19 replies to this topic

[kayemod]

 

 

This is one of my favourite photos, peace, tranquillity and remembrance. It becomes my desktop background at this time every year, and it is of course a distant pic of the Thiepval Arch in Belgium. Anne and I were both born a few years after the 1939-45 unpleasantness, we enjoy lengthy European tours on holiday, and our first or last days are often spent visiting war memorials in northern France and Belgium. We've been to Thiepval a couple of times, and the Menin Gate in Ypres three or four, as well as many other cemeteries, and their effect never lessens, I'm sure that many others on TNF are affected in much the same way. Thiepval is an overwhelmingly impressive structure, designed by Edwin Lutyens and completed in the early 1930s, it's a memorial to more than 72,000 British and South African soldiers who were killed fighting on the Somme in WW!, every one of them blown to pieces, with little trace remaining. There are a few individual graves in front of the Arch, almost all bodies that were unidentifiable, the headstones have wording like "A soldier of the Yorkshire Regiment" with no name, there was no DNA to identify individuals in those days. The many war cemeteries in northern Europe are, or should be, inspirational, you'd have to have a heart of stone to be unaffected by them. Most are immaculately maintained, even after so many years, the Allied Forces ones especially. One rather sad exception we found was a WW1 German cemetery somewhere in Picardy. It wasn't tatty and unkempt, but the grass between graves was too long, and many of the headstones marking graves would have benefited from more regular attention. One stone in particular made a lasting impression on me, the inscription read simply "Vier Kameraden", four comrades, nothing more, no identification at all, just ordinary men, the same as most of the Allied dead, almost all ordered to go to fight for their respective Countries against an enemy they had no real quarrel with.

 

Nothing changes.

[Doug Nye]

Timely words Rob - and such a thought-provoking photograph...  

 

Each of my visits to wartime sites has been dominated by thoughts of what a fortunate and pampered generation mine has been in contrast to those which preceded us.  The accident of birth place, of course - positioning one within a nation, a culture and the vagaries of a political system  - explains much about who ended up shooting at whom, on behalf of what, and why.  Manifest stupidity is too simplistic an answer - but one does stand in such places and simply shake one's head in sorrow, asking 'why'?

 

DCN

[tampaguy]

Thank you for sharing this photo and information. My grandfather Pat Halligan suffered the effects of mustard gas poisoning after returning from France. Like most of his colleagues he never spoke about his experiences. He passed when I was just a young boy so had little time with him. "

[Bob Riebe]

When I was still in single digits age, in the late fifties very early sixties, we had a neighbor Mr. Mielke who had served in WWI.

I asked dad why he had such a distored face, and dad said that was the effect of poison gas in WWI.

 

Being snot faced kids we used to steal green apples from his apple tree and he would chase  us away with his cane.

One day he came out when we were standing on the side walk and said, you can have apples, all you have to do is ask.

 

He was a very nice old man.

[Dick Dastardly]

Thank you for sharing this photo and information. My grandfather Pat Halligan suffered the effects of mustard gas poisoning after returning from France. Like most of his colleagues he never spoke about his experiences. He passed when I was just a young boy so had little time with him. "

Similar to my paternal grandfather who suffered gas poisoning in WW1, he was among the many horse-mounted troops......he never spoke to his family about his experiences.

 

Moving on...in the late 60s, my Dad took over a garage in County Durham....among the customers was a "Colonel Ord" [I'm not certain about the spelling] who lived in the Hamsterley area. He seemed a right miserable old sod, my and my brothers used to tease / plague him when he visited the garage.....until we found out that he'd had to witness the Germans executing the rest of his family, leaving him as the sole survivor.....never again did we tease him 

[Vitesse2]

Both my grandfathers served on the Western Front, having volunteered - and both survived. My paternal grandfather was in a transport battalion - he was already a lorry driver before joining up - and his otherwise unremarkable service record includes a reprimand for 'driving a motor lorry at more than 8mph' and 'careless driving causing damage to a bridge'. He became a bus driver on demob, but he died before I was born. My maternal grandfather lied about his age in order to join the Canadian army, having emigrated there in the early 1900s; at the outbreak of war, Canada specified that all volunteers should be under 26. He was already 28, but understated his birthdate by exactly five years to join up - although it was eventually corrected on his records. He eventually found himself in a Tunnelling Company and was evacuated back to Blighty after falling off a trench parapet while carrying wounded to the rear, breaking his arm in several places. It was a complex fracture, which didn't heal easily, so he was in hospital for several months - which is how he met my grandmother, who was a qualified midwife serving as a VAD nurse. I was named after both my grandfathers, although I barely remember my maternal grandfather, who died when I was three.

