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Ooh, dumbass grandparents stories! My paternal grandfather was a little shithead as a teenager and got in some trouble with the law, and was given a choice between enlisting as a minor and jail time. (Kinda hosed up, really.) He got approval from his parents and enlisted in the USNAG at 17. Ended up going to Luzon on a Victory ship, and permanently lost a fair amount of his hearing from manning a 20mm. ullerrm fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 07:15
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My other grandfather was 15 when WWII ended so he never served there, but when he was in the (Finnish) national service in 1949 or so he served with some dude who had been in the Hitler Jugend, had received training in some bombers (I think a Stuka most likely) and flown a few sorties at the very end of the war, at the age of 14 or 15. He had gotten to Finland after the war, he might have had a Finnish mother or somethig, but because he was around 19 then he was put into the national service. That guy was complaining how him having taken part in the war didn't count as it had not been in the Finnish forces. He ended up guarding an airport somewhere out in the sticks for two years with my grandfather.
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Aug 21, 2019 07:30
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Scratch Monkey posted:When you've spent a lifetime blocking out all the images in your head of gas attacks, mangled bodies, and dead friends I'm sure it's pretty easy to think of WWI as a cracking good time Catching up to the thread but I'm sure the guy who watched his squaddie slowly sink and then drown in mud surely thought it was just grand. Guy wasnt even wounded, he just stepped off from the boardwalk and nobody could help him without suffering the same fate *Edit for war content* My grandma's dad? granddad? was caught up in Finnish Civil War and got sent to Hennala Prison Camp by the Whites. quote:The number of Reds executed in Hennala was about 500,[5] at least 218 of them were women, youngest being only 14-year-old girls.[3] A total of 13 underaged children were shot.[6] The largest single execution in Lahti was made on 9 May, when at least 100 Red women were shot.[7] Sormus fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 12:42
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My paternal grandfather enlisted in the Royal Norwegian Navy in 41 after getting tired of being torpedoed in the merchant marine. Those were his literal words. He figured it was better to be on a destroyer that could at least fight back  He sailed as a signalman on destroyers for most of the war, participated in Normandie, and managed to switch ships not once, but twice just before they were sunk, earning him a "lucky" in front of his surname. He met my grandmother in London during the war, and eventually retired as a Commander in 1980. He drank himself to death about 20 years ago, tired of life, after all his WW2 buddies had passed away.
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Aug 21, 2019 12:57
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My maternal grandfather ran a small family hotel in Glasgow in the 30's. My mom told stories about how they would have to hide in the tin bomb shelter in the back yard, and that during one raid the house across the street got destroyed by a German bomb. I'm pretty sure that's why they decided to move to East Anglia to start another small hotel, and he got a job at one of the US bomber bases nearby. Of course, the war followed them and mom would talk about hearing buzz bombs flying over. I once looked up airstrikes on that area and found a V2 hit less than a mile from their house there. My mom's grandfather was a German immigrant around the turn of the century, and so got put in a camp on some island to farm when WW I broke out. Apparently he and the others didn't care for being rounded up like that, so they cut all the eyes out of the seed potatoes so nothing grew. They got sent home pretty quickly after that. My paternal grandfather got drafted for WW I and was sent to the front during the second battle of the Marne at Belleau Wood. He never talked about any of the combat stuff. The only stories I've gotten were how he left his rifle somewhere and had to walk back miles to get it, and how he and another soldier got demoted for stealing some honey from a farm. Like many of his generation, he became pretty pacifist. Ironically, one of his sons became a colonel and the other enlisted and went on to be a four star.
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Aug 21, 2019 17:49
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My great grandfather joined the Navy to get away from my great grandmother. We don't know a lot of the details as he died in his 60s (again, probably to get away from my great grandmother, she lived to be 95 and was awful) and only talked about it when drunk. He crewed a LST in the Pacific. They dropped Marines on the beach and hauled bodies back to the boats, having to decide which wounded were worth saving. He was in his 30s and having to haul the bodies of kids only a few years older than his own broke him. Somehow he managed to get stateside again and immediately went AWOL. My great grandmother tuned him in and he somehow didn't get in trouble, and he ended up never having to do another combat landing after that.
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Aug 21, 2019 17:57
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WWII German Kriegsmarine prisoners in Arizona attempt to escape down a dry river. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_Escape The short version of it is that their great escape plan was to bust out of Phoenix, and float in their improvised boats down the Salt River and then Gila River to Mexico. Those "rivers" are really more like washes. They sometimes only flow for a few weeks every year. When they got there, it was sand and puddles, and they're now in the middle of the desert. I can't find a reference but I recall a story of one of the guys who was captured just sort of wandered up to a farmhouse. The family fed him dinner, took him to a movie, and then dropped him off at the police station when they were done. Picking cotton in Arizona for a couple years sounds a whole lot better than getting drowned in a U-Boat in the Atlantic.
