Family on the East Front?

[TwelfthMonkey]

Hello all,

This is my first post to this forum, though I've been lurking for some weeks. All these great stories moved me to post my own family history in WW2, insofar as I know it.

My father didn't serve, being the eldest son of a farm family. But three uncles did: one was in the infantry throughout North Africa, Sicily and Italy. He was at Anzio when a German shell landed very near his foxhole -- a buddy of his saw the shell land and saw my uncle go cartwheeling through the air like a rag doll. He was completely buried in the sand, but his buddy saw where he landed and dug him out before he suffocated. Miraculously, he didn't have a single shrapnel wound, but he was out cold -- he woke up on a hospital ship almost two weeks later. He finished out the war slogging through the Po valley. He also fought briefly at Cassino. My dad once saw a television show, back in the 1960s, which talked about the Germans not occupying the monastery until after the Allies bombed it. My dad asked my uncle if that was true and my uncle replied, "I don't know if there were any Germans in that monastery or not, because I never saw any. If there weren't, though, those monks were the best damned shots I've ever seen."

A second uncle fought at Bougainville, and he never talked about it much. The only story he ever told was about how the Americans would dig trenches an arm's reach apart and stay awake all night, and the Japanese would still infiltrate through the line. And because you didn't want to give away your position by firing your weapon, it was bayonet and spade work to take them out.

A third uncle served on the Merchant Marine on the Murmansk runs. He used to talk about the helpless feeling you'd get watching one ship after another in your convoy get torpedoed and never knowing if your own ship would be next, and the certain death that would result from going into the Arctic waters. He also used to talk about the fistfights he'd get into in port with the regular servicemen, who thought that the Merchant Marine were a bunch of goldbricks and draft dodgers with cushy jobs...

As for my mother's side, well, my mother's side were Polish Jews. None of them made it through the war alive, a fact that fills me with rage whenever I think of it...

[Scots Grey]

Further to my last post my maternal grandfather was in the "Scruff"(Desert Airforce) from late '41. According to my mother he said that he always manged to arrive in a place after all the fighting was over.

My fathers step-father was in 5th Camerons(51st Highland Division).Just before Alamein he thought he would be clever and dug his foxhole next to where the Naffi canteen truck stopped.As his section was queing up for their grub a Stuka appeared from nowhere.He dived into his foxhole and his section dived in on top of him.After the attack he was covered in Naffi custard from head to foot

I also worked with a man who enlisted under age in the Lovat Scouts (as his father had done in WW1)and then transferred to 2/Camerons when the regiment was being reformed after the fall of Tobruk.At Cassino his Section trench was mortared and he was the only survivor

[PJungnitsch]

My German grandfather was another one of those unlucky enough to be of the right age to serve in both wars. Apparently in the first he was buried so completely in an artillery barrage that it was thought he was gone until a buddy found his hand and dug him out. Between the wars he was a teacher but in the second he was called up immediately and spent most of it in the east, not making it home until '46.

One uncle was in the Luftwaffe and apparently bombed the same London that my English grandfather was working in at the time. I tried asking this uncle about the war but all that he said was that by the end they had no gas for their Focke-Wulfs and could only watch the Allied planes go by. Of course if he was one of the bomber pilots hastily converted to fighters at the end that may have been better for him.

Another uncle has something to do with training tank crews and one aunt worked with searchlights on the anti-aircraft batteries.

Everyone survived, including my father who was too young to get involved but was moved with my grandmother and the other younger children from Silesia to Dresden, where fortunately they were placed in the suburbs and were not killed when the city was flattened.

[Jagdratt]

My father was a teenage bombadier in the Canadian Army. He was in a replacement depot laying telephone wire in a "cold ditch" in Britain when a Sgt rode up on a motorcycle and told him the war had ended. He asked if this meant he could leave the wire and get out of the ditch - "No". He said he was always cold and hungry in Britain.

He was in London when VE day was celebrated. A friend of his jumped on the fender of Churchill's car as it wound through the crowds, and Dad has pointed him out in various newsreel shots.

He was in Holland when German POWs were being repatriated to Germany. They were using German transport whenever possible, and the vehicles were in terrible shape.

A Kubelwagon broke down out on the "polder"(?) and he was left to guard four POWs who were trying to fix it. He thought any one of them could have broken his neck before he could unshoulder his rifle.

When they finally go it running, the convoy was miles ahead. They arrived in a Dutch village, and word that a German vehicle with German soldiers had entered the village appeared to spread fast. By the time they reached the market square, it was full of people. They were screaming and spitting on the VW, pounding on it and rocking it. Dad was trying to stick his shoulder out the window with the 'Canada' rocker on top. He thought they were going to get hauled out and lynched.

A big dutch woman came up to the car and was screaming at the driver while shaking a large painting of King George the fifth at him. My dad couldn't understand that.

