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?

DGD1 was in the navy during WW2 and based in Iceland - he was a bit of a rogue and came home with his kit bag bursting with booty he sold on the black market. He died when I was 12 so I never got to ask him about his war.

DGD2 was in the Ordnance Corps. He had his 37th birthday crossing to Normandy on D-Day + 1 He worked on the Mulberry harbour at Arromanche and ended his war as part of the force that liberated the Channel Islands - we'd bypassed the islands and they were only set free atl the very end of the war. He told my DF a few tales but I never asked.

My maternal DGM died when I was very young and Dad's mum got quite grumpy when asked about the past but not for any particular reason.

My Mum worked in a wool weaving factory, learning to lip read because of the noise, she started at 14. Dad was a schoolboy and evacuated for a short time.

The reason for the leaves was that the collectors were delivered multiples of three boxes - one with the petals, one with stalks and centres, one with leaves and pins - and you had to sit there for days after work/college/school assembling every poppy before you could start collecting.

The plastic had sharp edges and by the time you had enough for a two hour session standing outside the supermarket, the entire family had blisters on their fingers. Sometimes you ran out of leaves and sometimes your fingers were just too sore to separate each one from the paper they were stamped into along with the plastic and wrangling sharp pins to put each one into the paper.

My Grandad Bill was 18 in 1932. He was homeless and joined the Communist Party... he was paid to break up meetings of Moseley's Fascist Blackshirts. Which he enjoyed because he liked to fight.

In 1933 he joined the British Army as he knew he would get 3 meals a day for the first time in his life. But the recruiting officer was very rude to him and said 'you're from Manchester, you lot are all illiterate' & Grandad was so angry he punched him unconscious.. he was put in the military prison but then another officer got him out, saying 'we need someone like you in the Army'!

So that was the start of the best years of Grandads life, the Army years. The Army life suited him very well as he got to learn new skills (he was very intelligent) in tank driving & tank mechanics, then in teaching others those skills. Also there was endless cheap alcohol in the mess & lots of fights with locals to get into. He was promoted & demoted multiple times!

By Ww2 he was in the Tank regiment stationed in Bovington and his regular pub was the White Swan at Poole Harbour (aka the Mucky Duck). From the slums of Salford, Bovington was paradise.
Then he was sent to India to teach tank driving to the troops out there near Calcutta.
Even he was shocked by the poverty. He also had interesting experiences, escaping a Bengal Tiger in the jungle, swimming near sharks in the Bay of Bengal & witnessing a certain tribe disposing of bodies by putting them up in trees for the vultures to pick the bones clean...

But after that came the horrors of war in Burma. Gliders carrying tanks with his mates in them crashed in front of him; his best mate was shot dead by a sniper in front of him & he learned to hate the Japanese.
He was driving a Sherman tank. They were known as 'Tommy burners' as they caught fire easily.

One day a Japanese soldier ran at the tank shooting at Grandads slit and he had no choice but to run him over. When he returned to base he was orders to clean the tracks. The memory haunted him as an old man with dementia.
Then the tanks were given the order to advance at all costs. The men were not allowed to stop despite all having dysentery with diarrhoea. Also Grandad accidentally drove the tank over a small cliff, damaging his & the others' backs.
They finally made it to Rangoon and also fought in the battle for Ramree Island which is where 1000 Japanese troops were eaten by crocodiles in the swamps rather than surrender to the British.
He was also Mentioned in Dispatches for pulling a man out of a burning plane.

In late 1945, he made it home on a troopship and married my Nan Rita, whom he'd only met twice! She was 20 & he was 31. He held the Buddhist beliefs on reincarnation he'd got from Burma all his life. He joked he would go to hell or become a cat in his next life.

After Nan died we found Grandads war 'souvenirs' - a kind of diary (a list of dates & events written in pencil), an ivory elephant necklace, Japanese money, and the diary of a Japanese soldier containing the photo of a wife / girlfriend. He must have taken the diary from a dead soldier or a prisoner.
My uncle had the idea of getting the diary translated and finding the soldier's family, but my Mum destroyed it. She didn't want my Grandad to be seen in a bad way and to be fair I agree.

