Historical Accounts: 42 Horrifying World War II Stories Shared By Grandparents

Grandpa and grandma were out in Austria, Grandma was super pregnant with my aunt. They were stumbling through the forest when they met 5 afro-american soldiers. Might have been the first time they've seen black people. One asked grandpoppy to come closer (no common language just by using hand signs). They both thought that that's the end, they're done. (it's scary to run into guys with big guns in the forest). Turns out, they got a bunch of eggs in exchange for some help at a nearby farm, and when they saw grandma's big belly they thought she'll be needing the extra calories more then them, so they put it all into pa's hat, and pointed on grandma smiling. Best dudes ever. ♥.

I don't know the details very well so I'll let more knowledgeable war historians fill in the blanks for me:

My grandfather was a random farmhand in central France, about 20 when the French government surrendered. A couple years later, he joined the Resistance, not knowing how long the war was going to last. Turns out he joined at the end of 1943, so it was only a few months later that the US army ended up wining the French territories back.

When the US forces arrived near my grandpa's countryside, his *maquis* (Resistance group) essentially offered their services as scouts/reconnaissance, since they didn't have much firepower but they were quite good at sneaking around. They ended up making their way through eastern France and into Germany, liberating various small towns on the way (although my understanding is that the Wehrmacht was essentially fleeing at this point).

Enter the small town of Annweiler in Germany. My grandpa is making a reconnaissance round, when he hears a patrol coming around and has to hide quickly. He knocked on a random door, and asked in broken German to be hidden inside ("Versteck mich"). They accepted, and in that house, my grandpa met the daughter of the family, just three years younger than him. Her name was Anna. They... Kept in touch, and he came back with his hat in his hands a couple years later, and asked for her hand.

They settled in Lorraine, a region that historically got passed around between France and Prussia/Germany, and where a French-German couple would not be judged quite as harshly.

60 years of marriage, six children, and a gaggle of grandkids and great-grandkids later, they p****d a**y a few months apart from each other. They're buried in the tiny graveyard of the church of the village where I grew up.

My great-grandfather d**d in the Netherlands fighting when my grandpa was 1 year old. My great-grandmother never spoke about it even up until she d**d, and it was only cleaning the house my grandpa found the purple heart and other memorabilia, tucked away. She never remarried.

Recently my dad and I went to the Netherlands and got the chance to visit the American Cemetery there to see where he was buried. It was touching and sad, my dad had never met his grandpa and his dad could never make it over there at this point. We rubbed sand into his name on the gravestone and planted flags, talked about him. He d**d in 1945.

My grandfather, a six foot six inch redheaded Irishman from New York was a lieutenant in charge of an anti-aircraft battery at Normandy. That's not the interesting bit though.

As the Allies advanced into Europe they took a number of prisoners, who all spoke German, obviously.

My Lieutenant grandfather was put into a private's uniform and stationed outside the POW camp.

Why?

Because my six foot six redheaded Irishman from New York Grandfather was the son of a German immigrant and spoke fluent German. He got a lot of intel from the prisoners who spoke German freely in front of the American.

My grandfather joined up in 1943 when he turned 18 years old.

He was stationed on a Pacific island where he basically became a Radar O'Reilly.

His family were Mennonites, so he was a conscientious objector.

He was a medic, clerical worker, cook, ditch digger, driver, and anything else that he was asked.

Most of his time was spent cleaning up after everyone else and watching for air raids by the Japanese Air Force.

EDIT: My mom said that he watched the Japanese planes surrender on the USS Missouri.

My Grandpa stormed the beaches at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, and lived to tell about it. Afterwards, when things calmed down and they had left France, he ran off for about a week to another country and had some fun.

I went back to Pointe du Hoc with him for a Rangers reunion with my family several years ago. Now that was powerful. Standing in the same area with your grandpa, and family, where he stormed the beaches.

Something sweet:

My grandparents saved *all* their love-letters sent back and forth during that time.

They had just met and had fallen in love before his departure. So they carried on their romance and developed the relationship through beautifully written letters.

Those letters expressed every emotion - from the realities and horrors of war to the abiding hope they'd be reunited safe & sound. They were married not long after grandfather's return.

