WWII Photos (and Stories) of Our Loved Ones

[Maguire]

My relatives managed to dodge every one of the big wars by luck of age or being born in neutral countries. All the better says I.

 

[MD_SPencer]

My father was a B-24 Liberator bombardier. He enlisted in the USAAC on November 21st 1942. He did his training in Missouri, Texas, Massachusetts and New York. He was assigned to Pantanella AAB 464th bomb group (heavy) 777th squadron. I have his war time memoirs that he type for the family and I have many first had accounts of his war time experience that he told me on long car trips together. I also have all of his insignia and medals, his uniform jacket complete with is officers cap. My older brother has his 45 auto pistol that survived a crash in the Azores enroot to Italy. The pilot was flying in heavy scud and the tower was calling out altitude in meters and the gauges in the B-24 were calibrated in feet so they hit the mountain instead of going over. All but two of the crew were killed in the crash. My father and the ball gunner were the only two who survived and my father was the only one of the original crew to survive the war. He never romanticized WWII or his roll in it. He always said that it was just a job that needed to be done and that he could help do it. He never defined himself buy his war time experiences but buy what he did later on in his life. Until he got older he rarely even talked about what he had seen and done in WWII unless it was with other veterans that he bumped into. I guess that he just wanted to be judged by his later accomplishments and not his war time service alone. He died in 1993 at the age of seventy, I was thirty.

 

[ranchnman]

none for me unfortunatly... 1 in WWI and 1 in Korea

 

[PADDY]

Uncle Joe.

Whilst on the German occupied island of Crete, working with the British SOE (Special Operations Executive). Get the feeling you don't really want to mess with these guys?

 

[tuppence]

Crete

Hey Paddy, my father-in -law was a p.o.w. on crete. Did Uncle Joe meet any Aussies?

 

[PADDY]

He served with an Aussie.

In fact the Aussie used to go back to Uncle Joe's home in North Wales on leave. Sadly, the Aussie pal didn't make it out of the Halifax they were flying out of the middle east.

 

[Eyemo]

Which bit of North Wales did he live?

 

[Story]

I love a good mystery/detectin' challenge

I am trying to find a picture of another relative General Donald Clinton Swatland, Chief of Technical Procurement Division, Air Technical Service Command from 1942-5.

Born 1895

Received High Honors, Princeton U. 1915
http://books.google.com/books?id=eJ...X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA442,M1



Apparently, a partner of Cravath, Henderson & de Gersdorff
http://www.kriso.ee/cgi-bin/shop/9781584777137.html
And the President of the Harvard Law Review for 1922, and by 1928 a junior partner, Cravath, Degersdorff, Swaine & Wood, New York;
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,928426,00.html?iid=chix-sphere

Involved in pre-war litigation between Big Business and Radio
http://books.google.com/books?id=EK...X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA269,M1
see also
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company And Its Subsidiaries, Westinghouse X-ray Company, Inc. And The Bryant Electric Company And United Electrical, Radio And Machine Workers Of America
http://vlex.com/vid/39957002
(which would explain how he wound up in Technical Procurement)
As far as Technical Procurement in 1942, see alsocontracting.tacom.army.mil/sbo/SBPGUIDE-GovInd(Dec%202006).doc
Small Business Mobilization Act of 1942: In 1942, Congress recognized that business concerns operating small plants did not have the “economies of scale” necessary to compete with large plants and a price differential might be required to keep such plants mobilized for the war efforts.

Smaller War Plants Corporation (SWPC): Concern for small business intensified during World War II when large industries beefed up production to accommodate wartime defense contracts and smaller businesses were left unable to compete. To help small business participate in war production and give them financial viability, Congress created the SWPC in 1942. The SWPC provided direct loans to private entrepreneurs, encouraged large financial institutions to make credit available to small enterprises, and advocated small business interests to federal procurement agencies and big businesses. The SWPC was dissolved after the war and its lending and contract powers were handed over to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

Only his bio is on record, no photo
http://www.army.mil/cmh/reference/Finding Aids/GO-S.htm.

The senior partner of my division was Donald Swatland, known as "Gen. Swatland." I would be notified in advance when he wanted to see me: Every minute of his time was precious. Minutes before the interview I would be summoned to his outer office with the words, "Stand by for Gen. Swatland." When I was ushered into his corner office, directly overlooking the fabled intersection of Wall and Broad streets, he was often having his shoes shined by a kneeling figure, talking on the telephone and glaring at documents brought in by his two male secretaries who kept rushing in and out. Then he would look over his glasses at me. Still, I felt a bond. After I had reported, he waved me out of his office with the back of his hand. Did I catch sight of an ever-so-fleeting grin?
http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1197626690782



NYT Obit, April 1962
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E10FD3B54157A93C6A9178FD85F468685F9

 

[Story]

Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2008/08/wwii_vets_open_up_belatedly_fo.html

Guy Groff Jr. was a fighting member of the "greatest generation." Like many other World War II veterans, the Silver Spring Township resident doesn't like to talk about his wartime experiences. "I don't think it's important," Groff said.