Sorry for the essay! Just thinking about this brought back lots of memories of what my Grandad told me.

He hated the Japanese and refused anything made in Japan in the house.

This was my grandfather also. As I said above he didn’t fight himself in WW2 as declared too old here but from the stories of those who came back who had been imprisoned in Japanese pow camps he had a lifetime hatred of the Japanese. His ashes would likely turn over if he knew about my good Japanese friends who have settled in ‘his’ country and greatly benefit it.

My dad was in the Marines on landing craft in Burma. I've got lots of photos of him. He had a big dent in his leg where he had been shot but he would never talk about it. My mum was a little younger but worked from 15. She used to love going dancing in the evenings with the local 'Czech' soldiers who were stationed near her. She seemed to have a marvellous war!!

Loving these stories - so many ordinary people stepping up and doing extraordinary things.

My granddad was RASC as well. Well, he was when they couldn't hide the fact he was a five foot tall 16 year old. Once he'd been gassed and got himself mentioned in dispatches for rescuing his CO in no man's land under fire, they let him transfer to the North Staffs, where he got fished out from under bits of horse in an St Martin crater full of mud by the Germans, who put a steel plate in his skull and discharged him to a POW camp where he was fed and treated well until after the Armistice.

He never agreed with what he called the glorification of war, all the pomp and circumstance or anti German sentiment. Possibly a mixture of the horror and because individual Germans, along with their actual rules for dealing with enemy casualties saved his life. He also hated fireworks, wasn't that keen on humans and taught me how to palm a cigarette whilst never, ever taking the Third Light.

He was an ARP in WWII and came home to find my grandmother and toddler mother underneath what used to be their house. My mother survived because the bedroom door blew off and landed on top of her cot like a lid.

My grandmother had been sent to a Belgian Convent in 1913 and spent the war with it going on all around her and the Sisters. The order came to England after the war and set up schools, one of which I worked for nearly a century later. She only said she'd spent years having precious little but pickled red cabbage and was never going to eat it ever again - but the order's archives show they were right in the centre of fighting, hid soldiers from both sides in the crypt depending upon who was in control of the area at the time and generally did all they could to help everybody irrespective of who they were.

My parents.
Both reluctant to talk about it ..both socialist, pacifist people but did what they considered their duty.

Mum was in the Land Army, then invalided out and worked in a munitions factory.

Dad was in the Army. Sent to India to repatriate Japanese POWs. He never wore his medals or a poppy or had any pride whatsoever in what he did.

It affected them both ( negatively) in so many ways for their whole lives.

All I know is my GF drove an ambulance with an American called Granville in the war. My dad was given Granville as a middle name in memory of him.
I wish I knew more.

Only one of my family (a great uncle) did military service in either war, and sadly he died. Last year I went to his memorial on November 11th.

Grandparents and great grandparents were in reserved occupations or not of the age where they could be called up.

And mum's cousin ( who she was very close to) was the pilot of a Lancaster bomber plane and shot down over Germany. All lives lost, but they were able to identify him from his scarf. He was 26.

My Grandma worked in a munitions factory and her husband, my Grandad worked in communications, he rarely talked about the war but from what My mum learnt he was dropped behind enemy lines.My Granny was a nurse and my Grandpa was in Burma. I work as a care assistant an one gentleman flew bombing raids in Halifax's and another landed on Sword beach on D Day..

GF1 was Irish and underage, but that didn't stop him joining up. He was injured at Dunkirk and told that because of his injury he couldn't be evacuated and would be left behind. His fellow soldiers argued back and pointed out he was underage and a neutral who could have stayed out of it and they weren't leaving him. He got on a ship.

GM1 was at home in Ireland.

