My Friend's Grandfather

While I don't have any relatives that fought in World War II, one of my friend's grandfather did. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944. He was then deployed to the Pacific and served as an officer in the submarines. The reason he was directed to command the submarines was because he could not go on boats because he got sea sick. On the submarine, they torpedoed and sank Japanese supply ships to weaken the Japanese army and navy and to ensure that they did not get any new supplies. He also torpedoed some Japanese warships. He recalled that explosions reverberated throughout the vessel and that people smelled since they were down in the submarine for months at a time. He came back safely 1946.

My Grandpa Eli's WWII Experience

My grandfather moved from Poland to the United States in 1929 at the age of 6. He lived in Detroit, Michigan and suffered through the Great Depression living in horrible poverty. After he became the only one of his three siblings to graduate high school, he started to work at a Ford factory in Detroit. He decided that he wanted to become part of the war and attempted to join the cadet program in the Air Force. This program was to become a pilot, a navigator, or a bomber.  After flunking the test to become a cadet, he went back to work at Ford. In 1942, the year after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, one of his friends approached him saying that he was going to enlist in the army. Being a Jew, my grandfather decided that it was time to enlist as well, and fight against Germany who was killing the large amount of family that he left behind in Poland. He suspected that had he not enlisted then, he would have been drafted within the nest six months. He enlisted in the Army Air Force and they made him a teletype mechanic. He claims that he was horrible at the job, so they moved him and he once again attempted to join the cadet program. This time he was accepted into the program. The final test of the program was the physical, my grandfather flunked the depth perception part of the physical and once again could not become a pilot. They then sent him to gunnery school to become a gunner, where he learned how to shoot from the b29 planes, the type of plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. When it was time for his troop to invade Japan, they decided to keep him behind to be an aerial instructor in Nebraska. Towards the end of the war, they moved him to Washington state to then deploy to Japan, but right as he was about to leave, the war ended. My grandfather fought in the war to do what he could to save as many Jews as possible. He lost almost all of his family in the war.

My Great-grandfather

My grandfather was born in Russia right after the war. When he was very little, both of his parents passed away, but he still remembered some stories that his father, my great-grandfather, told him of World War II on the Russian front. My great-grandfather was drafted into the military. My grandfather told me that his father didn’t want to leave home and go fight, but he had no other choice. Everyone that was old enough and did not have any serious medical conditions either volunteered, which few did, or were taken away. He was briefly trained and taken to the battlefield, which was in Ukraine. He first fought in Kiev and then in Kharkov.
My grandfather told me of a very interesting story that happened with my great-grandfather. One time my great-grandfather was defending some anti-air guns. He looks over the horizon and sees 20 tanks coming straight at the guns. He reports this to the higher ups and they have no idea what to do because they don’t have any amour piercing guns. They think for a while and decide to do something very drastic- to use the anti-air guns against the tanks! So they lower the guns and aim them through the barrel (looking through the barrel and aiming directly at the tanks). They load up the first gun and fire it. Since the anti-air missiles fire at greater speeds because they need to reach the planes in the sky, the tank was completely obliterated. The Germans thought that the Russians invented a new powerful gun started retreating.

My great-grandfather

I am perhaps one of the few people to have a relative who fought on both sides of the war.

My great-grandfather was living in eastern France, on the border with Germany, when war was declared. Because he had done his military service in the navy, he had to go join the navy down in Toulon, in southern France, when war was declared. The entire French navy was stationed there. Then, one day, the Germans staged a surprise attack against Toulon, and Admiral Darlan, the head of the navy, ordered that all the ships in the navy be sunk so that the Germans couldn't get them.

After that, France quickly surrendered to Germany, and northern/eastern France was annexed by Germany. Then, all the men in that part of France (including my great-grandfather) were drafted into the German army and whisked away to the Russian front. As soon as my great-grandfather got to the front, his section of the army lost a battle, and was taken as prisoners by the Russians. My great-grandfather spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, and was later returned to France in 1945.

The U.S. Foreign Service

My grandfather grew up in Athens, Georgia. After high school, he got his law degree in Georgia while simultaneously working full-time in Atlanta (at this point he'd become the bread-winner for his family, as both his parents couldn't work and he was the oldest child). Later he applied to the U.S. State Department with the dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. He received his acceptance letter along with a letter ordering him to report to Moscow immediately. Enclosed was a plane ticket. Upon seeing this, grandpa telephoned the State Department in Washington, D.C. and asked if he could stop there for a briefing. He was told no.

He arrived in Russia knowing only high school level French. He was good at picking up languages, so he quickly learned Russian from a French teacher as he was working for the U.S. Embassy. My grandpa was in charge of communications between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. In 1941, the Germans invaded Russia. As they got closer to Moscow, the Allies evacuated their Embassies, leaving five American men in the U.S. Embassy to be in charge of the war effort. My grandfather was left alone—with Germany within 20 kilometers of the city—while the other four men escorted the evacuees to the train station. They were supposed to be gone only a short while, but they got stuck in a snowstorm and my grandpa was left alone all day and all night, typing communications on his typewriter as the windows of the building were blown out by explosions. His orders were to destroy all important papers and codes if it looked as though they might be compromised, and he spent the night wondering whether it was time to do this or not. Luckily, at daylight the other men returned, and the documents remained.

In February 1945, my grandfather was in charge of typing up the minutes of the Yalta Conference, as well as deciding the logistics of the Conference (procuring all the labor force, typewriters, desks, etc.). There, the three leaders—Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, concentrated on postwar issues. All of this was top secret. Later, he attended the Potsdam Conference—where he met my grandmother, who was there as a State Department secretary.

My middle school History teacher's father. (what a mouthful.)

My middle school History teacher's father fought as a member of the Army in World War II. This teacher was one of those teacher who would often deviate from the lesson plan for the day to tell stories of his adventures (he scuba dives, does underwater photography, rides a motorcycle, is a Boy Scout something-master, was a cop, etcetera.). He would sometimes tell us stories of his father (who had passed away a few years ago) during class.

His father earned two purple hearts, one for getting shot in the head, and one for getting shot in the butt. My teacher then went on to tell us that his father received more money in compensation for the wound to his posterior than to his head. Quite an interesting thought.

He told us that his father had joined the Army because he said he felt a need to do something about what was happening around the world, and that he felt a need to serve his country and give back to it. Seems to me to be quite a common reason for many people to join the military. That, or economics (ie: $$$).

Grandpa Poppy

My grandfather, Poppy, was involved in World War II, during 1939-1945. He belonged to the Air Core and worked on planes. The most well known plane he worked on was the Enola Gay, which was well known because it carried the first atomic bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Although my grandfather passed, interviewing my grandmother, I found out that he joined the war by choice because he wanted to support his country like every other man. Today I discovered that when I went to D.C. in eighth grade, I actually was able to see the Enola Gay that my grandfather took part in building.