20th Century Stories about WW1 or WW2 you have been told about your grandparents or great-grandparents

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MaddAdam said:
About having to use a hose to get the remains of the rear gunner out of shot up turrets,
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I too have heard stories of this happening. In a case related to me, from the radio operator in the same plane, he recalled watching them do this after their plane landed. To make things worse, the rear gunner was the radio op's best mate.

The radio op. had a tragic life. He married a beautiful English girl in London, in the 1950s, who was a ballerina with the Royal Ballet. Six weeks after they married, she was killed in an auto accident, in which the radio op was the driver. Unsurprisingly, when I met him in the 1990's, he liked a drink. Surprisingly, despite all that had befallen him, he was neither depressed nor pissed off with life. A remarkable man, with a sophisticated sense of humour and an engaging turn in self-deprecation.
 
MaddAdam said:
Yeah nah. I'd say being cut off from supplies and surrounded in the Kassel during winter, then facing overwhelming force in the counter attack was what did them in, not a few chicks operating anti tank guns.
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Kursk could of been so much different if Paulus chose to fight his way out. He would of took 1 million good Russians with him, if he did. Russians were so close to being on the run again after Kursk,took massive casualties.

Think man, use that brain, don't allow yourself to boxed in by someone elses barriers.

Paulus and his men had had enough, no more fight in a unit that perhaps fought better than anyone in history.
 

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Two of my Great Uncles went off to WW1.
Walter and younger brother Wesley, who died in camp of pneumonia in North Adelaideo_O

Walter though, spent his entire front line service with the 27th Battalion A.I.F.
He was on the front line with the 27th Battalion from the 01st of February 1917 until his wounding in action on the 02nd of March 1917.

Walter was wounded during an assault on Malt Trench, Warlencourt, Northern France where the 27th Battalion suffered 22 Killed and 95 wounded during the attack.
Walter was severely wounded with a gunshot wound/s to the abdomen; his record mentions that he also received wounds to the mouth and shoulder at the same time. This was possibly from machinegun fire that strafed the fields to hinder Allied advance as the Germans began their planned retreat.

Walter lay out in the battlefield for a long time and apparently there were badly wounded people all around him many of whom were screaming from pain. He found the noise almost unbearable and when the stretcher bearers came, he urged them to take those people first just so the noise would stop.

When Walter was finally taken back to the first aid post someone moved down the ranks of the wounded assessing their condition and attaching some sort of marker (I’m not sure what - a piece of paper or coloured cloth perhaps) which gave guidance as to their chances of survival. Walter was apparently "tagged" as "won't live until morning" and as a result wasn't given any treatment.

Obviously when he was still alive in the morning treatment was begun! Walter was evacuated aboard the hospital ship HMHS Gloucester Castle.
Incidentally, this ship was torpedoed by the German U-boat UB-32 off the Isle of Wight a few weeks later on 31 March 1917.
Surely a lucky man,:thumbsu: he survived not only the assault on Malt Trench but also avoided this sinking to eventually return to Australia in late August 1917.
 
topjars said:
Two of my Great Uncles went off to WW1.
Walter and younger brother Wesley, who died in camp of pneumonia in North Adelaideo_O
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My Great Grandfather spent the whole war in an english hospital after contracting some kind of communal stomache bug on the ship ride over to Europe.

HIs brothers served on the front of which one was gassed and bayoneted but still found a way to live to his 60's (not very comfortably I might add)

With that said, I had an american grandfather who spent his time in the pacific campaign. Had loads of stories. He even got a presidential citation. He spoke of the years with both fondness and regret.
 
The Coup said:
I know in a few towns in Australia its quite common to see the odd Japanese Imperial Katana sitting in a garage alongside a few other momentos.

Heaps of guns came back to country Australia, big ones :)
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My grandma threw the one my grandfather got in PNG in a lake because my uncles were playing with it.

She had no idea what it meant to my Grandfather or the family the sword came from.

I cannot imagine the fury that ensued.

Another guy I know said his grandma pawned off the sword after his grandfather died. It was from a japanese general.
 
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LIPSTICK
I've heard it said that men returning from WW1 frowned upon their sisters and daughters wearing red lip stick; because in France, the women used to wear this makeup as a sign of being single and hence available. There was also an imbalance in the ratio of women to men because of WWI.
Women now had to compete for their attention, making lipstick makeup even more desirable.

In 1915 lipstick evolved into a metal cylinder with a tiny lever to one side that would raise a lipstick for application while protecting it when not in use.
The manufacturer also made metal ammunition casings, which started the rumour that lipsticks were made from WW1 bullet casings.
As the war progressed women were needed not just to act in their traditional roles as nurses, but also to step into roles previously held exclusively by men. In civilian life they were needed to work in factories and on the land.

...............
http://www.australiagreatwar.com.au/lipstick/

I posted this to the website above and won a $45 medallion....about time I got a medal;)
 
topjars said:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandso...-a-wwi-soldier-sheds-light-on-drug-resistance
Dysentery in the trenches would feel like you were shitting a new a-hole; what a terrible condition.
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Yeah, just checked it out. He had dysentery.

