Stories From WW2

[Baptist Believer]

My grandmother would never go to the air raid shelter (granddad tried to get her to leave London and live with relatives in Oxfordshire, but she always refused.

The British people showed an incredible amount of courage during the Battle of Britain. The British were not in a position to win the war on their own, but they certainly kept Europe from being lost by their bravery, their intelligence, and their unwillingness to give in.

My mother and her family went through the war in Europe and suffered greatly during the Nazi occupation. Toward the end of the war, they endured Allied bombing which my mother and aunt can barely describe except in terms of terror. When the warning sirens went off, they had only a short time to get to the shelter before it was closed. Once the bombs started falling, the pressure wave from the explosions could kill everyone in the shelter (destroy their lungs) if the door was left open.

I can barely imagine what that was like, and I'm certain that I am underestimating the experience.

Yet the regular citizen of London, and some other larger cities, faced that almost every day for a long time.

 

[David Kent]

War effects innocent people on both sides. Where my gran lived in London there was an open space where they built some air raid shelters. These were all hit by German bombs and all inside were killed. They were just levelled over, I believe. There was a derelict school which had been bombed, on the other side. As children we were told not to try to play there as there were wild cats in there. I now suspect it was more than that.

 

[David Kent]

Mt grandfather served in Bomber Command in the Pathfinder Squadron as a navigator (he liked maps, which I've inherited from him). Their job was to drop flares on the German targets to guide the Lancasters to them.

My wife's uncle Arthur, was put in the fire service during the war due to ill health. They soon found he could draw maps and was transferred to a govt. department that was responsible for maps.

It was only at his funeral that we discovered that the maps he worked on were for D Day.

 

[David Kent]

When I first started work in an office, there were about three or four men who had been in WW1. One had been serving in Palestine. Another had been injured with a gunshot wound and was patched up and then lost a leg.

When the first retired, he said he was going to take it easy. He died within 6 months, The second said he was going to be busy doing woodwork, he lived well into his 90's.

They both said that when WW1 was declared, all the men in the office went to lunch, signed up and didn't come back from lunch till after the war.

 

[Adonia]

Mt grandfather served in Bomber Command in the Pathfinder Squadron as a navigator (he liked maps, which I've inherited from him). Their job was to drop flares on the German targets to guide the Lancasters to them.

My uncle was a navigator in the U.S. Army Air Forces. I believe he served in Europe, but other than that, I don't know much else about his service.

 

[Adonia]

The British people showed an incredible amount of courage during the Battle of Britain. The British were not in a position to win the war on their own, but they certainly kept Europe from being lost by their bravery, their intelligence, and their unwillingness to give in.

My mother and her family went through the war in Europe and suffered greatly during the Nazi occupation. Toward the end of the war, they endured Allied bombing which my mother and aunt can barely describe except in terms of terror. When the warning sirens went off, they had only a short time to get to the shelter before it was closed. Once the bombs started falling, the pressure wave from the explosions could kill everyone in the shelter (destroy their lungs) if the door was left open.

I can barely imagine what that was like, and I'm certain that I am underestimating the experience.

Yet the regular citizen of London, and some other larger cities, faced that almost every day for a long time.

That's right, unless one has been through it we really have no idea. Since we are dealing with WW2, my cousin dated a guy for a couple of years and his mother had been in a concentration camp as a teenager. I never met the lady, but that must have been an unbelievable experience.

 

[tyndale1946]

That's right, unless one has been through it we really have no idea. Since we are dealing with WW2, my cousin dated a guy for a couple of years and his mother had been in a concentration camp as a teenager. I never met the lady, but that must have been an unbelievable experience.

Isn't that true weather it is WW1, WW2 or any other war... You have no concept of it, unless you've been through it... Each and every war has it casualties... Scars are left external and internal... You mentioned concentration camp... There is an interesting movie out on dvd called The Boy In Stripped Pyjamas... If you have never seen it I suggest you do... Was it a true story?... Could have been, you decide... Interesting twist to war... Brother Glen

 

[Salty]

Back around 1980, when I was in Germany - my German secretary about age 50. She told me that as a ten year old,
her and her mother would listen to the BBC. But to do so, they would put a very heavy blanket over the radio and them selves. If caught by the Nazi's listening to the BBC, they would pay with their lives.

 

[Adonia]

Back around 1980, when I was in Germany - my German secretary about age 50. She told me that as a ten year old,
her and her mother would listen to the BBC. But to do so, they would put a very heavy blanket over the radio and them selves. If caught by the Nazi's listening to the BBC, they would pay with their lives.

In high school my girlfriend's parents were both from Germany and her father was in the Wehrmacht. The first time I came home on leave he said in his heavy German accent "Ach, zie home on furlough from zie army?" I said yes sir, I am home on leave, but I am in the Luftwaffe, remember? He laughed. He was a nice man and the only thing he ever said about the war that he got drafted and he was glad when it was over.

 

[Adonia]

Isn't that true weather it is WW1, WW2 or any other war... You have no concept of it, unless you've been through it... Each and every war has it casualties... Scars are left external and internal... You mentioned concentration camp... There is an interesting movie out on dvd called The Boy In Stripped Pyjamas... If you have never seen it I suggest you do... Was it a true story?... Could have been, you decide... Interesting twist to war... Brother Glen

No, I don't remember seeing that one, but I did see a movie about a teenaged Jew who ended up in Russia fleeing from the Germans after they entered Poland. He then ended up serving in the German army for a bit after he encountered them there though some quirk of fate. It was a true story and he wrote a book about all that had happened to him and then they made the movie.

 

[Baptist Believer]

That's right, unless one has been through it we really have no idea. Since we are dealing with WW2, my cousin dated a guy for a couple of years and his mother had been in a concentration camp as a teenager. I never met the lady, but that must have been an unbelievable experience.

My mother and her family were held in a Nazi forced labor camp in Poland during most of the war. While the goal was not to kill prisoners, there was little food and the work was hard. My mother won't talk much about it except that she has made my brother and me promise that we will not have her cremated when she dies. They spent too many years fighting to keep from having their bodies placed on the burn pile like many of their fellow prisoners. Although my mother's family is Austrian, they were living in Yugoslavia before the war and were considered "Slavs," and therefore undesirable people, except as slave labor.

I didn't know much about all of this when my grandparents were alive, but when we were cleaning up and disposing of my grandmother's home shortly after her death, we found a suitcase full of papers and documents related to their war years. The Nazi stamps on a number of documents made me ask a lot of questions, and my mother decided to answer them since I was then an adult.

Horrible stuff.