Posted on 05/01/2018 3:42:21 AM PDT by Libloather
**SNIP**
So far, Sharma has interviewed more than 850 veterans in 45 states.
“They can say that their lives have had a purpose greater than themselves. Lot’s of people are born, they live and they die without having an impact on the world,” Sharma said. “But every single World War II veteran have given millions of people a chance at life. Because of the hell they went through at 18-19 years old.”
Sharma’s goal is to preserve their stories for future generations through his nonprofit, Heroes of the Second World War.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
Just saw the interview on Fox News. Very impressive. Sharma said he has to miss class to get this done. He said something like, "I'm learning much more doing this than I am in college." There it is...
81st Recon Battalion of the 1st Armored Div - I just have a photo album and a roster of towns in North Africa and Italy they passed through. And a picture of his light tank after it hit a mine.
I know a lot of data was lost when that records warehouse burned down a while back. What a shame.
“Wished I’d have interviewed my dad when he was alive - but he never wanted to talk about it.
81st Recon Battalion of the 1st Armored Div - I just have a photo album and a roster of towns in North Africa and Italy they passed through. And a picture of his light tank after it hit a mine.
I know a lot of data was lost when that records warehouse burned down a while back. What a shame.”
Other than the locations, I could have written this. My dad was not willing to talk about anything until he was so near death he was not understandable. As with you, all his records were gone.
Same here. It wasn’t until after he died and I read his discharge papers that I realized he spent over three months on Okinawa (I don’t think I would have lasted three minutes!).
It wasn’t like it was a secret, or something that distressed him to talk about - he just never did.
My grandfathers didn’t talk about it — nor did my grandmother’s. My parents attribute this to a mindset of “savor the present, build the future.”
I think they were too busy absorbing the life they’d received by the grace of God, to look back.
Bingo…same thing with my dad, a marine, who fought throughout the Pacific. He talked about non war related stuff during his deployment. Funny stuff. When I prodded him he said “you don’t want to know…you don’t want to go to war…war is terrible”.
My Dad was a civilian employee (research & development) of a company that designed missiles for the Navy so he didn't serve in uniform.However,my sister-in-law's Dad served in Europe.She told me that he never talked about his time there.And I've heard many,many other such stories.
My guess is that WWII vets didn't tell their families much because they didn't want to unsettle or disturb them.However,it's not difficult to imagine that guys talked to each other at their local VFW Post.
A lot of vets never wanted to talk about it. My grandfather served in WW1, he was from Scotland and never said one word about it to my mother or me or anybody. The most I ever got from him was when I was 16 he would say “When I was your age I was dodging bullets” His father was an abusive alcoholic and je wanted to escape and he somehow got recruited by lying about his age. He had a really really tough life, of that I’m sure of. By the time he was 20 for example all his teeth were gone. Back then they would pull them even for a cavity. John Lumsden was his name, born 1898 and he served with the Queens own Cameron highlanders as a pipe major. He use to play bagpipes into battle. Imagine that scenario. I still have his shaving blade and bagpipes. His cousin who I met once had his foot taken off.
Before he was discharged he broke up with her because he was Methodist and couldn't abide with raising his children in the Catholic Church.
My grandfather was an ambulance driver stationed in Argonne, France during WW-I. Unfortunately I was too young to even ask him about it. I never even found out about it until a few years ago when talking with an aunt who also told me that he graduated from pharmacy school at Ferris State in Michigan.
btt
>> “Wished I’d have interviewed my dad when he was alive - but he never wanted to talk about it.”
My dad only told me 2 things about his WW2 naval service.
The name of his ship (USS Heermann, DD-532) and that he’d received a battlefield promotion from Ensign to Lieutenant Commander during an engagement near the Philippines; nothing else.
It wasn’t until 3 years ago that I learned the details from another crew member I accidentally met. My dad’s ship was in the The Battle off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. He was part of the Taffy 3 Force and the 4 destroyers and 4 destroyer escorts who charged the Japanese fleet.
I wish my dad had been more informative about his service.
My father never talked about it and was on one of the most decorated destroyers in the war. Would have loved to hear the stories.
The WWII generation were extremely concious of those who died in the fight. To talk about your experiences when you got to go home and pick up your life was, to them, somehow implying or claiming more sacrifice than they were willing to do.
My dad fought in Korea and I don’t even know what battalion he was in.
He told one story about some patrol he was on that crossed paths with ROK troops and how they steered clear of some cave where they had some NOK POWs. They knew enough not to get involved.
That was it. He never said anything else.
I would venture to guess that the majority of today's twenty-year-olds could not tell you the most basic things about WWII, let alone have any appreciation for the veteran's sacrifices.
My Grandpa’s brother Dale flew B-26 Marauders in WW2. Have a picture somewhere of his plane on a snowy tarmac in D-Day markings. He would not talk to his own family about his experiences. I was just a kid when I asked him at a family reunion and he just lowered his head, mumbled something and walked away. I was hurt at the time, but understood later. One of his daughters told me after he passed they found some memorabilia of his time during the war. They never knew he even had that. Sad, but understandable. He lost a lot of friends. B-26 units flew dangerous, low level missions hitting rail yards, etc.
“My grandfather was an ambulance driver stationed in Argonne, France during WW-I. Unfortunately I was too young to even ask him about it.”
My grandfather was there, too. Tank commamder towards the end of the war. I only found out when I found his discharge papers while closing my parent’s home after they passed.
“According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, there are around 558,000 World War II veterans that were still alive in 2017.
The youngest are in their late 80s and some are over a 100 years old. An average of 362 die each day, according to the VA.”
The death rate curve is exponential and will turn up radically from here on out. Very few make it to 100 years....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.