 

Two of my maternal grandmother's brothers were in the Royal Navy - one survived the war, signed on as a regular afterwards and spent much of his service in Malta, although his final posting was to HMS Victory as a CPO. The other, previously an employee of the LB&SCR, was a signalman who went down with HMS Ardent at Jutland. He was just 20 years old.

[DCapps]

Since last Veteran's Day, the ranks of Echo Company (Lurps and Rangers) have continued to thin. Just a few weeks ago, SGT Bill Christensen (Silver Star recipient) and my bunkmate while operating out of Tan An died. 

Bill (Call Sign: Stinky) was probably among the last of that team left. Of my last team, 2-4, maybe only two of us are now left. I am not sure if anyone from Team 1-1 is still alive.

 

My great-uncle Charlie was KIA on 8 October 1918 when his company in the 30th Division attacked the German lines.

My father went ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day, and barely escaped when the Chinese attacked in late-1950, his unit managing to survive after after almost being surrounded.

My uncle Hubert was captured during The Bulge when his company basically ceased to exist, everyone either being killed or captured.

Another uncle, Rob, was with the 101st Airborne in both Normandy and Holland.

Another uncle, Clyde, was in New Guiana and the Philippines.

My late father-in-law was the commander of the first company in the 3rd Armored Division to engage in combat in Normandy.

 

Including Viet-Nam, my stint in Korea during when the DMZ was pretty hot, the Balkans, and then SWA, too much time in hostile fire areas...

[Alan Lewis]

Threads like this have appeared regularly on TNF down the years (rightly so), and I don't think I've posted in them before, but I guess I'm getting old...

My maternal grandfather died in the final year of the Second World War and lies in the cemetery at Bergen-op-Zoom. He and two of his mates in the Royal Horse Artillery were scouting in a Jeep near Hilvarenbeek, during the push to Tilburg, and hit a mine, possibly after coming under sniper fire and having to run off the road. A fortnight short of twenty years later, his daughter had her first son and gave me his Christian names.

When the Royal British Legion started running trips to the Dutch cemeteries in the late 60s/early 70s, the local families would house "the pilgrims" as they called them, and the family that looked after Gran became lifelong friends. That generation is gone now, but their son and his wife came over this summer to see Mum in Shropshire and naturally we made the trip down from Northumberland to be there.

Last year, a local history group in the Tilburg area were researching that autumn 1944 campaign and - as far as it's possible to be sure - located the spot where my grandfather and his mates died. There is now a memorial stone at the spot.

It makes no sense when you see it written down, but somehow it matters to know there's a stone with his name on it by a quiet country road in North Brabant.

[tampaguy]

I know that post like this should be directed to those who put their lives on the line so others could live freely. But I firmly believe that the byproduct is comfort for those who are left behind and willing to bring their family members back to life. I have a motto that I have followed for decades. “No one is really gone if their memories are alive in those left behind “ I think of my uncle John Francis Byrne Flight officer AAF killed April 19th 1944 every Veterans Day. My grandmother and grandfather where never the same people afterwards.

[Jack-the-Lad]

My wife and I are children of the Greatest Generation.  My father was a pilot who  flew The Hump and later in the war flew missions into Italy dropping supplies to partisans, for which he received the DFC.  A very humble man, I wasn’t aware of his achievements until I discovered hometown newspaper clippings about the citation.  My mother was a flight nurse but did not serve overseas.  

 

My own service was in Vietnam, First Marine Division, but nothing I did there could compare with their courage and commitment.   We’ll be visiting the Normandy beaches next year, a dream my wife has had for a long time.  Her uncle landed there (not the first wave) and was later captured in the Hürtgen Forest. 

Edited by Jack-the-Lad, 11 November 2023 - 23:53.

[Vitesse2]

My wife and I are children of the Greatest Generation.  My father was a pilot who  flew The Hump and later in the war flew missions into Italy dropping supplies to partisans, for which he received the DFC.

Similar career to my father, although he would have been a bit later. He dropped out of Leeds University after a year, having got there on a state bursary to study Electrical Engineering - I only recently discovered, while researching his medals, that he'd been in the Officer Training Corps there, which explained why he received the Defence Medal as well as the 1939-45 Star and the Burma Star with Pacific clasp. He joined the RAF in 1944, trained in Canada as a navigator/bomb aimer, and his crew then flew all the way from Abbotsford BC to India via South America, Africa and the Middle East. The undercarriage of their original B24 collapsed just before taking off from Montreal, so they got a new one which was straight off the line at Willow Run. If my research is correct that plane was one of the supposedly permanently disabled Lend/Lease Liberators which was refurbished and flew with the Indian Air Force - and it still exists!