The pre-existing condition he had made it worse and I'm guessing medical treatment on the boat ride wouldnt have been the best.

I understand he spent the next couple of years trying to get to the front (while stationed in Salisbury, England) but didn't get any better. Came back in early 1918.

He took up woodwork while in hospital and we still have lots of the little things he made, jewelry boxes, coffee tables etc.

Though I never met him (he died 20 years before I was born) I'm grateful to him, I am living in his house.....
 
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LanceRomance said:
Yeah, just checked it out. He had dysentery.

The pre-existing condition he had made it worse and I'm guessing medical treatment on the boat ride wouldnt have been the best.

I understand he spent the next couple of years trying to get to the front (while stationed in Salisbury, England) but didn't get any better. Came back in early 1918.

He took up woodwork while in hospital and we still have lots of the little things he made, jewelry boxes, coffee tables etc.

Though I never met him (he died 20 years before I was born) I'm grateful to him, I am living in his house.....
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He also got meningitis
 
little graham said:
Kursk could of been so much different if Paulus chose to fight his way out. He would of took 1 million good Russians with him, if he did. Russians were so close to being on the run again after Kursk,took massive casualties.

Think man, use that brain, don't allow yourself to boxed in by someone elses barriers.

Paulus and his men had had enough, no more fight in a unit that perhaps fought better than anyone in history.
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No, they weren't. By July 1943 the Soviets had such a massive advantage in men and material that they were not only able to achieve a clear local superiority in the Kursk salient but also build up their forces for offensives to the north and the south of the salient and maintain a large central reserve (Steppe Front). On 12 July - the high water mark of the offensive for the Germans, with the fighting around Prokhorovka between II SS Panzer Corps and 5th Guards Tank Army - the Soviets were already launching Operation KUTUZOV to the north of the salient, and then proceeded to launch a series of offensives to the south that culminated in the liberation of Kharkov. Worth noting that the same panzer units that had done such hard fighting at Kursk spent August trying (and failing) to defend Kharkov.

tl;dr, the Soviets were never close to 'being on the run again' after Kursk - the Red Army had the strength to not only absorb the offensive handily but to initiate action that made any German gains at Kursk strategically irrelevant.
 
My grandmother talks about her uncle being the first person in Greece (living in Corfu) to see the German fleet advance (she was with him at the time, didn't really know what was going on).

Apparently he panicked and went to talk to the first police officer he saw - who walked a short amount of time to a blank wall, pressed something and the wall slid away to reveal radio consoles.
She spend the bulk of the war under Nazi & Turkish occupation - the Turks were complete animals. Her uncle was later murdered in front of her and she didn't speak for over a week.
 

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GF and brothers were in the light horse. Died well before I was born. Told the old man very little apparently. One thing I can distinctly remember being told by him was his fathers utter hatred of the Arabs, so much so that they shot their horses rather than let them have them (couldn't take them home due to quarantine). Apparently thought the Turks were great blokes though. One story he told my father was that a couple of Turkish pow's were told to go and get some firewood unattended by any Australians ie feel free to shoot through. They came back about an hour later arms full of branches etc much to the Australians amazement.
 
Apologies for this not being told to me by my Grandparents or Great Grandparents as per the thread title but I was loathe to start a thread on its own and wanted to flag this amazing statistic.

“All together, Britain printed 34 million war maps, France over 30 million, and Germany a staggering 775 milliono_Oo_O (including the Eastern Front).”
Source: Peter Chasseaud, ‘British, French and German Mapping and Survey on the Western Front in the First World War’, in Peter Doyle and Matthew R. Bennett (eds.), Fields of Battle: Terrain in Military History, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, p. 171.

WWI trench maps were critical to the planning and conduct of military campaigns, to logistics and infrastructure, and to moving troops in and out of conflict zones. Once the war in France had ceased to be one of movement and the deadlock of entrenched positions had begun, the artillery lost most of its ability to fire at targets that could be directly observed. Enemy artillery and other positions were out of sight, requiring indirect firing. The ability to know very accurately where your own position was, where the enemy was and the topography of the terrain became of increasing importance. Surveying the ground, creating maps and identifying the position of the enemy even when he could not be seen became the job of the Topographical Sections of the Field Survey units of the Royal Engineers. The drawing of maps was the job of the Army Printing Section.
 
Wifes father told us when they we demobbed, on the train home the discussion turned to the up coming election.

Father told us almost every occupant of the carriage declared they would be voting labour.

Sorry to include politics but its useful to see what stimulates trends
 
topjars said:
Mr Rabbit Strikes again:rolleyes:

QANTAS and the Federal government are going to fly WW1 war widows to Turkey on ANZAC Day, for free; how "bloody" magnanimous of them , I would suggest that plane is going to be quite empty.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/01/27/wwi-vet-widows-fly-free-to-turkey.html
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up to ten apparently

It's not impossible.
Bloke comes back from WWI and marries a woman when he's in his 40s or 50s. He dies but she's still alive and her husband did serve in WWI.

I think there are actually a few children of American civil war veterans still alive.
 
The_Reaper said:
up to ten apparently

It's not impossible.
Bloke comes back from WWI and marries a woman when he's in his 40s or 50s. He dies but she's still alive and her husband did serve in WWI.

