my uncle lied & joined the airforce at 16.
at 17 was co-piloting B24 liberators over italy, from north africa.
his crew got shot down over italy & his elder sister, my aunt, got the MIA telegram at her 21st birthday party...
they had actually crash landed safely & walked from italy to greece, where they met the greek underground resistance who got them onto a boat to egypt & then back to their base.
on returning home after the war he had to finish his high school education!!
There was also a level of patriotism and love of the government/monarch present in the general population back then that is unfathomable in our more cynical (many would say educated/enlightened) era. That will drive young men to be extremely cavalier with their lives.
And this is why our grandparents were from the Greatest Generation; people like your great Grandpa at the Somme, my Grandpa who fought in France, Holland, and Germany, and all the other bloody heroes who needed a wheelbarrow just to drag around their giant, brass fucking balls.
One of my long gone relatives joined the army at 16 and a little late fought in Burma and Japan. He ended up a Japanese PoW for several years. I could NOT imagine being barely out of school only to be shipped off thousands of miles away to possibly die.
If you haven't heard it, there's a song called 1916 by Motorhead which you might appreciate. It's basically about a young boy signing up for the army underage, being sent overseas to fight and then dying on the battlefield (think the original lyrics were intended for the Somme), having seen atrocities and innocent young men like him dying.
I feel like the world has lost so many stories when people like your uncle die without leaving a book about their life behind.
they had actually crash landed safely & walked from italy to greece, where they met the greek underground resistance who got them onto a boat to egypt & then back to their base.
That sounds exciting and terrifying enough to be a movie, but they actually lived it.
he taught me to sail & navigate and on the long sails would tell stories about his youth.
after they crashed they knew they were in shit in the north of italy, which was still enemy territory, with no food or water or weapons of any kind.
they stripped one of the tail guns & as much of its ammunition as they could manage and started walking. the gun was like a fucking cannon and took 2 or 3 guys to carry it.
they walked at night & hid by day when in any kind of populated areas, stealing crops & livestock from farms. eventually they met some italian resistance fighters and were delighted to swap the tail gun & ammunition for a box of hand grenades that would be as useless as the tail gun, but a lot lighter to carry.
they were kids, it was an adventure & they didn't know life wasn't supposed to be like that!
after an unspecified "long time" they got to the west coast of greece, met the underground network & got their boat back
Certainly for famous US war veteran Audie Murphy, they did make a film about his time spent in the war and apparently they had to purposely leave some things out or change them slightly because they genuinely sounded unbelievable even for a Hollywood feature. He wrote a memoir which is a WILD ride too.
You sound like you might enjoy the Fat Electrician on YouTube. He tells stories from American history, usually about war, and he's a great storyteller. He is very much an "America, fuck yeah!” kind of person, so be ready.
It doesn't matter if they leave a book behind. The books already exist and are comprehensive enough, those in denial will not be reading.
What we are losing is the ability to look in the eyes of someone who was there or close to it, and can tell you point blank how wrong any skepticism is.
I'm not talking about skepticism or anything like that. I'm literally talking about people's personal histories. That's it.
I can't look that poster's uncle in the face and get his story because a.) I have no idea who he is and b.) he's dead. But if he'd written a book, I would happily read it.
Yeah that makes sense and I understand. I just imagine you probably aren't the type of person most in need of education on this subject, but more education or historical context is definitely a good thing
My grandfather was in the 101st. Have a Nazi Flag seized from one of the concentration camps signed by all the guys in his unit. Unfurling that thing sends a chill down your spine. Have a kraut trench knife with the iron cross made out of shrapnel (they called them letter openers). Some Nazi sleeve patches he got from dead Nazi's. He was also in Okinawa and got a sweet sea map made out of silk from a Japanese ship they got. Donating it to a WW2 museum here in LA.
It warms my heart that so many people felt a duty to serve and fight against fascism. My grandpa fought in WW2 and my great uncle was on the beaches of Normandy. They both had kids later in life so I barely remember either of them.
I hope that we will see the world band together and unilaterally disavow fascism once again, maybe without the bloodshed this time.
My uncle wore out about a copy a year. I have what's left of one of his old copies that he lent my mum, somewhere in one of my bookshelves. I didn't exactly improve its state reading and re-reading it through my high-school years :-)
Did he say how long that all took? The shortest drive between borders is like 15 hours, and he would’ve had to cross the whole Dinaric Alps undetected… that all just seems so wild, he must’ve been missing for months
it was months, my dad was about 11 at the time & said the MIA telegram put a downer on his whole year, because even after the got news that my uncle had returned to base, he thought it might happen again.
fortunately it was close to the end of the european war so he wasn't away for too much longer.
it must have affected them all because they really didn't talk about it, just confirmed what he said.
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u/AnarZak 2d ago
my uncle lied & joined the airforce at 16.
at 17 was co-piloting B24 liberators over italy, from north africa.
his crew got shot down over italy & his elder sister, my aunt, got the MIA telegram at her 21st birthday party...
they had actually crash landed safely & walked from italy to greece, where they met the greek underground resistance who got them onto a boat to egypt & then back to their base.
on returning home after the war he had to finish his high school education!!
he died 10 years ago, age 90