StepGF1 was also Irish but joined the navy. He was sunk and rescued multiple times over a couple of days.

GM2 was working in a shop and doing fire watch at night.

GF2- I don't actually know what he did. He ended up a Major but I don't think he left the country. I think he was in London.

My dad (who had his children in his 60s) was in a tank regiment and decorated for bravery - rescued a comrade from a burning tank by crossing a snow covered minefield. His parents and siblings lived in China and were interred by the Japanese for the duration of the war. 2 adult sisters were nurses.

Not sure about maternal grandfather.

Maternal grandmother came to UK as a German Jewish refugee having escaped Nazi Germany.

paternal GF - General in Army - killed in action in 1922, Polish/Soviet War.
paternal GF - Medical Doctor and diplomat - imprisoned in concentration camp, due to nationality (GeneralplanOst). Survived, but died a few years later due to deprivations.
maternal GF - architect, worked in War Damage Commission
maternal GM - volunteered for Red Cross and transported blood supplies, joined Church “war mother” scheme, which put young, foreign soldiers stationed in U.K. in touch with families, for a bit of TLC. It was through this that my parents met

One grandfather in France one based in Dover

Both grandmothers worked in munitions factories.

My great grandfather died when a U-boat sunk the ship he was on in the Atlantic. There are some official records around it but other than that I don't know much. I think only 2 people survived.

My grandfather fought in the Second World War and came back war injured having been shot. My great uncle (his sisters husband) never came back at all and my grandad was as given a rosary by a soldier who died in my grandads arms. My grandad would still have nightmares after up until his death.

my grandma was the milk lady and she always stayed with her horse even during the bombings. She went on to have my mum in 1947 and my mum remained the only child. My great aunt never remarried despite having a son and died very peacefully in her arm chair watching tv unexpectedly in 1997/98

Nothing if I'm honest. My grandparents were born in the early 1940s, so my great grandparents would have been the ones who can remember the war but all of my GGPs died long before I was born apart from one GGM. She died when I was 12 so I can't ask her now.

FIL was in the airforce based in UK as ground crew doing electrics.
MIL helped in forces canteen.
One GF was a civil engineer involved with the mulberry harbours used at the Normandy beaches, other was a fire warden. My DPs were children at the time.

My grandparents war was WW1. Both granddads were in reserved occupations so never fought. My maternal grandmother was a volunteer for the local cottage hospital which housed solders suffering "shell shock" and my paternal grandmother was too drunk to do anything apparently.

WW2 not 1....I'm not that old.

Dad’s mum drove an ambulance in WW1 and got gassed towards the end. She was a Deb who happened to be able to drive and went from a ball at Londonderry House one weekend to the Flanders’s mud the next! WW2 she was a fire watcher for the Nat Hist Museum + V&A. Dad’s dad was a Captain in WW1 in one of the few regiments who promoted Jewish officers. He was in the Home Guard in WW2. My dad was at prep school and was evacuated with the school.

Mum’s mum was a Guide in WW1 and collected sphagnum moss for medical dressings. Mum’s dad flew a Sopwith Camel! During WW2 they were both working in India and my mum was at boarding school, which evacuated to Devon. She didn’t see her parents from 1937 to 1945, as they couldn’t get home.

Grandad was in the TA so called up at the beginning and was in the African campaign under Montgomery and came up through Italy, wasn’t home for pretty much the whole 6 years. Died before I was born

Grandma stayed at home with my aunt. Refused to talk about it. From what I can gather his absence really affected her.

Grandpa was a teen and then was a fire warden at the very end

Other Grandma was a child and was evacuated twice, first time she returned home and second time she went with one of her older sisters. She never talked about it. My mum said they were fairly sure that something happened whilst she was evacuated the first time, but it was never spoken about.

Both my grandmas hated any of the rose tinted glasses blitz spirit talk etc. As far as they were concerned it was a horrific 6 years, learn the lessons but never wanted to discuss it and any discussion would be shut down.