Tell me one interesting fact about one of your grandparents

[listsandbudgets]

Because I'm bored and nosey.

My nan could speak Italian but only in the imperative because she and my grand dad had Italian prisoners of war on their farm during world war 2

My grandfather worked on Cefn Ydfa Farm. The song 'Bugeilio'r Gwenith Gwyn' is a very 'famous' song. Well, it is in Wales!

My grandad was at Dunkirk. He was brought back home on one of the "little ships".
When he first landed in France he had bought a beautiful French China doll, with a wardrobe of clothes for my mum. He carefully packed it all away in his kit bag, and it remained there as he fought his way through France to Dunkirk.
Unfortunately there wasn't much room on the little ship and he was forced to sit on his kit bag.
After arriving back in England he had to make his own way home to the north of England.
He burst into his mothers house, where my grandma and my mum, who was 5 at the time, were living. My grandma wasn't at home, she was out working in a munitions factory. Obviously his mum and his little girl, my mum, were overjoyed to see him. He delved into his kit bag reads to give my mum her present with a gran flourish, only to find that the face of the China doll had been smashed to smithereens. My mum was traumatised at the sight of it, and she said later that it really brought home the horror of war to her as a small child. She still enjoyed playing with the China doll's beautiful clothes, although she always felt her old rag doll didn't do justice to them.

I always think it is so touching, that in the middle of war torn a France my lovely grandad was able to stop and buy a French doll for his little girl.

My grandad went out to India in 1942 with the Army to teach tank driving & to fight in Burma.

He said he got chased by a shark while swimming in the Bay of Bengal; and while peeing in the jungle he saw a Bengal Tiger staring at him., I assume it was true.

He also said that a tribal group in the north of India would put their dead bodies in the treetops for the vultures to eat!!

He was from the slums of Salford (no shoes, literally 1 meal a day, shared a toilet with the whole street) but the poverty he saw in Calcutta actually shocked him.

While driving a tank in Burma the whole crew had Dysentery so had diarrhoea but they weren't allowed to stop during battle so it was one smelly tank.
He accidentally drove the tank off a small cliff which permanently damaged his back.

He rescued a man from a burning plane & got Mentioned in Dispatches.

He lost a lot of friends & saw horrific things, he hated the Japanese because of how they treated prisoners.
He also had a healthy respect for them as they would fight to the death.
Once a Japanese soldier charged his tank & grandad had no choice but to run him over.
He had to clean off the tank afterwards.
It haunted him all his life.

He claimed to have seen Jesus on the banks of the Suez Canal (he was on a troop ship) but I suspect it was probably a local in robes that he saw, or he was hallucinating as he had malaria.

He came home believing in reincarnation from the Indian soldiers he served with. He said he would either be reincarnated as a cat or would go to Hell.

He also brought Japanese money, a photo of a Japanese woman & a Japanese soldiers' diary. I assume these were taken from dead soldiers. My mum burnt them when she inherited them as she thought it was wrong to have them.

He married my nan as soon as he got home - she'd written to him for 2 years but they only met twice before their wedding!!
She was 20 and he was 31. They had 2 children & were married for 58 years.

He got dementia in the end but never stopped telling his war stories.
He'd joined up in 1933 until being demobbed in 1945. His Army days were the most exciting days of his life.

My nan made bullets for the 2nd world war 💪🏻

I can't believe I'm so late in finding this thread!

My maternal grandfather (William James always known as Jim) was in the Royal Artillery. He spent most of his working life serving in the RA and was a CSM when he retired. He then joined the Army Recruitment office and was very well known, liked and respected throughout the town they lived in.

In 1977 he was awarded the British Empire Medal. I'm lead to believe that it's the military equivalent of the OBE or MBE, really not sure which!!

He has always been my idol and I adored him. You can imagine my horror and distress when he died on my 29th birthday! That was 12 years ago and I still miss him! I called my son James in his honour.

My grandmother's grandmother was French and played one of the pianos during the Great Exhibition in the mid 19th century; my grandmother had the music score she used and part of the hardback cover was missing so I took it to a bookbinding class when I was a student librarian and rebound it for her from scratch.

