My father (and his classmates) due to his/their age were told by GP and GM/other parents he/they could not enlist till he/they finished high school. The school put all the seniors on a fast track to finish. He made it in about 4 months before the end of WWII. He joined the Navy and after boot camp was sent on Joint Task Force 1 under Admiral Blandy to the first Atom Tests at Bikini atoll. He was a part of Operations Crossroads. He is one of the Atomic Veterans. He died in his sleep at the age of 82 in Dec/2010. I am proud of his service even though it was unglamorous or exiting as some of you and your relatives.
My Dad - Combat Engineer, 65th Engineer BN 25th Div Pearl Harbor/Guadacanal/Soloman Islands
Mom - parts inspector m1 CARBINE Underwood Company Bridgeport ct
Grandfather (WW1 Vet) neighborhood air raid warden- Bridgeport CT
I’ll give you a list of my family’s military involvement, including my own service during the war:
My father served under Brigadier General Zygmunt Piasecki of brigade Karkowska during the September Campaign. He died on 4 September; my uncle, Karol, fought under Władysław Bortnowski in the infamous Bzura battle. He was captured by the Germans and sent to the Stalag, from where he was then sent to work in a civilian armaments plant in Germany. He died just a few months before the allies liberated the plant; my brother, who was four years older than me, escaped across the Romanian border and later joined the RAF, where he fought bravely against the German luftwaffe.
My story is different. My mother and I were forced out of our house, and sent to the General Government, the rump “Polish” state Hitler created for us, after the invasion. When we were deported, I’ll never forget riding on that rickety wagon with my weeping mother, her face covered in her shawl, my father’s birthday present to her, or the soldiers who threw my music box on the floor, smashing it into a million pieces, trying to hurry us up. But, that deportation was the least of our problems.
I joined the Polish resistance after I learned that my mother was to be sent to work on a farm in Germany, where I knew she would most certainly die. My life in the resistance was interesting to say the least: I blew up railway tracks, sent messages to other resistance fighters in the underground, and waited orders from the government. I eventually joined in the Warsaw uprising where I got injured falling down a a flight of stairs (more about that later).
That’s my story.
Sapper, karenlalaniz, Scott, Kregs and all —> very interesting stories !!! 
My Grandfather (His photo is my avatar) was a Major of the Polish Army and commander of the 3rd battalion of the 29th Infantry Regiment
(29 Pułk Strzelców Kaniowskich).
He fought the battle of Bzura and the Battle of Młociny in September 1939 under the General Kutrzeba.
He was injured during the Siege of Warsaw and taken captive after Warsaw surrendered to the Germans. He died in January 1940 in the military hospital of Łódź.
But in fact his death is quite mysterious… nobody knows what happened to him exactly. My family identified at least two graves of him - one in Łódź, another one in Warsaw at the Powązki cemetery - we possess some German death certificates, one from Warsaw and three (!) from two different (!) hospitals of Łódź.
Only the date of death is the same. My Grandmother didn´t identify his corpse, saying: “it must be someone else…” and “what did you make with him?” A nurse answered: “you will find out after the war…”
He was a very experienced officer (he fought already the battle of Warsaw in 1920) and 1939 was not seriously wounded so I guess that he was smuggled, like many other soldiers, into the Polish underground organisation SZP. This procedure was often practised in the German POW hospitals during the first months of WWII and later. The Polish medical personnel forged official papers, made injuries longer heal, saw about the civilian clothes and got the patients ready to disappear. Nobody ever saw him… His son and my uncle was the Armia Krajowa soldier.
I was hiding in a deserted storage building that had large glass windows (I’d say the windows were 47’’ Tall x 16’’ wide–in American metric units) with my Sten gun and knife in hand, waiting for more soldiers to come directly into view (our pistols kept misfiring or we kept running out of ammunition, so we had to shoot until they were directly proportional to us). We, a couple of AK guys and three civilians, were shooting for hours, some were throwing hand grenades until we ran out of ammunition and couldn’t hold the building for more than two hours. The guys panicked at this point because we were through: our supply ran out (we had only 100 rounds of ammunition and about 80 hand grenades between us), and the Germans were surrounding the building. (In fact, to this day, I can still hear them approaching the building.)