Nonetheless, Groff recently did his first interview -- with a newspaper reporter -- in which he told of charging a German machine gun nest in 1944, and of being held prisoner by the Germans. And Robert Patrick, who is coordinating a national effort to record such memories for posterity, said more and more World War II veterans like Groff are opening up about their wartime experiences.

Patrick is director of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. The project was authorized by Congress in 2000. It has accumulated video, audio, and written records of the war experiences of some 60,000 veterans, including about 36,000 from World War II.

 

[jessicarabbit]

I can upload some pics at a later date, but just wanted to add my family's story. my late grandfather was a signalman in the British Navy on board the King George V. he was on board when they sank the german warship Bismarck and my grandmother has original photos of winston churchill on board the ship with the men. it's amazing.

my other grandfather enlisted with the australian army and was sent to singapore. he was captured when singapore fell in 1942 and imprisoned in changi jail. from april-december 1943 he was sent with F force to the middle section of the thai-burma railway. the experiences of the soldiers of F force were considered to be the most horrific amongst japanese POWs. for the entire 9 months they worked on the railway they had to wear loin cloths as their clothes rotted off their backs, and they went barefoot due to their boots having fallen apart after the initial 300km march north. it was during this time that the monsoons swept in over burma, halting work on the railway and making conditions horrendous. my grandfather lost many friends to cholera. sanitation, if existent, was appalling and the soldiers either had to sleep in the open (getting drenched with rain), or sleep sitting up in crowded attap huts. on top of this of course, they had to tolerate the now infamous cruelty and torture inflicted upon them by the japanese.

my grandfather recorded his experiences on tape a few years ago which I've since transcribed. he's a wonderful storyteller. I hope no one minds me sharing some excerpts here:

"food was a long time arriving at Changi. We were starving, and when it did arrive it was rice. Just plain rice and not much of it. To be quite frank I hated bloody rice - never could stand it."

"We slept in these attap huts and I remember waking up one night and thinking 'jesus, what’s got my toe?' and it was a bloody rat gnawing my toe."

"there were some amusing things. When we were at the rat infested camp I was out on a working party when somebody discovered something in the back of one of the go-downs that might be saleable. some characters discovered this great crate wall with all these nicely wrapped brown cartons in them, so we all acquired a carton each on that working party and we all went marching home with a packet under our shirt. When we got back to camp we all discovered that each packet contained a stack of condoms. I can tell you that trading condoms to natives is not an easy task. They’re not into birth control! lol The Japanese used to carry out searches from time to time at the camp so we all had to dispose of our condoms in the river."

"when we were on one working party there was a huge Chinese cemetery over the barbed wire at the back of a row of houses. There were funerals there, several every day. Apparently it’s the custom for the mourners to put food and baskets of fruit on the grave so the departed would not be hungry in the next world. Well unfortunately a few went to the next world and they must have been hungry because our blokes found their way under the wire at night and found it necessary to remove some of the food. One unfortunate was caught; I always remember this was our first sight of a real hard bashing. They herded us all together and made us form up into a square and then their troops posted round facing us with bayonets and then they brought the poor unfortunate to the middle and the officer flogged him unmercifully across the face with the buckle end of his strap. Geez he made a mess of him."

"You read a lot about the bashings and the starvation, but the degradation and the humiliation were the worst, the filth that we had to live in."

"when the railway finished I didn’t see this because I was in hospital with another dose of malaria. They had a big ceremony outside our camp when it all joined up. They brought a bloody awful Japanese band. You might forgive them for a lot of things but how could you forgive them for their awful bloody music, especially when our blokes were too bloody weak to put their hands over their ears!"

"one day we got to a staging camp and we all staggered to sit under the nearest tree and as I walked towards the tree I had no boots, they’d dropped off my feet. My foot slipped on a greasy root of a tree and I went down. I remember my mate said to me, 'did you notice nobody laughed? We’d usually laugh at something like that.' Geez it was terrible. I realize now that I never heard anybody laugh from the time that we left Changi in April until we got back in December. I never heard the sound of laughter."

my grandfather turns 90 next week and is one of the few remaining members of his battalion to be alive. he really is amazing. he doesn't talk of his experiences in a racist or angry way. he's just very philosophical.

if anyone would like me to email them the full transcript please PM me. sorry for the long post.