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Aug 21, 2019 18:13
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Arven posted:My great grandfather joined the Navy to get away from my great grandmother. We don't know a lot of the details as he died in his 60s (again, probably to get away from my great grandmother, she lived to be 95 and was awful) and only talked about it when drunk. He probably knew mine. He was a Bosun mate or similar and landed at Guadalcanal.
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Aug 21, 2019 18:16
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My maternal grandfather was an XO on a floating drydock for the USN in the Pacific for WWII. The only real idiot stories I know of from his service were rolling a Jeep after leaving the officer's club on Guam, and someone (not sure who) getting the geometry wrong for a ship they built a temporary bow for to get it back to Norfolk. They made it fit and the ship made it back, but....oops.
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Aug 21, 2019 18:56
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My maternal grandfather did ten years after being drafted into WWII. His shadowbox had him as a Corporal. Evidently he liked to drink and party a lot so he'd make Sergeant, get busted to PFC, make it back to Corporal, bust down to Private, etc. He continually volunteered for any training that got him sent back to England, where he'd generally just get drunk and bang British girls. One time him and his buddy were having so much fun they went AWOL for a couple weeks, and only came back when they heard their unit was being shipped back. Same dude hired a black housekeeper in the fifties to help watch the kids and was evidently very kind to her despite the racial tensions in Baltimore at the time. Then my grandmother came home early one day to my grandfather balls deep in the housekeeper on the living room couch. She flipped her poo poo until he screamed back at her that my youngest Aunt was his buddy's kid, which shut her up fast. Nana never did stop being a racist old bag until she died. Enlisted. Enlisted never change.
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Aug 21, 2019 19:28
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My maternal grandfather was a engineer in the pacific during ww2. My paternal grandfather had polio and ended up building radios and communications equipment in Pittsburgh. My dad was Il National Guard during the 68 riots in Chicago.
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Aug 21, 2019 19:46
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Grandfather was an Electronics Engineer on a B-29, originally was on B-17s but got moved. The story goes that he never saw combat, but his Bomber belly landed and he had to jump, and the rest of his crew perished. He messed up his back jumping, and never much talked about his service, most of the info came from my Grandmother. I had a great grandfather that was in Merril's Marauders, went to war a very kind man, came back a mean drunk. Knowing what happened in Burma, doesnt make it suprising. Had a great Uncle on the Yorktown.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:11
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Merrill had a heart attack and was sent back into the field. Twice. The rest of his unit received the same outstanding level of treatment.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:27
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Wild T posted:My maternal grandfather did ten years after being drafted into WWII. His shadowbox had him as a Corporal. Evidently he liked to drink and party a lot so he'd make Sergeant, get busted to PFC, make it back to Corporal, bust down to Private, etc. He continually volunteered for any training that got him sent back to England, where he'd generally just get drunk and bang British girls. One time him and his buddy were having so much fun they went AWOL for a couple weeks, and only came back when they heard their unit was being shipped back. gently caress that's enlisted.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:35
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Ceiling fan posted:Merrill had a heart attack and was sent back into the field. Twice. The rest of his unit received the same outstanding level of treatment. I think they actually had congressional level hearings on how hosed up the treatment of the troops in Burma was.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:42
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My great grandfather was at Gallipoli and was wounded in the head, apparently not during combat. I can only assume it was trust game or him showing off, so I'm proud to continue the family tradition of idiocy
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Aug 22, 2019 02:08
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:My great grandfather was at Gallipoli and was wounded in the head, apparently not during combat. I mean dudes were randomly getting blown up down at the beach swimming, it could easily be something like that when he was technically not in combat.
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Aug 22, 2019 03:38
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:My great grandfather was at Gallipoli and was wounded in the head, apparently not during combat. sometimes the sheep kick
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Aug 22, 2019 06:03
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Guest2553 posted:Do what you love and you never work a day in your life. My own grandparents were too young to be involved in the fighting though many (I have 9 sorta grandparents long story) were in the military. However, my buddy’s grandpa was a crusty old scot and he got drunk one night and started telling us (not that I understood what he was saying sober) about all the gnarly poo poo they did to captured SS. They uh, had a high accident rate and unusually high propensity to try to escape. Across open fields, those wacky Nazis. IIRC he was a young Scots Guard officer but mostly served with a Canadian unit somehow, who were in particular not very stoked on the idea of SS surrendering after the SS murdered a bunch of Canadian POWs early in the war. What a legend.
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Aug 22, 2019 06:53
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SpaceSDoorGunner posted:What a legend. Solid. My wife's grandfather, Sergeant in the Australian Army, was court martialled for stealing bedsheets from the USN ship he was being transported on, which he traded at a port brothel for booze and women for him and his squad. Got busted down to Corporal and some extra PT. WWII ended literally days after so that's a thousand percent worth it in my book.