So, before we could plan our escape and eventual surrender, we smelled some smoke and could feel the heat from the floors beneath us. We guessed that the Germans were burning the building down to bring us to our knees; they wanted, we guessed, to see us cower in fear before them, to see a couple of filthy Slavs trembling before their almighty superiority, and they were doing it correctly: we were panicking, and we were so weak before them. As soon as we smelled the smoke, we lost all sense of rationality and proportion. I attempted to escape, rather willy-nilly on my part, through one of the windows, but paused because I could see a soldier guarding the side exit, looking up at us (he was very cool and calm, even smoking). So, I rushed down a couple of stairs and eventually fell down the second flight, breaking my glasses and jawbone in the process (I could hear my jaw snap–this is the source of all of my extensive dental work today!)
I escaped through some windows to the east of the building, and ran as fast as my feet could carry me. I ran for nearly five miles and eventually hid with an elderly woman and her young daughter in a deserted, ruined building.
Wish I could tell you some more, but I’m getting sleepy and my hands are cramping up.
Kregs,
i just want to thank you for sharing with us the amazing stories of you and your family… May your parents rest in peace.
Thank you, skorzeny. Unfortunately, they did not live to tell their stories: God gave that responsibility to me.
SSG. Johm M. Fuller, ADSEC COMZONE G4 under General Ewart Plank passed away peacfully Monday, aged 87. Soldier, Architect, Father, Grandfather, Great Grandfather. Be at peace, you will be missed.
All of my grandparents have been kids of 10-16/17 years during the war. They did not do anything special except my grandfather from my mother’s side.
As the others, he was a kid. And one day in 1944 or 1945, he painted a big red star on the front door of their house. He did this deliberatly to piss off the Nazis and Ustaše. Of course they noticed it and my great grandparents had a hard time to fend off an execution of the whole family. They could persuade them that he was only a child and “didn’t know what he did” (although he bloody well did).
It is worth to note, that some years later he did the same with the communists in a very similar manner (though not using Nazi symbols).
All of them witnessed some brutal acts of both the Axis (in this area Germans, Ustaše and Četniks) and the Partisans. Especially during Operation Vlaška Mala…
First a mass slaughter by the Axis in our village, then by the partisans.
http://www.vojska.net/eng/world-war-2/operation/vlaska-mala-1945/
My grand uncle of my father’s side was drafted under not entirely clear circumstances by the Germans in 1943 and was never heard of again.
Another grand uncle (or great cousin or so, I must admit I am not sure) was shot by Ustaše when the war was practically over (some day in May 1945) for resisting the draft into the HOS (Hrvatske oružane snage - Croatian armed forces). He was 16 years at this time. The Ustaše went from house to house to collect able men, with brutal force. When at the home of my unfortunate grand uncle, his parents begged this rotten Rakovac (some officer and diehard Ustaša who seems to have even survived the Operation Vlaška Mala) to spare their son, to do anything he wishes to them, but just to spare him. He said calmly that there is no need to be so upset, the boy shall answer himself whether he wants to go or not. My granduncle, shaken of fear, just shaked his head. This Rakovac then drew his pistol as fast as a lightning and shot him between his eyes, his mother was standing right behind him and was littered with his brains…
She never spoke a single word again.
To make it worse, he was listed as an Ustaše soldier, which meant some very harsh treatments for the family after the war. This didn’t last long though, as his mother died soon after and his father a couple of years after that.
Now some more distant relatives. Some family members of the cousins of my father.
One was killed in May 1945 by partisans after torture, because some Ustaša who went into hiding slipped him some incriminating stuff (IIRC not more than a badge with Ustaša insignia). He died a really horrible death, it is said that they took his eyes out…
Another one was killed by the so called Križari (“Crusaders” - a partisan type force of former Ustaše and Army personell as well as people who supported the Ustaše otherwise, who kept fighting up to the fifties). The reasons remain unclear, probably he was just at the wrong time at the wrong place.
Not directly related to WW2, but a granduncle of mine was in Vietnam with the US forces as some kind of scout.
