D-Day

Today is D-day. If you still know any WWII vets alive, maybe give them a call or a visit it you have time. Above all, give them your thanks and prayers to the ones that fell or are no longer with us.

I for one miss the WWII vets I knew they were quite the generation that's for sure !

My dad was in the 4th infantry division. He landed on Utah beach. He was a 6x6 truck driver. He was born in 1920. Hauling riflemen, water, food, bed roils, ammunition, etc. from the beach inland to support the advancing U.S. troops.. The 4th infantry hooked up with the 82d and 101st airborne and moved inland. He could tell some stories. My wife's grandfather was a tanker. Sherman tank with the 2nd armored division ((This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) on wheels). He was kind of a short man. He did not say much about the war. I remember he told me that he did not sleep for several days because he was so afraid. The only time I herd him talk about it in some sort of detail was with my dad. My dad past at 79 years old. He had alshimers disease. I remember him saying some of the G.I'S were picking up the white parachutes (white silk) and sending the chutes to their girlfriend back home in order for them to make a wedding dress out of the used parachute. I have a captured German dress bayonet and leather frog that my dad gave to his uncle, later he gave it to me.

Total respect for our Vets they went out to save the world and got it done real men doing a tough job.

Dad was 2nd man on Anzio. He made Sgt that day.
The last week of his life he told all. I listened.

GOD Bless them all ...

Thank God for those men and what they did.

I"ll be seeing the one on the left today. He was a ball turret gunner on a B17. He flew on 23 missions and was discharged from service on his 20th. birthday.
He says he got that job because he was so little and skinny. Ha Ha, and he is still skinny.
The one on the right was in the infantry and is still alive.

The ball turret gunner was one of the most dangerous assignments in World War II. Ball Turret Gunners on B-17 bombers were protected only by a glass bubble jutting out from the bowels of the plane. Permanently fixed and unable to be retracted, there was no hiding from enemy attack.
A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells.

Dad was there this day as were a lot of the men from around here. These were the men that were the neighbors, coached the ball teams, delivered the mail, and helped the scouts when I was growing up. I sure miss them and am thankful for what they believed in.

Dad didn't talk much about the war. When he got back home, he'd dive under the bed at night when a thunderstorm would come through. I've got his discharge papers. His feet were damaged by the cold while in a foxhole.

Two uncles Richard Graves "KT" Gibbs and his older brother Commie Gibbs jumped into Normandy. 101st and 82nd respectively. KT was shot and wounded on the way down.

There WILL NEVER be a generation of men as great as that generation. It honestly chills me at times.thinking about the bravery and sacrifices they made.

Think about it, a lot of these 18-20 year old boys had probably never ventured out of the state, much less the county they were born in. Then they go literally on the other side of the world to parts unknown, places they have never even heard of.

I think back to when I was that age, which wasn't too long ago, and I look at kids that age today and just think, how?

How? Because they were the greatest generation of men to walk the face of this earth.

My father was in the Pacific , when I was a young kid he had to soak his feet, finally cleared up caught it in the island was all he said

I worked with a fellow decades ago who fought the Germans. I say he fought the Germans but that might not be accurate, he was a medic who wore a Red Cross armband. According to him and the Geneva Convention, those guys were considered noncombatants and weren't supposed to be targeted. According to Earl the Germans didn't honor that, they shot at him. Looking back on it, I believe Earl fought in the 1st World War. He was an old man when I worked with close to forty-five years ago.

The last WWll vet I knew was a farmer I worked for. What a man he was, slight of build but big in heart and mind. Could not stand planes flying over him. I think of him all the time. He hated being indoors and spent most of his time on the farm and in the woods. Here's to you Nick, thanks for defending our freedom and way of life. I will never forget you

My dad was one of the original Darby's Rangers. He was shot at Cisterna and again at Anzio. Met my mom on a hospital ship. He never talked about the war with us kids but did speak with others who were there. The Rangers were involved in D-Day but he was convalescing. He is still my hero.