He missed a trip to Berlin to tour the Nazi ruins because he was on guard duty. He traded a pack of cigarettes for a peice of velumn paper with an embossed Nazi eagle and the words "Adolf Hitler' on it in huge letters. We still have that.

He spent several years in Germany in the 50's as a Lt and Cpt. He came to love the German people, culture, and cuisine. He couldn't believe the devastation in the country, and didn't think the Brits or Canadians would have kept going - fighting - through that kind of hardship.

He shared his own father's strong post WW1 sentiment - he was a Lt Col running a military hospital in Britain during WWI - that the Allies had far more in common with the Germans than they did the French...

[edward cameron]

I had a dear friend called Hans Feldhorst. He was a tank driver in the 16th Panzer Division. He managed to get to the Volga but was injured in September in 42 norht of the Tractor factory and was evacuated to a hospital further back. He managed to survive the collapse of the southern front.

He ended up as a tank driver in the reformed 116th Panzer Division and spent time in both the Panzer regiment and the Panzerjaeger unit. His favourite vehicle was the Jadgpanther. He died 7 years ago.

[Reckall]

My mother father served in WWI against the Austro-Hungarians in the "Alpini" and got two Silver Medals. He was then wounded in the back in 1918 and spent the rest of his life with a bullet in his spine (he could walk, but not even bow to tie his shoes). He met my Grandma, who served as a nurse in the hospital, and they fell in love and married. It could seem a romantic story if you have not lived throug it, I belive. My mother still cannot see the Alpini on TV without crying.

My father's father served in the Bersaglieri in North Africa, somewhere in the '30s. His regiment WALKED from Tripoli to Abissinia when it was reassigned to the latter. He came home in 1939, never to return in the army again.

[Sytass]

Sort of a bit of off topic, but don't you think it's wonderful that we, the following generations, can sit together on a forum, descendants of former adversaries, and share our memories and love for a game in peace and harmony?

*gets suddenly all mushy*

[EDIT: Difficult time typing. ]

[ October 15, 2002, 12:18 PM: Message edited by: Sytass ]

[laxx]

this is Off-Topic but

in WWII, my Granddad and the whole family hid in neighbouring Malayan State of Johore, deep in the jungle while the Japanese invaded Singapore in Bicycles. It was a whole commune cut off for a few years from the cities, living off tapioca, fruits, and sweet potatoes.

He had a sworn-brother, who was a bandit who would scour the battlefields for the dead's belongings, gold-rings, tooth etc. The Brother was extradited back to China in the early fifties.

[MikeyD]

A short while ago I walked into my supervisor's office in Boston and found a large document unfolded on his desk with a big Nazi stamp at the top! My supervisor was in the process of documenting the flight of his parents out of Krakow as the Russians approached.

[PPeter]

Hi there

It's my first post here, although I'm a long-time lurker.

My Grandfather served in... russian army in I World War - cavalery unit. My second Grandfather served as infantryman in 1939 (Armia Odwodowa Prusy) - he fought near Modlin and was only one survivor from his entire company - due scouting they were caught in MG/mortar fire. He was injured and spent 2 days laing in the field. Although he lost part of his stomach and has trouble moving (one leg shortened) he lived 'till 1999.

[Mafiozox]

In my last post i wrote about my grandfather in the Red army,well, my grandmother was in Auschwitz Birkenau, she lives with us so i ask her alot about it. she has no real problem talking about, and she's a strong woman.

Around '41 she escaped a mass-execution somewhere in Czechlovakia, 3 Wehrmacht soldiers helped her get away, knowing she was a jew escaping.

She cooked for kapos and uberkapos in Birkenau since '42 and that's how she survived Auschwitz, she tells me that she remembers seeing the American bombers. "they shined like diamonds in the sky" and the Germans would run into Auschwitz because they knew the Americans wont bomb it, heh.

Then she tells me that around the end of '44 they were taken from Auschwitz and marched into Germany. in april they stopped in the area of Berlin as she recalls, and stayed there untill the Russians liberated them in the ending days of the war.

She told me "I remember we woke up one day in the spring, and as we got out of barracks we saw dead Germans, so many dead Germans, scattered around like flies."

About the Wehrmacht after the war she tells me : "They came back from war, held their heads and said 'mein gott mein gott'. they were shocked by what their own people did to us."

[Ruthless]

My grandparents (on my father's side) are both from Romania. My grandfather was in (I believe) the Prinz Eugan division/regiment in WWII. Apparently he was fortunate that he was not tattooed as an SS because his brother(or something) apparently could not emigrate to U.S. because of SS tattoo. However, my grandfather, after being wounded twice (once in the head) ended up captured. I believe he said something about every man being lined up and every other one being shot. Nice fun stuff like that. He ended up in a Russian prison camp where he managed to make friends with one of the guards because he spoke some Russian. That probably kept him alive because he "was one of the lucky ones" to get a fish head with his soup (mostly water) very sporadically. Anyhow, he emigrated to U.S. with his wife after the war, eventually managed to buy his own orchard, and is retired now.