How atomic bombs worked out for you

[Patrick Thistle]

"We were the first troops to meet the Russians, up at the (place name) on the Baltic, see.

"Then after the fighting stopped, they pulled all the airbornes back. We got kitted out in 8 weeks. They gave us green underwear ready for jungle fighting. We were going to fight the Japanese because they carried on after things had stopped in Europe.

"But then they dropped the atom bomb and they stopped fighting after that.

"I got sent to Palestine instead. We had two years there. It was before the state of Israel. British mandate... hey, you missed the turn there."

My grandad in law talking about his wartime experiences as I drove him home today. He was in a glider on D-day and went across Europe including liberating a concentration camp. He ended up doing a work experience type placement in the army PR office 'learning journalism'.

I really did miss the turn. I was thoroughly enthralled and listening to him while driving on auto pilot.

[HORN]

Oh wow. I’m envious. I missed out on asking my grandfathers about their war experiences because one died of wounds following WW1 and the other was so traumatised by his time in a WW2 Japanese POW camp that I was forbidden to ever mention the bleedin’ war to him.

I’ve a second cousin who is in his 90s, fortunately still as bright as a button. He has taken great care to record his memoirs (this must be fairly natural for someone who worked as a museum curator), and he has even written a book of poetry documenting his time as a boy in the valleys, describing some of the characters in his village, the way of life back then, including little snippets such as being caned at school for daring to speak Welsh. He is the last of his generation in our family, and an absolute treasure to spend time with. The other bonus is that he was very close to my dad, who died when I was just a boy so he helps fill in some of the blanks for me.

[Lang Spoon]

My grandad was still well pissed off til death at being a Bevin Boy for the duration and more of the war. Spat upon by women thinking he was a conchie coward, probably getting as little action as his grandkid would at the same age (despite being a Superfly mover on the dinner dance circuit). His boss kept him from using his telecoms engineer expertise as a Signaller even. Too Valuable to let go Andy!, he said as my grandad pinned his boss against the wall futilely. He’d have swapped a minute down pit let alone 5 years for the unimaginable horror his brother must have seen (who lost all his hearing at Arnhem).

[Sits]

Dad was a bit young but arrived in New Delhi in May 1945 aged 20. He was with the REME, fixing vehicles and planes. He always maintained there was a good chance my brother and I would never have been born without the A-Bombs (which feels a bit weird). He and his regiment were being prepared for the Japanese invasion force.

As it was, he never saw a member of the opposite side, and had masses of anecdotes of big white spiders, dhobi itch, convalescing from a broken arm in the foothills of Kashmir etc. So I would say that unlike HORN's poor Grandad, Dad's war was not terribly traumatic. In fact I often wonder if it was the time of his life.

[ursus arctos]

My father was working in what now would be called logistics in the Philippines, and was very pleased that the invasion they had been planning for close to a year never happened.

Making sure that the occupation forces had sufficient cigarettes and Spam was rather less stressful than keeping a lethal supply chain open in time of war.

The whole reality of living with mutually assumed destruction as a child was another entirely.

[Amor de Cosmos]

That's all way more interesting than my Dad who spent the entire war loading bombs onto Lancasters in Carnforth. My Mum was working there too in the NAAFI, it's where they met. I think it was the best time of their lives. When my Dad retired they eventually moved back to the area, in an attempt to recapture something they'd lost I guess.

My Dad's father was in the Royal Observer Corps in WW1. He was a radio operator, which was cutting edge tech in 1914. Caught the audio bug for life. When he bought a house in the 1930s he had the place wired for sound, speakers everywhere except the bathroom and WC. It was genuinely awesome.

[ad hoc]

Both my grandfathers worked for Firth Brown (big steel manufacturer) in Sheffield and so stayed at home because their jobs were reserved occupations. One of them also did ARP duty in the evenings, mostly telling people off for not correctly obeying the blackout as I understand it. A great uncle signed up at the start of the war and was in the BEF. On his first night in France he went out of the tent to have a piss, tripped over a guy rope and broke his ankle, and spent the rest of the war back in the UK designing camouflage.

[Guy Profumo]

There's something awfully familiar about the theme of this thread…

[Sits]

ad hoc's Grandad, about 75 years ago:

[tracteurgarcon]

My granddad was a wireless operator in the Royal Navy during the War, his (WW1 vintage) ship was an escort for the convoys taking arms and supplies to the Russians in the early(ish) part of the War and then around D-Day he was assigned to a Royal Marine unit where his job was to set up mobile communications just behind the (constantly moving) front line.

He recently told me a story about him and his Royal Marine driver rushing around taking walkie-talkie and radio batteries (which, in those days were massive, weighty things) to front line units and then racing back to his mobile base to put the old ones back on charge.

He also told me about an island off the coast of Holland I think, which the Allied advance missed and so some of the rear echelon troops had to be sent to clear out the Germans who were dug in there, which sounded especially dangerous for someone who'd basically been trained in naval communications and not infantry warfare.

[anton pulisov]

My grandfathers were in Ireland and weren't going to join the British army. One of them worked at a war factory in Dagenham in the UK because it paid well.