My grandmother was the local milk woman during the Second World War and never left her horse during air raids.

My grandad fought in the Second World War and came back having been shot through the elbow. He brother in law never came back. He also only had 1 kidney but that wasn’t known until it started to fail when he older.

Both long gone. and neither I got to ever remember.

My grandmother looked like butter wouldn't melt but had grown up in the roughest bit of Glasgow in the 1920s. According to family legend she once went on a date to the pictures with a man who tried to get handsy with her. She calmly removed her hat pin, stuck it in his leg and left.

My favourite grandad was German and in the Luftwaffe in ww2. He was captured and as a POW he met my English grandma who was a land girl. At the end of the war, he got my grandma pregnant with my aunt and ‘had’ to marry her. For years he would go back over to Germany to visit family but would leave my grandma at home - they didn’t approve of his English wife. Eventually though, his mum was old and unwell and he moved her to England to live with them. His mum didn’t speak a word of English and was bedridden. My grandma did all of the caring for her despite this and my great grandma ended up living to 104 - my poor grandma!
My other grandad was in the army and my nan was a wren. I find it fascinating that they were on opposing sides yet they got on like a house on fire when my mum and Dad married.

love this thread

@fakemews my grandad claimed that too.

My Grandfather translated a philosopher into English, he became a world authority on the translation of that philosopher. He was a quiet unassuming but highly intelligent family man. He turned down promotions in order to have enough time at home for family and for his hobby - this philosopher.

On my bookshelf I have his books. I am very proud of him

and he was born in 1899, so a Victorian - he fought in WW1

My other grandfather went to India just after the war, and caught polio and then typhoid, and died. My Granny was on her way to join him with her 2 boys (my dad and uncle)

She had had my dad, and then triplets who all died, and then twins, one of whom died, all within 4 years. then went to India, and when she arrived was met by the local European doctor, he took her to the hospital, where she found her husband at deaths door.

My grandpa was a coxwain in ww2 age 18, blown out water twice and then moved to hospital fields in Normandy. Granny would have terrified Himmler if she got him.

My hubby gran was a un licenced WRVS driver in ww2 - his grandpa was in Africa, Burma and very recently we found out he was a liberator of a death camp and cleaned out the gas chambers.

Long may their names be remembered.

My grandads father was 70 when he was born and his youngest (half) sibling was 40, my grandad thought his mother died when he was 6 mths old, but I have recently found out she was the housekeeper and ran away. I’m so glad my grandad didn’t know this.

My maternal granddad was an ARP warden in WW2, despite this, he was called up. He came home on leave to see his parents (after sending my Mum and Nanna to South Wales) and discovered that the ARP shelter had had a direct hit on what would have been one of the nights that he would have been rostered on and all those on duty died.

I might have shared this before, after my paternal grandparents had both passed on, we found out that their 'golden wedding' was actually their 49th! this was in 1930

I mean the wedding was in 1930

My granddad was a Royal Engineer at the D day landings and built the mulberry harbour at Arromanches.

My nan was a twin and they weighed 8lb each. Bloody miracle they survived and thrived.

My grandma joined the army at 16 to help with the war effort in WW2 (she lied about her age to join up)

My great grandfather was abandoned as a baby, I'm not sure where he was found but a name was made up for him and he was sent to live in Dr Barnardo's orphanage - he was one of the first Barnardo's boys.

My grandfather ballsed up his documentation on coming to England in the 1950s and never bothered to rectify it so he just went by the wrong surname all this time meaning we've all had the wrong surname forever too!

My Grandad was in the D Day landings. He married my grandma on Valentines Day while on leave from the army during the war.

My grandma, a midwife, delivered a baby in a London tube tunnel during WW2.

my grandmother lived next door to John logie Baird when he was inventing the television. He asked to trail some wiring through their garden

My grandmother set up her own business in Australia in around 1900. She was a furrier, and eventually married one of the hunters who brought her pelts to make into coats.

My grandfather blew his arm off with a canon he kept in the garage.