Like Cedar, I have had the pleasure of having a great friend who was a tail gunner on the bombers in the Pacific. Lewis Bailey. He was also a smaller stature, wiry type. He had washed out of pilot school because his math skills weren't good enough. He had a ton of stories that he shared about his days in the Pacific. Sometimes they had him filming instead of manning the guns.

One quick story:

They were on a hunt and destroy mission looking for the Japanese fleet but it was cloudy and they couldn't find anything. But suddenly the cloud cover lifted and they discovered the Japanese fleet below so they all picked targets and dove down with torpedo bombs. Lew's crew missed their target and so when they got back up out of harms way the pilot asked what should they do? Most crews just dropped their extra torpedo and went back home since a second dive was far more dangerous than the first as the Japs would be ready.

So Lew said: "I say Uncle Sam gave us a job to do so let's go back down and drop the second one". They all concurred and the second torpedo hit its mark and eventually sunk a Japanese ship. After dropping it they stayed down low just over the waves to keep from getting shot as they ascended. On their way back to flat top it had moved on thinking that Lew's plain had been lost since everybody else had long since returned. They were desperately low on fuel by then and when they finally landed the plain engines sputtered dead just as they touched down.

Lew died a couple of years ago at the age of 95. When he was 89 he shot an elk at 400 yards with an open sight octagonal barrel 30-30 and dropped it on the spot.

I had 4 uncles in WWII, but none that stormed the beaches on D-Day.

When they got together, their language wouldn't pass today's standards. Only 1 still with us.

My uncle Pat was at D-Day on the beach.He got wounded there shot in the upper arm.He never talked about the war.

At least 12 of my uncles were overhead flying on D Day.
Funny how if you were a duck hunter you were put in a airplane cause you could hit moving targets.
Not much was talked about those days after.

My Great Uncle Went in with the 5th Armored Division at D Day. Didn't talk much about the war but everyone said he came back different from the war. Today we would say PTSD. The guy was a great trapper and hunter.

Lost an uncle at Bastogne and 3 uncles were in the Pacific fighting the Japs. Two came home in bad shape and my Grandmother quit medical school to take care of the them(her brothers) and nurse them back to health.

Interesting on the flat top moving. Knew a man who was a Corsair fighter pilot in the Pacific at the tail end of the war. He was on carriers first he said but got transferred to an island base as soon as he could. Said a lot of guys were lost cause they could not find the carriers on the way back at times cause the carriers had moved.

Told me too they knew when Japan had surrendered but was told to keep shooting at Japanese boats anyway. He found a Japanese boat a bit later but did not try to shoot it up as could have been dangerous for him and what was the point anymore where he had survived so far. He said he did not report it when he landed as could have got in trouble.

My father was in the Pacific. He left with the Red Arrow Division in late April of 1942 and came home October of 1945. My mom's two brothers were drafted in 42, one went to Europe and one to the Pacific. Most said very little unless they were with others that were there and it was ear opening to hear the situations and conditions. some pretty hefty scars came home with them too.

Bryce

One of my uncles was trained as a combat engineer and his first job in the war was to land at Omaha Beach before the actual landing party and blow up the beach obstacles. He said their rubber raft swamped and he swam to shore and hid behind one of the obstacles he had been tasked to blow up. He waited for the invasion force to arrive, and survived the day. He found himself in the infantry for the rest of the war. He was placed in three different companies in two weeks after everyone else was killed or wounded. He survived and witnessed the surrender of Berlin.

My father in law landed in France on D Day in a glider.. 82nd airborne. He went all the way to Berlin.
I also had a cousin that was a Navy medic on guadalcanal.
I can remember, as a boy, seeing the streams of red cross ambulances shuttling wounded from hospital ships to a hospital near where I lived.

My maternal grandfather lied about his age and enlisted at 16. He was at D Day. He hated the Russians. Later during WWII he was assigned assigned a post on one side of a river with Russians on the other. He said the Russians would laugh and shoot at the dead men and injured men in the river, not caring who they were.