 

They were assigned to a Special Duties squadron flying out of Jessore, dropping Force 136 agents and supplies into the jungle in Malaya, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, typically on missions which lasted about 15 hours - on one they were actually in the air for just over 24 hours! After VJ Day they were dropping medics, supplies and liaison officers into POW camps, but because their flights were so long their tours of duty were measured in hours rather than missions - they only flew ten and the squadron was disbanded soon afterwards. A lot of the crew members were Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians and the squadron number - 358 - was one assigned to the RCAF. All rather odd!

 

And in a coincidence, the father of one of the other volunteers at the homelessness charity I help at was a Force 136 officer at exactly the same time, so it's possible they may have met!

[Glengavel]

My maternal grandfather lied about his age in order to join the Canadian army, having emigrated there in the early 1900s; at the outbreak of war, Canada specified that all volunteers should be under 26. He was already 28, but understated his birthdate by exactly five years to join up - although it was eventually corrected on his records. 

 

My wife's great-uncle enlisted in the Black Watch in 1914. Age 42, he knocked 12 years off his age.

 

Another great-uncle on her side enlisted in 1914, arrived in France July 1915 and died at Loos in September.

 

Her father fought in Italy in 1944 and 1945.

 

The war mostly by-passed my side of the family. Father too young, grandfathers too young for WW1 and too old for WW2. Also, most of my ancestors were farmers. I do have a very distant cousin (a school teacher) who coincidentally died (age 35) at Loos, but in a different regiment to my wife's ancestor.

[RCH]

I visited Thiepval and other WW1 memorials and graveyards some years ago with my mother, to be honest it just became so depressing that we cut the visit short. We were interested in discovering the fate of my mother's cousin, family legend had it that he was actually killed, underage on the 11th of November 1918. Later research showed this wasn't true but in some ways it was even more tragic. He was 18 and was killed in September 1918 at Auchy near Bethune on his very first day at the front. 

My aunt was a nursing sister with the Queen Alexandra Nursing Corps and was reputedly the first woman ashore in Normandy after D Day. Bizarrely due to her equivalent army rank of Captain later in the war she was called upon to accept the surrender of a group of German soldiers who would only surrender to an officer. 

Writing about Aunt Gwen on Facebook yesterday got me thinking about the millions who weren't heroes but just stoically endured. Like my father, who much to his disgust was in a reserved occupation. He came home in the early hours after his shift as a special constable to find his whole street flattened. As luck would have it my grandmother had been visiting friends and decided to stay the night with friends while the bombing continued. Or my mother, a wages clerk, who had to take her turn when the air raid siren sounded manning the telephones whilst her colleagues were in the shelters. She worked at Saltley Gas Works in Birmingham. She recalled coming out of the air raid shelter one morning to see a massive glow in the sky to the east. "Coventry must have got it last night", she remembered saying. It certainly did. 

A second cousin, in the Merchant Navy, was torpedoed twice, once on the infamous Murmansk convoys. He was only 16, perhaps we can excuse him being unable to settle in later life. Today we would call it PTSD. 

[Jack-the-Lad]

Similar career to my father, although he would have been a bit later. He dropped out of Leeds University after a year, having got there on a state bursary to study Electrical Engineering - I only recently discovered, while researching his medals, that he'd been in the Officer Training Corps there, which explained why he received the Defence Medal as well as the 1939-45 Star and the Burma Star with Pacific clasp. He joined the RAF in 1944, trained in Canada as a navigator/bomb aimer, and his crew then flew all the way from Abbotsford BC to India via South America, Africa and the Middle East. The undercarriage of their original B24 collapsed just before taking off from Montreal, so they got a new one which was straight off the line at Willow Run. If my research is correct that plane was one of the supposedly permanently disabled Lend/Lease Liberators which was refurbished and flew with the Indian Air Force - and it still exists!

 

They were assigned to a Special Duties squadron flying out of Jessore, dropping Force 136 agents and supplies into the jungle in Malaya, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, typically on missions which lasted about 15 hours - on one they were actually in the air for just over 24 hours! After VJ Day they were dropping medics, supplies and liaison officers into POW camps, but because their flights were so long their tours of duty were measured in hours rather than missions - they only flew ten and the squadron was disbanded soon afterwards. A lot of the crew members were Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians and the squadron number - 358 - was one assigned to the RCAF. All rather odd!

 

And in a coincidence, the father of one of the other volunteers at the homelessness charity I help at was a Force 136 officer at exactly the same time, so it's possible they may have met!

My dad actually enlisted in 1939 as a way out of the Great Depression and to escape the area that would have been analogous to your Sheffield or Newcastle.  After the Pearl Harbor attacks he took the flying aptitude test and was found acceptable and immediately entered flight training in multi-engine, hoping to fly bombers.  Instead he flew the C-47 Dakota.  In retrospect, had he been assigned to bombers yours truly might not have had the opportunity to write this. It causes one to think…..

Edited by Jack-the-Lad, 12 November 2023 - 20:27.