I think there are actually a few children of American civil war veterans still alive.
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The last civil war widow died in 2003. Married an 81 year old veteran at 18.
 
The_Reaper said:
up to ten apparently

It's not impossible.
Bloke comes back from WWI and marries a woman when he's in his 40s or 50s. He dies but she's still alive and her husband did serve in WWI.

I think there are actually a few children of American civil war veterans still alive.
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There was a huge shortage of men in their prime because of the war. Many women had no hope of marriage. Little dicussed consequence of war.

If you want to see this effect in the extreme research the war of the triple alliance when the male population of paraguay was nearly wiped out
 
Pessimistic said:
There was a huge shortage of men in their prime because of the war. Many women had no hope of marriage. Little dicussed consequence of war.

If you want to see this effect in the extreme research the war of the triple alliance when the male population of paraguay was nearly wiped out
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The War of the Triple Alliance is worth the time of anyone who reads history. An astonishing event.

I read that polygamy was practised as the male population was reduced to about 28,000 to a female population of about 240,000.
 
The_Reaper said:
up to ten apparently

It's not impossible.
Bloke comes back from WWI and marries a woman when he's in his 40s or 50s. He dies but she's still alive and her husband did serve in WWI.

I think there are actually a few children of American civil war veterans still alive.
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Richard Pryor said:
The last civil war widow died in 2003. Married an 81 year old veteran at 18.
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Pessimistic said:
There was a huge shortage of men in their prime because of the war. Many women had no hope of marriage. Little dicussed consequence of war.

If you want to see this effect in the extreme research the war of the triple alliance when the male population of paraguay was nearly wiped out
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John said:
The War of the Triple Alliance is worth the time of anyone who reads history. An astonishing event.

I read that polygamy was practised as the male population was reduced to about 28,000 to a female population of about 240,000.
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What quality posts. Informative and pithy. It is rare to learn so much in such a short time on BF.
 
John said:
The War of the Triple Alliance is worth the time of anyone who reads history. An astonishing event.

I read that polygamy was practised as the male population was reduced to about 28,000 to a female population of about 240,000.
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Would have been pretty hard to be gay
 
Pessimistic said:
Would have been pretty hard to be gay
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Indeed. Lets hope they did their patriotic duty. In fact I suspect that they had no choice.

Might add something more to this subject.
Battle of Curupaity in 1866. It was one of the most decisive battle in history IMO though for all the wrong reasons in terms of the victor, Paraguay. Paraguayan loss's amounted to 92 killed while the allies of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay lost 4,000. The issue with Paraguayan victory was that it prolonged the war due to the considerable weakening of the allies. Uruguay had never really contributed to the war and after this battle Argentina took less and less a part in the war. Brazil took the brunt of the later donkey work.

With this victory Paraguay as a nation seemingly lost all fear of the enemy and this lead to a final and disastrous defeat that almost took them to the verge of extinction. Some commentators claim that to this day they have not recovered from this defeat. The figures on the mortally rate are horrendous. It is estimated that up to 90% of the male population perished.

A couple of other things to come out was that it caused the fall of the Brazilian emperor and the end of slavery in Brazil as they had to free the slaves after the army became short of cannon fodder. Francisco Solano López, the Paraguayan President has to have been insane considering his actions and what that wrought on his people. He did though have fine taste in Paris living Irish courtesans and his mistress/wife Eliza Lynch is another life worth a look at for those interested in this astonishing historical event. It is claimed that the national archives of Paraguay were taken to Brazil and to this day are hidden away and never to be returned. There is a, shall we say, robust discussion between Brazilian and Paraguayan historians as to the very existence of these archives. Paraguay lost large amounts of territory, the allies went into turmoil and hardly recovered for decades after, some have even argued that politically none of them have ever recovered to this day. And the biggest winner? British banks who made a financial killing.

FWIW I got very interested in this event when Paraguay was mentioned in a book I read years back called "Japan's Longest Day" by The Pacific War Research Society. In the debate in the final hours members of the anti surrender group within the Japanese Army made mention of Paraguay fighting to the last man and why should not the Japanese people do the same. "Paraguay?" I recall thinking "why would Japanese fanatics talk about a small poverty stricken South American banana republic that played football?" IMO one of the most fascinating events in mankind's cruel history of his inhumanity to his fellow man.
 
LanceRomance said:
He took up woodwork while in hospital and we still have lots of the little things he made, jewelry boxes, coffee tables etc.
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This is fascinating to me. During WWII, General Blamey's missus, Olga, and a nurse from England, are credited with having invented occupational therapy for recovering, wounded soldiers. Obviously, from what you say here, this had been developed long before the Middle East campaigns of WWII.

Blamey was accused of being a crook because he set out to (successfully) raise funds (ten thousand pounds) for this purpose from the Moonee Valley Racing Club and the Australian Jockey Club, during a visit back to Australia. Unsurprisingly to me, Blamey refused to dignify those accusations with an answer. In many ways, he was his own worst enemy.

I have incontrovertible proof of Blamey's rectitude in this matter.
 
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