My paternal grandfather was studying to be a surgeon at Loyola University. He quit school and joined up as a medic. He was stationed in the Philippines. He got shot in the hand, while carrying a wounded GI and stayed in. He later contacted malaria. With the hand injury and malaria he lost the hand control needed to be a surgeon and had to find another career. My father never knew he had a lot of medals, until he found them in grandpa's desk drawer when my dad was in college.

Neither of my grandfathers hardly ever talked about the war. Princeton High School interviewed my maternal grandfather, for several hours about his experiences in WWII, in the eighties. I would like to get a copy of it. My paternal grandfather told me he had to kill a Japanese soldier who ran up on them and tried to blow himself and the Americans up. My paternal grandfather never hunted again after WWII and gave away his guns.

Keith

I"ll be seeing the one on the left today. He was a ball turret gunner on a B17. He flew on 23 missions and was discharged from service on his 20th. birthday.
He says he got that job because he was so little and skinny. Ha Ha, and he is still skinny.
The one on the right was in the infantry and is still alive.
under the 8th
The ball turret gunner was one of the most dangerous assignments in World War II. Ball Turret Gunners on B-17 bombers were protected only by a glass bubble jutting out from the bowels of the plane. Permanently fixed and unable to be retracted, there was no hiding from enemy attack.
A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells.

Thanks for this post and thank that skinny guy for his service to our country. my father was a staff Sargent crew chief with the 8th army air force,..didn't talk much about service but did relate a few times about the position turret gunners found themselves in. A horrible ending when the aircraft had no recourse on crash landings.

Great stories
Thanks

A great article pertinent to this thread :https://www.liherald.com/stories/the-life-of-a-ball-turret-gunner,15799

My buddies grandpa just passed away this spring at 102. He was a Navy man in WW2 It reminded me how few
of these heros are still around to thank. His stories of winning the battle for the So Pacific are the things they make movies about with top of the line actors like Glenn Ford (on of my all time favs)

Was it not for them we would not have the freedom to fight the "hope and change" promised by self serving leftist candidates. If you do love your freedoms thank the veterans you meet

My Dad was a MP in France in WW II

His brother Loise landed on the beach and didnt make it.

Another uncle on Moms side air dropped in On D day. He just passed this March from covid complications he was 100.

JIM White. The old guy in this picture with me was a turret gunner in WWII. Never really said anything about it. He wasnt the first person to tell me what he had done. Asked who told me when I asked him about him about it. Before he died the town had a Veterans day parade and made it about him. He is sitting a little behind me but you can see how small he was. I think that was a requirement. Beaver trapping was his passion. Lived in WY his whole life. Quite a character. Tough as nails. Not many like him in this world.

My dad was with the 99th Division and was at the Battle of the Bulge on opening day , was in the Rhur Pocket and Remagen Bridge . Dad had a brother that was blown out of his tank at Normandy and was the only survivor . Dad also had a cousin that died on Normandy and also had a brother in law that was a replacement in the 101st Airborne at Bastogne for only 2 weeks , my uncle said he saw enough fighting in 2 weeks to last a life time .

Our pathetic President Biden failed to even mention the anniversary of D Day. What a disgrace! It says a lot about the lack of character of the man.

My VFW Post is slowly but quicker every day running out of "Duece" and Korean War Vet's, and even the "Nam" Vets are getting thinned out.

With his Dementia, I doubt he even remembers there was a World War 2. His aides are either stupid to forget history or did it on purpose to feed their anti-American agenda.

It wasn't D-day but my grandfather was in North Africa and the invasion of Italy where he was injured during the landing.

Lots of folks (including myself) busted the chops of Trump because of his draft deferments. Just read that Biden also had a few reasons for deferment. Maybe his guilt is the reason he didnt recognize D Day

With his Dementia, I doubt he even remembers there was a World War 2. His aides are either stupid to forget history or did it on purpose to feed their anti-American agenda. [/quote]
X2.

I hate draft dodgers, but honor all that served.