[Wirra]

... Later research showed this wasn't true but in some ways it was even more tragic. He was 18 and was killed in September 1918 at Auchy near Bethune on his very first day at the front. ...

 

I had a Great Uncle who was 19 when he suffered the same fate on his first day.

 

With what is going on today in both reported and non-reported conflicts it really does make one wonder.

[ensign14]

I'm a generation lower.  Two great-grandfathers killed in WW1 (one in October 1918), one wounded for three years (his brother dead at 16 having lied about his age, thank you Haig, you ****), the fourth dead before the war in an Erdington workhouse. 

 

One grandfather too old for WW2 (he was Home Guard), the other reserved occupation (metalworker at the Spitfire in Castle Brom).  Given the house opposite his was taken out by the Luftwaffe, it may have been more dangerous.

[malomay]

I'm a little late to the topic, but thanks to that wonderful first post from kayemod & the other deeply personal stories above, I felt like it would be appropriate to put down my own thoughts.

 

Being a 1960s child, our generation & society grew up commemorating the Armistice & ANZAC days as a part of life. Our school & workplaces still stopped for that minute at 11.00am on the 11th day of the 11th month. It was only when i got older though that I started to learn of the family involvement in the two major conflicts.

My mums uncle (who she never knew), grew up a farmers son in the idyllic rolling green farmland near Wynyard on the North West coast of Tasmania. At the age of 20, he lost his life as a member of the of the Australian Machine Gun Corps on the 4th of October 1917 in the mud, destruction & horror that was Passchendaele during the battle for Tyne Cot. I think of him often on days like this trying to comprehend what he might have gone through in those last few days/months. He has no known grave & is instead a name among thousands on the Menin Gate.

 

At the other end of the scale was my Dads grandfather (again, who was gone before dad was born). He was a farmer on the lush gentle river slopes of the Derwent Valley on the outskirts of Hobart here in southern Tasmania. He was apparently a big, physically very strong man & so there were no questions asked when he volunteered to enlist at the age of 53 & put his age down as 43 instead.His attitude was that he had no right to be at home while young men were being deployed & slaughtered.

He lost his life as part of the 12th battalion AIF in the final offensive push on the outskirts of Saint-Quentin on 19th September 1918, just under 2 months before the end of the War. His grave memorial is at a little war cemetary outside the small village of Jeancourt.

 

At a personal level, it is highly likely that I would have had the chance to meet & know my great uncle, as his life was lost so young, just as I knew his sister (my nana) for much of my early life. What it meant for her losing her brother I cannot imagine.

 

I have not had the opportunity to visit these sites personally yet, it is very much a voyage I need to make though, and the feeling has only got stronger in later years as my own links to these relatives (my own mum & dad) are no longer around. My dream is to take my own boys on this journey to understand the sacrifices these men (like all the others) made for our subsequent generations. It saddens me that some in society now have little or no comprehension what price was paid for their comfortable & free lives.

 

Mal.

Edited by malomay, 13 November 2023 - 00:46.

[Lee Nicolle]

The 11th hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we shall remember them. Rememberance Day here in Oz. This year it was hardly noticed, sad but I guess inevitable.

My grandfather spent most of WW1 in Egypt as a training officer. A career Cavalry officer. He did have a short stint [as an officer] at Gallipoli. Possibly a more 'fair' battleground unlike France.

He finished his time as the Major in charge of the Ohalloran Hill remount station. I suspect a quiet occupation as by then it was generally motorised

My Grandmother became a temporary postmistress at Happy Valley South Oz during the war, something she then did for over 50 years. She won a BEM eventually for that. After my grandfather died late 70s she eventually had to give the job up as her vision was very poor. She was also the organist at the church for possibly longer.

[RCH]

 

One grandfather too old for WW2 (he was Home Guard), the other reserved occupation (metalworker at the Spitfire in Castle Brom).  Given the house opposite his was taken out by the Luftwaffe, it may have been more dangerous.

 

Three members of my family worked there. My maternal grandfather was a storeman, although an accountant he was made redundant by Metro Cammell when they took over his previous employer because he had no formal qualifications and had to take what he could get. His son in law, although he was actually in the RAF was working on Spitfires there and his eldest son who was to work for Fisher & Ludlow until his retirement. Not my favourite relative so I knew little of what he was doing, some sort of product planning role I believe. He was in a reserved occupation and recent whispers have been that he was involved in some top secret work...

[DCapps]

FYI: Echo Company had 26 KIA (one formerly MIA) & 1 died of wounds during its tour (1967-1970). Since September 1970, at least 170 (at last count) have died since then. This from a unit that had scarcely 300 serve in it during that tour. The number of WIA (individuals, not multiple times WIA) during the tour was somewhere about 125+ as best can be determined.