Personal accounts from both WW2 and The Great War(WW1) give rise to authors picking up their pens and writing fictional stories based off of them (my own story Where Chaos Reigns is heavily based off of personal accounts I have read in my research). However, many of us have stories of our own, of our own family who served in either WW1 or 2 or were a mere spectator to both wars. Does your family have a legacy of service in the world wars? If so, share it with us!
GREAT discussion point!!
My Aunt Mary died last summer at the age of 96. She was a registered nurse who was working in Washington in December of '41. I took her out to lunch one time and she told me how on her walk to mass every week, she would pass by the Japanese Embassy. One Sunday, she thought it was odd that the entire staff of the embassy were running around like mad, packing up vehicles and burning papers in the front yard. When she got home from church, she heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
She also was married to her childhood sweetheart while he was on leave in 1944. He returned to the European front and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge. He died soon after of pneumonia in a Nazi POW camp. She was so destroyed by his death that she said she couldn't bear to stay in Boston anymore and see the places they used to go. So as a young, 26 year old woman, she packed up her car with her cat and drove all alone clear across the country to become a nurse in a hospital in San Francisco. There she met the second great love of her life, a Navy Officer, when he came home on his ship following VJ Day.
She was a pistol. Let me tell you. If she thought something, she'd say it. One time, she didn't like what I was wearing so she chirped out in the middle of Walmart, "Are those real pants or did you just paint your jeans on?" ...okay they were NOT that tight....really...
@Nicole Armas, she really was. I was blessed that my daughter, who was four months at the time, got to meet her a week before she died. It makes me want to cry even thinking about it. She was the matriarch of our family, a tough love, Boston Irish Catholic lady.
I had a great uncle (his name was Jack) who served for the Canadian Army as a dispatch rider. One story that my Nana has always told about him was this one incident where he was riding his motorcycle through some dangerous road when a German sniper shot at him. The sniper missed and the bullet ricocheted and hit him in the arse. He ended up losing control of the motorcycle because of it and wiped out in a ditch.
He lay there for quite a long time, bleeding and unable to move until some Canadian Infantry came by and picked him up out of the ditch. They told him that he was lucky they found him in time or else he would have bled out.
I never met him or even seen a picture of him but my Nana always tells me that he was a good-looking man XD
@Frances, Yes, but I'm not sure when or for how long he was in France (my Nana was never specific about that; I should ask her to verify how long he in service for. She's the family historian after all.)
I've already discussed my mom's babysitter to Frances, but her story is amazing. Her name was Mia and she was about seventeen in '44 and lived in Wiesbaden, Germany. Her best friend was Jewish, the love of her life an American Air Force officer, and she herself was forced by the Germans to be an architectural draftswoman designing top secret sumarine bunkers, hidden V2 rocket facilities, and concentration camps. I hope to make her story a collaborative fiction piece.
I am astounded at how young she was during all that. You know what the highlight of my life was at 17? I played a nun in a school play and got a standing ovation....yup that's about it.
@Frances, Pfff I'm 17 right now and the highlight of my life is the two week long trip I took with my best friend and her family to Florida (rare do I ever get to travel very far) XD
@Andrew Knight, haha it was a dinner theater production that was written by a friend of mine and we produced it. Lots of people came, it was super fun. I was a singing hillbilly nun who was a former hippie...it was awesome.
@Frances, awesome! I love student written and directed works! My all time favorite was a play called "Hit, Luv, and Jews" and was a satirical piece of ridiculousness that potrayed Hitler as a gay, misunderstood artist!
@Frances, never seen it! This play had a horribly offensive rendition of Mulan's "Be A Man" sung by Lucifer as Hitler prepares to take on the art school he was rejected by!
@Frances, anyway, circling back around, when I was 17 I was doing intelligence processing for the Air Force ROTC in conjunction wit h the DEA, but that's not even a drop on the bucket compared to what the Greatest Generation accomplished!
@Frances, that's the truth. Unfortunately, hardship breeds the most shapely of diamonds. I wonder if we're heading into a tougher world climate, and if our generation will be able to rise to the occasion
@Andrew Knight, All generations have hardships to deal with (the Baby Boomers for example had to deal with Civil Rights and Women's Liberation) but I think we'll be able to rise to the occasion. That I don't doubt
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My Aunt Mary died last summer at the age of 96. She was a registered nurse who was working in Washington in December of '41. I took her out to lunch one time and she told me how on her walk to mass every week, she would pass by the Japanese Embassy. One Sunday, she thought it was odd that the entire staff of the embassy were running around like mad, packing up vehicles and burning papers in the front yard. When she got home from church, she heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
She also was married to her childhood sweetheart while he was on leave in 1944. He returned to the European front and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge. He died soon after of pneumonia in a Nazi POW camp. She was so destroyed by his death that she said she couldn't bear to stay in Boston anymore and see the places they used to go. So as a young, 26 year old woman, she packed up her car with her cat and drove all alone clear across the country to become a nurse in a hospital in San Francisco. There she met the second great love of her life, a Navy Officer, when he came home on his ship following VJ Day.
She was a pistol. Let me tell you. If she thought something, she'd say it. One time, she didn't like what I was wearing so she chirped out in the middle of Walmart, "Are those real pants or did you just paint your jeans on?" ...okay they were NOT that tight....really...
He lay there for quite a long time, bleeding and unable to move until some Canadian Infantry came by and picked him up out of the ditch. They told him that he was lucky they found him in time or else he would have bled out.
I never met him or even seen a picture of him but my Nana always tells me that he was a good-looking man XD