Anyone have family or relatives who served in WW2?

Most of my family worked in the shipyards and we're building ships and landing craft. One of my mums uncles fought the Japanese and was eventually captured and worked in the death camps. My dad's uncle fought with the HLI and was part of the landings.

When my mums uncle came home she said he was changed forever. I never got the opportunity to meet him as he died when I was a kid. You can't imagine what those poor young men went through.
 
My father was conscripted at 18 in 1944 into the South Lancs Regiment, then transferred to the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
Basic training in Berwick, then shipped to Belgium after the Market Garden military setback at Arnhem, fought in forward
platoons through the Ardennes forest in winter, saw 6 of his platoon lieutenants KIA, as well as numerous mates killed or wounded.
He only told me details of the war he experienced towards the end of his life, and it must have been absolutely fucking terrifying.
One event saw him and his mate, in a Bren gun crew, sitting in a slit trench and peering over the edge at dawn to see 3 Tiger tanks
approaching, followed by screaming Panzergrenadiers throwing grenades. Shitting themselves, they frantically buried looted
German cash, Lugers, medals etc, then thought sod this, climbed out and ran like hell back towards British lines, he then said
that the recurring dream of feeling like you're running through treacle became reality.
A Spandau machine gun opened up just as the two of them were diving into a rear trench, his mate was struck in the leg
into the main artery, blood cascaded out, and he died in the arms of a sergeant who caught him as he fell in.
My dad was blown off the rocking chair in a farmhouse they had just captured inside Germany when a shell exploded outside
the window, his left arm was pierced by shrapnel in two places and was bent permanently ever since.
He said there is nothing glorious about war, it is a shocking, brutal, disgusting terrifying experience, that he was glad I
never had to endure.
 
Magicpole said:
My dad's uncle fought with the HLI and was part of the landings.
Click to expand...
I've got a fair few documents for the HLI, mostly for the 10th Bn, but others for the 1st, 2nd, 6th Bn's etc that served in NW Europe.
If you fancy pm'ing his name i can have a look through them and see if his name turns up.
 
My Dad ended up in the Irish Guards Airborne Div and did 5 drops in total, one of which involved the crossing of the Rhyne battle. On his last drop his plane was hit and he had to parachute out to save his life thereby becoming a member of the Catapilla club. I’ve still got the gold catapilla badge he received. After that drop he was captured and spent the last few months of the was as a POW.

I was a faddy little get as a kid and whenever I wouldn’t eat 3 hour boiled cabbage or similar he’d tell the story how a load of POWs coaxed a dog under the wire and devoured it, he didn’t get any of the meat but managed to boil the bones for a few days. It used to drive me fucking crazy. I’d rather eat a dead dog than fucking boiled cabbage.
 
My mums Dad was captured at Dunkirk and was a POW for the rest of the war - he was a mine of funny stories that were really a front for the shell shock, sleepless nights and anxiety attacks he had - PTSD we would call in now. Dads dad always just muttered he was in a reserved occupation - after he died I learned all about his joining up and fighting in the Western Desert and so on - never ever talked about it.
 
Grandfather WW1/WW2 - RSM Kings Own Royal Regiment
Father - WW2 - Sarge - KORR.
Assorted Uncles in the Navy...mostly lost on HMS HOOD.
 
My dad was a conscientious objector due to his Christian faith, so he joined the medical core and was a stretcher bearer in numerous fields of war. He wrote his memoirs, which touched on his WWII service, but was about his life in general. He used to tell the story of a piper leading the a battalion from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders into a battle in Africa. He took a bullet to his forehead. I think the battle was for what became known as Longstop Hill. He didn’t talk much about the war, but he would tell stories of bringing oranges and other luxuries home from Africa, when he was on leave.

His dad was a Professor of European Languages at Berlin University. He spoke 13 languages fluently, and was proficient in another eight. My dad lost contact with him when he was a boy, but I always wondered if he would have served in WWII.
 
My grandad was a tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber and my other grandad was a firefighter
 
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