Veterans Day

[Chris...]

My grandad, 8th Army N. Africa WW II 

 

[Ralphie ★]

Nice!  Somewhere there is a photo of my paternal grandfather in his WW1 uniform. 

[Road Runner]

When I was kid, today was known as Armistice Day.  

[ChrisL]

9 minutes ago, Chris... said:

My grandad, 8th Army N. Africa WW II 

 

My dad used to wear his cap cocked sideways like that! Boy they thought they were the shit back then. Truth is they were!

Cool shots!

[MickinMD ★]

My father was in Darby's Rangers in WW2 and was in the first landing craft that hit the beach at Oran in Algeria, Gela in Siciliy, Maori (near Salerno) in Italy and Anzio in Italy. In between he was in a lot of action, including the Rangers raid on Sened Pass in Tunisia.  At Anzio he was ordered to lead his platoon across a possibly mined beach toward a White Casino that might have been German headquarters, enter the casino and shoot anything that moved.  Fortunately it was empty, but he lost half his left hand near Cisterna a couple weeks later.  Few of Darby's Rangers who were members of the lone 1st Battalion before the Rangers were expanded from it went through the war unscathed - they were on or behind the front lines almost constantly from 1942 to 1944.

My brother-in-law was a tank-driver during the "Hail Mary" attack in desert storm and helped destroy Saddam's "elite" Republican Guard.

My uncle John was navigator of a B-17 dropping bombs, mission after mission, on Hitler's resources.  Once, after bombing the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania, his plane was so shot up that the pilot believed one more hit by flack would bring the plane down.  So, on the return trip to their base in Italy, he ordered my uncle to plot a course directly over the middle of Vienna, Austria.  He was counting on the Germans to see that he was heading back to base, not on a bombing run, and that they would shoot at the plane to avoid it crashing on property and people in Vienna.  He was right!  My uncle spent years seeing psychiatrists after the war.

Of course, many others in my family are veterans.  I am not.  But I did spend a couple years doing dangerous large-scale chemical reactions to successfully develop a large-scale process for a component of the Tomahawk Cruise Missile's solid fuel that made it burn more smoothly and make the on-board use of mapping more accurate.

[ChrisL]

Yeah I thought I was the shit too! Happy Veterans Day to the vets out there.

 

[shootingstar]

47 minutes ago, ChrisL said:

Yeah I thought I was the shit too! Happy Veterans Day to the vets out there.

 

So which one is you, Chris?

[ChrisL]

58 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

So which one is you, Chris?

The one in the middle.

[BuffJim]

Thank you to all you Forumites who served in the military!!!  You are heroes. 

[maddmaxx ★]

50 minutes ago, BuffJim said:

Thank you to all you Forumites who served in the military!!!  You are heroes. 

Naa.  Sometimes we just stumbled through very un-heroically.

[JerrySTL ★]

14 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Naa.  Sometimes we just stumbled through very un-heroically.

This. Never considered myself a hero. 

[donkpow]

2 hours ago, shootingstar said:

So which one is you, Chris?

The Hispanic one. 

[Chris...]

The wife is also a veteran 

[Longjohn ★]

My son John, his wife is also a veteran and left active duty after being injured in Iraq.

[Longjohn ★]

This is my dad. He served in France in WW2

[ChrisL]

My sister posted this on FB today.  My parents with my dad & his crooked cap circa 1947

[Randomguy]

Lots of cool veterans!  My dad, brother, grandfather, and an uncle were in mostly the navy, except the uncle.  I probably would have, too, if I had decent knees.

[shootingstar]

Taken a few days outside a church decorated with several thousand knitted poppies.  1 of the church woman organized this after seeing it done in England recently.  The church received  several thousand donated handmade poppies from various parts of Canada and some Commonwealth countries in the past few months.

My partner was born in 1945 in southern Germany. His mother had to bring him as a baby into the basement when the bombs were hitting their neighbourhood. A bomb exploded on the house beside his parents' house where she hid with baby.  His mother up to her death in Canada, hated thunderstorms.  She shook...it reminded her of the bombs.

His father was Hitler resister for Hitler didn't want Catholics..but in the end he got conscripted.  He died somewhere in Czechoslovakia. Dearie does remember in Germany as a 4 yr. old, the German authorities giving the letter to his mother to tell her of his death and seeing her breaking down in tears.  She had no idea for a few years where he disappeared.

Remembrance Day (which is what we call it in Canada), is rememberance of loved ones lost via war ….worldwide.

My father, age 10 remembers the seeing Japanese dropping bombs...like eggs is how he described.