His father was forcibly recruited to the HOS (Hrvatske oružane snage - Croatian armed forces) in February 1945. He saw him a few times in the war after February but he did not return in the end. Unfortunately, some “bright guy” decided to brand his family as Ustaše supporters. Probably for not resisting the forced recruitment (the Ustaše btw threated to kill him if he would not come with them, or to kill family members, some 100 people were killed like that, like my other grand uncle).
Anyway, my granduncle was trying to prove himself in the new Yugoslavia. And when he was 17 there was some programme that boys could help with the harvest and receive an appropriate amount of flour. This would have helped his family, which was hit so hard all the time, a lot. And he worked like a horse. And earned the most. Theoretically. The guy who dealt the flour knew him and with a smile he didn’t give him the flour, but gave him for each earned kilogram a single corn.
He was very bittered and didn’t talk for days. And then he ran away. Everyone thought he committed suicide.
But he didn’t. In fact, he fled. He managed to cross the border to Austria and went from there to Germany. He then went to the US. It is woth noting that he did not speak neither English nor German!
In the US, Šimun Klarić became Simon Clark. And when the Vietnam War started for the US, he volunteered. Apparently because of his hate of communism.
He was some kind of a scout, telling that he often hid of the Vietnamese who were walking only one meter away of him, not noticing him.
He also told how he had to drink his own urine to stay alive in some occasions.
And what really hurt him was the fate of the children there, left alone by everyone. When he found some, he took them with him to the next safe point, carrrying on occassions even up to three of them. In such cases, he was then even left by his squad!
We would not know anything of all this if he wouldn’t have returned in the late 70ies or the beginning of the 80ies to Yugoslavia. Everyone was surprised that he was alive at all. He then told some of his stories to my family. My grandmother, his sister, was very concerned whether he did ever kill someone or did something bad, to which he only replied “I can sleep well at night as I know I never killed anyone.”
But he was not popular among the police, who was observing him very carefully. Since he was now from the US. Although he did have an extra grant from Beograd that he could move freely. While he was in Yugoslavia on this visit, he said his hotel room was searched several times. And he found two bombs in his car. The first one not activated. The second one literally ticking. And with this one he went to the police station. Waiting neatly in the row. And when it was his turn, he put it on the table, saying “Gentlemen I found this in my car, I think this is yours.”
The police station was panicking a little and after some time, one of the defused the bomb. The chief of the department had then a little conversation with him, promising to leave him alone then (which he did if you don’t count the informers who were following carefully where he was going).
When my grandmother heard of this, she went furious, asking how he could do that, didn’t he think that he could die. And he silenced her with his short reply “In Vietnam I died so many times, nothng can happen to me anymore.”
After his visit he moved to Canada, where he died in 1996. Apparently he suffered from Leukemia, but he received some special medical treatment.
I am very sad that he passed away a long time ago now, long before I could have really made contact with him.
I know, it is a longer read, but I hope that some of you will find it interesting.
I found your post very interesting, Evillittlekenny, tears instantly came to my eyes when I read it. I suffered enormously during and after the war, but I managed to look my past in the eyes and come to the conclusion that I must start from scratch, everything must begin anew. After the Warsaw uprising, I realized that my past life was over. I no longer had a home to go to, I no longer had a father or a mother or brothers and sisters–they vanished or died, all of them lost to me. When two German soldiers holding large, menacing rifles, give you ten minutes to gather your belongings, you will see your past life ebbing away before your eyes. They will herd you like cattle to a crowded wagon, and you will watch your house through an old woman’s open legs and a small hole in the wood, until you can barely make out the roof or the front porch of your beloved home. And your past life will come to you, as it always does: The very same house where you were born, where you learned to read and write your name, where you listened to “With Fire and Sword” and pretended to be interested, where you kept earthworms under your bed, will be inhabited by Baltic Germans and later destroyed by the retreating Nazis.
Thanks for sharing your story, Evillittlekenny.
I must say I am very impressed that you can talk so freely about your story. Many people could not.
I can surely talk much easier about it since I was not there, but when I talk to the elder people in my home village, you can see the fear in their eyes related to what happened there.
I feel very sorry for what happened to you and I would like to offer my sincere condolences to you for your family.
I thank you also for your interest in my family history.
Dobranoc Kregs.
My greatgranfather was a Private, a volunteer. He fighted from Tunisia to Monte Cassino and killed some jerries (any german here, don’t take this as an offense!)