 

[PADDY]

Jessica, that was marvellous.

I'm sure everyone who read your grandfather's piece appreciated your sharing it, thankyou 'so much' for taking the time out to do that. One just cannot imagine what they had to enjure.

 

[Widebrim]

My father

My avatar shows my dad, Tech. 5th Class Lee Bartoletti, U.S. Army Infantry, '42-'45, Pacific Theater. Although he was listed in Pennsylvania as a coal miner (an essential occupation during the war), and was therefore deferred, he wrote the government stating that he was no longer a miner, and wanted to serve. Uncle Sam happily obliged him. He fought on Attu (terrible campaign), Kwajalein, Leyte (Philippines), and Okinawa. If the A Bombs had not been dropped, his division (the 7th Infantry) would have participated in the invasion of Japan. He witnessed the first Jap banzai on Attu, where he was hit with shrapnel and got frozen feet (the Americans weren't issued cold-weather uniforms). Later on, he picked up malaria, and was shot in the hand. He was told that he would be put in for the Silver Star and the rank of Sergeant on Okinawa, but the LT who made both recommendations got hit, and nothing came out of either. He was about 30 lbs. lighter when he came home in December of 1945, and for years would not say much about his experiences. It was only when I, as a boy, started asking him about the war that he told me some of his stories. Still, he kept his Class A jacket, and later petitioned the Army for his missing medals. He eventually joined DAV, and began to attend Memorial Day services with me. At 90, his memory is shot, but I was fortunate enough to have recorded his experiences on cassette, as well as a bit on video. He has truly been a hero to me, and it was greatly due to him that I joined the Army Infantry, eventually serving in Iraq; he was always with me there in spirit.

 

[PADDY]

Might I just say...

...'how important' it is, if you can, to record some of these lives and experiences either through tape or written, as once these "ordinary people who did extraordinary things" pass away, well...sadly all those stories and feelings..etc pass away forever with them [huh]

A few years ago, I believe it was the BBC had a scheme going to encourage families to record the wartime experiences of their nearest and dearest, or friends/neighbours of the family so that they could be archived through the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London for generations to come. I don't know if other countries, such as the USA have/had something similar, but there are great merits to doing this

Once again, thanks to ALL our members who have shared a slice of their family's life with us here.

"At the going down of the sun...we will remember them."

 

[just_me]

My father was in the Navy during WW II. Here are a couple of photos of lighthearted moments during the war.

 

[Story]

I have his war time memoirs that he type for the family and I have many first had accounts of his war time experience that he told me on long car trips together.

I would encourage you (and anyone else) to please write down his (or their relatives') verbal accounts while you still remember them.

Furthermore, if you know veterans who are still sharp of mind, I would recommend using the Center of Military History's Oral History Interview guide.
I'll have to get back to ya later with the right URL, but this is what the one for Vietnam looks like http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/oralhistory/participation/forms/veteran.pdf )

 

[Widebrim]

Anchors aweigh

My father was in the Navy during WW II. Here are a couple of photos of lighthearted moments during the war.

Great photos, and love the beards. Sailors should be allowed to wear them again.

 

[Vanessa]

My Grampa Wood

A few photos recently unearthed during genealogy work. He was in North Africa & the Mediterranean.

 

[Widebrim]

A few photos recently unearthed during genealogy work. He was in North Africa & the Mediterranean.

Great photos of Grandpa Wood. Interesting that he has no necktie in the second photo. Any more salutes to our loved ones?

 

[Brinybay]

Funny I should come across this thread. I just had a vintage picture of my Uncle Charlie enlarged, circa early 30s:



Then there was Dad in the early or mid 60s:

 

[kyda]

My Grandfather served in New Guinea during ww11, my other grandfather was in the Army transport in Australia. My Grandmother was in the land Army - when my Nanna and Poppie went to get married her was given a 24 hour pass. 2 hours before Nanna was out trapping rabbits for dinner.

My Husbands Grandfather served in Egypt, and on the Kokoda Track. We have a photo of him and some of his mates collecting mail in front of a sign saying "If you have not got it and I don't have it then who has it"??? My husband's dad has the table that has the burn mark from where his mum dropped the flat iron when she found out that he was coming home ( that kitchen table will be fought over when it comes time for a new home).

My Dad was in National Service during Vietnam, he did not have to go as it was voluntary to go in Australia.

Oh and my Mums Grandfather served on the Western Front in WW1 and made it home - not many Australians survived on that front.