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Aug 22, 2019 07:55
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EBB posted:sometimes the sheep kick I appreciated this joke.
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Aug 22, 2019 11:56
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Memento posted:Solid. promote ahead of peers
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Aug 22, 2019 12:21
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From the TFR airpower thread. This guy isn't an idiot, this guy should be a fuckin legend:Smiling Jack posted:Take a moment to remember this absolute fuckin legend read the details on the pass
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Aug 22, 2019 12:23
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Crossposting Platystemon from the Spaceflight thread who posted this from Reddit.quote:Back in the late 90s worked for a NASA field experiment in the remote amazon jungle. We had a satellite phone, for which we were never instructed on when/how much to use it. Initially it was used for contacting other researchers at other sites, and for occasional calls to the US.
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Aug 22, 2019 13:47
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https://westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi posted:What cost $40000 in 2000 would cost $59056.64 in 2018.
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Aug 22, 2019 14:09
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Smiling Jack posted:From the TFR airpower thread. This guy isn't an idiot, this guy should be a fuckin legend: Reminds me of SAAR-N forms for various networks; there's a line that asks for justification for access. You'll see some creatively generic entries as people try to justify why they need access to command e-mail and share drive.
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Aug 22, 2019 14:29
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M_Gargantua posted:Crossposting Platystemon from the Spaceflight thread who posted this from Reddit. I know the INMARSAT that JSTARS uses is VERY expensive for Data, something to the tune of $2/MB. So if you wanted to do a Gigabyte, it would work out to $2048 at minimum. We had guys who would call their spouses from STE on the plane, and when command found out, they charged them for the service, and since it was VOIP and not voice, they got charged the data rate for a VOIP connection. the default connection for the STE is like 128kb/s minimum, so if you made a 5-10 minute phone call it would be about 76MB, so about $152 CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 14:37
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Smiling Jack posted:From the TFR airpower thread. This guy isn't an idiot, this guy should be a fuckin legend: He gets to go to the docks. Cool.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:03
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UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:He gets to go to the docks. Cool. The docks. During wartime. All access. That guy basically had an no-questions-asked pass to take whatever the gently caress he wanted.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:20
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piL posted:Reminds me of SAAR-N forms for various networks; there's a line that asks for justification for access. You'll see some creatively generic entries as people try to justify why they need access to command e-mail and share drive. I just had to fill one out and put “to do work”.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:31
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UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:He gets to go to the docks. Cool. He has a 24 hour all access to the docks for "duties". Guys looking at the photographer like he's working out how to steal the camera when he's done.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:32
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Smiling Jack posted:He has a 24 hour all access to the docks for "duties". "That's a nice suit you got there. Mind if I... borrow it?"
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Aug 22, 2019 15:33
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lol oh boy how cool. I guess I was wrong as hell about that guy, getting to go to the docks. During wartime.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:44
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Smiling Jack posted:Guys looking at the photographer like he's working out how to steal the camera when he's done. Implying he didn't steal it.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:45
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He’s already working on a god-tier pass through forgery, may as well start trying to max out his crimes in stealing too.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:47
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UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:lol oh boy how cool. I guess I was wrong as hell about that guy, getting to go to the docks. During wartime. Think of it this way: this was a time when all material was sent overseas on ships and ships alone, and there was so much of it coming into allied ports that a huge bureaucracy was required to manage it. This also allowed plenty of opportunities to steal since who the hell would notice a missing crate if thousands of them are unloaded every hour, every day, for years? The only way to fight the GI's habit of taking what they could was to use the bureaucracy part of the equation to restrict access as tightly as possible. Hence passes became how you got to the docks. This guy managed to get access that amounted to "I can go where I want, when I want, for whatever I want."
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Aug 22, 2019 16:26
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Scratch Monkey posted:Think of it this way: this was a time when all material was sent overseas on ships and ships alone, and there was so much of it coming into allied ports that a huge bureaucracy was required to manage it. This also allowed plenty of opportunities to steal since who the hell would notice a missing crate if thousands of them are unloaded every hour, every day, for years? The only way to fight the GI's habit of taking what they could was to use the bureaucracy part of the equation to restrict access as tightly as possible. Hence passes became how you got to the docks. This guy managed to get access that amounted to "I can go where I want, when I want, for whatever I want." I understand. I just don't think it's very cool. Oh look at me I have access to the arms room, I can steal weapons!
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Aug 22, 2019 16:28
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He was probably more interested in the chocolate and lucky strikes
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Aug 22, 2019 16:31
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Come on, boys, it's time for some skullduggery down by the docks!
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Aug 22, 2019 16:34
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UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:Oh look at me I have access to the arms room, I can steal weapons! At the time you probably could have. It wasn't like now back then. There were so many weapons arriving, being distributed, getting used, destroyed, lost to capture... it was almost impossible to give a gently caress.
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Aug 22, 2019 16:35
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