the course of his whole life, and he didn't want to go home after the end of the war.