[Logan Mountstuart]

One of my Gramps was shot in the bum a few days after arriving on the Western front in 1918. Apparently he never discussed it with anyone. There were rumours that his wound might have been self -
inflicted, however. He was a bit too old for Ww2 and apparently he didn't get up to much. Very much a Private Walker character, my grandad.

In contrast, my other Gramp was a professional military man. Spent virtually all the interwar years in India (my dad was born in Peshawar). During the war he worked on supply lines in Burma and managed to get injured 3 times. I remember always being fascinated by the huge scar on his bicep. One of his wounds on his limping leg remained a mystery to everyone but my Gran to the day he died.

My father grew up to fly Sabres in the 50s, becoming the 84th British man to fly Supersonic, getting engaged to a Dutch girl who subsequently died in a car crash.

Amazingly, despite me living with a Dutch woman since 1989 and living in NL for 20 years he only managed to tell me this about 10 years ago.

He has many stories of flying parallel to the Russian zone in Germany, acknowledging the Mig pilots doing the same. He never saw direct combat though. His squadron were on standby for Korea and their sister squadron actually went.

As for me, well I have spent the last 20 years ensuring Dutch people received their much - needed hamburger supplies. Our generation have been blessed in many ways, but are largely defined by wind and air.

[My Name Is Ian]

My maternal grandfather was conscripted in 1943 and was involved, in some way or other, in D-Day, leaving my grandmother at home in London with my mum, and pregnant with my uncle. There was family rumour that he had to "kill a man", but he didn't ever speak of it and died in 1981. The other one had been born in 1901 and attempted to signup to fight in the First World War, the blithering idiot. By the time of the Second World War he was unable to fight - a dislocated shoulder which, pre-NHS, he couldn't get fixed and settled into a minor disability - and was a civil engineer by this time. He was quite heavily involved in overseeing the building of the Beeding Cement Works and the first Shoreham Power Station, which will only be of interest to people with a connection to that part of Sussex (and probably not many of them.)

[Gangster Octopus]

Last week I had a dream about an impending nuclear holocaust for the first time since the nineteen-eighties. I wonder why.

[WOM]

Neither of my grandfathers fought in the wars; too young for one and too old (with kids) for the other.
But L's grandfathers did. The first was wounded in Italy and had shrapnel floating around just beneath his skin for the rest of his life. I never met this guy, but he was colourful.
Her other grandfather spend the better part of an afternoon telling me about his time as part of airborne observation scouting for Japanese submarines off the coast of British Columbia. It was fascinating and still vivid all those years later.
I learned, from L's dad, the very next day that his father had actually never left the province, much less left the ground. He was in supply management or something in Trenton, ON. It was pure fiction for the tourists.

[Sean of the Shed]

My maternal Grandad's ability to make pretty much anything taste edible saw him end up as a cook on an RAF base in Norfolk, so he spent the entire war based in Blighty feeding the fly-boys. Being based in Norfolk meant my Nan was put into munitions work in Norwich. My other Grandad wasn't even able to sign up, as he was farm foreman on the local country estate, and therefore deemed far too valuable to be sent away as cannon fodder. He joined the Home Guard though, probably just to feel like he was contributing a bit more to the war effort than keeping the country in bread and spuds. As a mother and being based in the countryside my other Nan was kept employed at the same country pile. They both continued working there for nearly 40 years after the war until they were in their seventies.
Probably the person who suffered most in my family was my great uncle Sid who was gassed in the trenches in WW1 and struggled with his breathing for the rest of his life until he died in the early seventies.

[Moonlight Shadow]

My paternal grand-parents were in Switzerland, quite close to the French/German border so they probably had a few alerts to deal with but overall I guess they had it easier than many others. My maternal grand-parents were in a small valley in Italy, my grand-mother was head maid in the Grand Hotel, latterly taken over by the Fascists, the Duce himself might have visited but I could not find confirmation of that. She was not too impressed by them and mocked her husband when he turned up back home one day in full uniform despite having railed against fascists previously - "a flag in the wind" she called him. Tbf to the guy, he was a carabiniere and he would have probably got himself into serious trouble standing up to his principles....Mind, he could have joined the many resistantce fighers found all over the valleys of the Valtellina areas.

One of the most cherished items I kept after my mum's death was her geography and history book from school, from 1936....it is grimly fascinating.

[Eggchaser]

Maternal grandfather was caught up in the Burma campaign, and never talked about it. He brought back a Japanese sword which he passed to one of my uncles, who was in the Paras.

Even though my paternal grandfather died when I was relatively young, some of his experiences were published in a book called Atlantic Star. He was in the Royal Artillery but got sent to man the ack-ack guns on the convoys. There's a photo of him in the book.

[elguapo4]

Three of my mother's cousins joined the British army,one was a career soldier who ran away from a drunken and violent father,he went through the war without a scratch,two others joined up when war broke out, both were killed,one at Arnhem the other at Monte Cassino.
My stepdad stayed at home and served in the LDV (local defence volunteers,Ireland's home guard) he was patrolling on the North Strand when the Germans bombed it,he had just turned a corner when it went off,he was knocked unconscious and deafened for a week,His hearing never fully recovered

[S. aureus]

One of my grandfathers was a farmer, so he didn't sign up. My other grandfather was an army man, but died before WWII, I think. At least I've never heard anything about what he did in the War, and I know he died when my dad was a kid. Both my parents were kids in the war, my dad in Edinburgh and my mom on the farm in Hampshire.
For a school project I got to interview a pair of my parents' acquaintances who fought on opposite sides at Monte Cassino. I imagine this kind of thing (knowing people who fought against each other) is getting much less common, but maybe that's just in my own limited world experience.

[My Name Is Ian]

Last week I had a dream about an impending nuclear holocaust for the first time since the nineteen-eighties. I wonder why.

I remember quite vividly being at junior school towards the end of 1982, sitting in a room waiting for the big TV on wheels to be pushed in, and when they switched it on it cut to, rather than "The English Programme", "How We Used To Live" or "Picture Box" (or whatever), a newsflash confirming the death of Leonid Brezhnev. I've thought about that a lot over the years. I didn't understand the significance of it at the time, obviously. I was ten years old and largely concerned with whether Spurs were going to win the FA Cup every year for the rest of my life (a dream that lasted another couple of months, as things turned out), so the finer points of a period of political upheaval in the USSR whilst the USA was run by a puppet for hawkish neo-cons were lost upon me at the time. I do, however, remember the tone surrounding the news of the time being a little anxious, in that way that kids pick up on the tics of adults even when they're not necessarily saying aloud what they're thinking.

I watched Threads a couple of years later, upon its first broadcast. There's one brief scene in it, shortly before the bomb drops, in which the kid in it is playing in the playground of his school as vehicles turn up to deliver stretchers and blankets as part of our beyond feeble civil defence preparations. That brief scene - and the famous melting milk bottles - stayed with me for years, probably because that kid was more or less the same age that I was at the time. Mercifully for his character, at least he was killed barely a few minutes after the first bomb dropped on Sheffield. In about 2001, having not watched it since that first broadcast, I ordered a copy of it on VHS online. I took the day off work to watch it (my girlfriend of the time would not have been interested and we only had the one TV, in the living room), but when it turned up it took me as much as I had to load the cassette into the machine, such was my worry over watching it again, even then. One of the finest TV dramas ever made, but it requires a certain degree of mental preparation.

[Third rate Leszno]

My paternal grandfather was too old for WW2, but my Dad turned 18 in 1945, joined the Navy and was on a minesweeper heading off somewhere when the bombs were dropped on Japan so thankfully he never saw any action. His brother, after whom I am named, wasn’t so fortunate and is in Taukkyan cemetery in Burma.

On my Mum’s side, her father was on the Prince of Wales when it was sunk, so she has a nice commemorative medal and no real memory of him.

By the time he died, my Gran has seemingly (not to be discussed as it was rather scandalous in that day and age) taken up with someone else, and he became the bloke I knew as my Grandad when she married him years later. He was East Anglian by birth but worked in a munitions factory in Bishopton, not far from Paisley and later moved to West Cumbria when the munitions factories there were developed into Calder Hall and Sellafield, creating the plutonium for the UKs nuclear programme.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Last week I had a dream about an impending nuclear holocaust for the first time since the nineteen-eighties. I wonder why.

Smiths B-side.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

My dad's dad had a very cushy WW2 as he was a sales rep for a colour works and could therefore drive, which was a bit of a rarity in those days. This meant he was conscripted into being an instructor for amphibious vehicle training, never getting to see any active service. As the war developed he was transferred to looking after Italian POWs on a hillside in Derbyshire. My dad says he and his brothers would regularly cycle to the camp where the POWs would teach them to make ships in bottles, something that he is still prolific at to this day.

So we move forward to the end of the war and VE day. The war is won and everyone is celebrating. The only thing that needs clearing up is to round up the remaining Germans from the Channel Islands. Except that the Allied soldiers have mostly been sent home so my Grandad, with his landing craft skills honed on the battle zones of Matlock, is finally sent to do some proper work, a month after the surrender.

They land a craft on the beach of either Jersey or Guernsey (only just realised I dont know which island it was) at which point the first Nazi he has encountered for the duration of the war, pulls a gun and shoots him dead. In turn, the German is plastered with fire, so it is never known if he was shot out of a last act of defiance, or if his opponent believed there was still reason to fight.

On the negative side, it means my dad grew up fatherless.

On the plus side, it means we both have the moral high ground when refusing to have any interest in the horrific bigotry that VE day has become.

It has also given a conversation shutting down answer to when any cunt gives it the pro-Brxkt 'well what did your grandad do during the war' argument.

I don't mean the above to show any sort of hero qualities. Quite the opposite, that a person who did everything they could to avoid a conflict, manages to get shot dead after it has ended, rather shows the futility of the pressed civilian involvement in conflict.

My mum's dad worked as a chief chemist at ICI in Traford Park and spent the war developing mustard gasses, and in his spare time making chess boards to send to the front line. I'm not wholly sure where this puts him on the moral compass against the axis of evil.

[Moonlight Shadow]

I have yet to read a dull long post by Big Boobs...someone should collect them and create an ebook....