My great grandfather commanded a battery stationed in France for a period of time. They were tipped off about a German supply train that would be passing through the area. They ambushed the train and captured 150 German soldiers, injured 30 k*****g 25 in the fight. Some tanks and other equipment was destroyed or taken. All members received a bronze star and my great grandfather also received the Croix de Guerre, awarded to those soldiers who distinguish themselves by acts of heroism involving combat with the enemy.

My grandfather would talk about the training, time with his unit while being transported, but mostly about a little kid he was helping feed in China after Japan surrendering. He would just think aloud about what happened to him and if he was alright.

He never talked about combat. I did walk into his house once and the history channel was on showing a USMC graveyard on Okinawa and he was crying.

My grandfather befriended a German family during the war. They would cook him meals and the mother would wash his clothes. One day hey loaded up a box with eggs and used toilet paper to make sure they didn't break. The next day there was a note in his laundry thanking him for the eggs, but an even bigger thank you for the toilet paper. They hadn't had any in years.

My grandparents were 8 and 5 when the japanese attacked nanjing. My grandpa told me he remembers his dad taking him and his mom running away 2 days before the r**e happened. My grandma's family was pretty well off, they owned a few resturants in nanjing. Her family had to basically give up everything to not get r***d or k****d.

My grandfather was captured on Corregidor at the start of the war and was a POW to the Japanese for the duration. His being on the island could be considered somewhat fortunate, as he had previously been on the USS Houston which was sunk shortly before the island fortress fell.

He talked about being on the Houston, and being in Manilla, and his service after the war, but said almost nothing about his time as a POW. He did write a fairly sanitized account of his experience but didn't like to actually talk about it.
As a cattle rancher, he once had to call my uncles to put down a calf that wasn't going to live. He had to take a drive while my uncles shot the calf because in his words "I've seen enough k*****g and don't want to be around for any more of it."

He at once point told my mom that he didn't hold any ill will against the Japanese people, but if he ever saw one specific guard on the streets he would k**l him without hesitation.

At one point in the war he was moved to Japan to be used as s***e labor in the coal mines. His civilian mine foreman was kinder than most people and saved his life after a near-fatal accident. In the days immediately after the war ended the POWs were issued red cross boxes and allowed to roam the city as they pleased. My grandpa ran into his former foreman whose family was now starving due to the severe food shortages. My grandpa spent the next few weeks bringing the Japanese family food from this red cross packages and continued to mail them care packages after he was returned home. Having sold everything else of value the foreman gave him their only remaining possession in thanks, a traditional wedding kimono that had been in the family for generations.

The two men remained lifelong friends and in the early 2000s after both men had passed my family flew to japan to return the Kimono to his widow and sons. It was an extremely emotional visit for both sides.

My grandpa had a hard life growing up and saw the Navy as a source of stability, enlisting before the start of the war. He loved the sense of order and comradery being in the service gave him and stayed until retirement shortly before Vietnam got going in earnest. His time as a POW was too horrific to talk about though so for most of my life there was a hole in his stories between 1942 and 1945.

The things I've found out about the camps he was in are truly horrific. The t******s the men endured and the fact that any of them survived at all is amazing.

One of the stories he did write about concerned his transport to the Japanese mainland. The Japanese needed more manpower and promised better conditions and better food to anyone who volunteered to go back to the home islands. The POWs were packed into the transport ship's hold so tightly that they couldn't lay down. They had to sit with their legs in a V a*s to c****h to fit everyone without standing. There was only one small door open to the deck and the men cycled out who was closest to it based on who passed out from the heat and stale air.

The transport ship was part of a convoy but had no markings indicating that it was carrying POWs. During the night American submarines ambushed the convoy. The Japanese quickly shut and latched the only door after telling the POW's that if the Americans sunk the ship, they were going down with it. For the rest of the night and several nights after the men sat in the dark stifling heat and listened to ships exploding around them, never knowing if they were next.

When the guards would open the door in the morning the air was so foul it looked like smoke. There were no bathrooms so the men were sitting in their own filth with the corpses of the men who'd d**d during the night leaning against them.

That story was tame enough that he thought he could share it. He never talked about the really bad stuff that happened.


Edit:

I just remembered another more light-hearted story he told. When he was still in a camp in the Philippines a couple of the guards decided that they wanted to try to learn a little English.

The POWs mimed big and strong, patting their biceps and flexing while saying "Son of a b***h" and pointing to the guards. For the next day, two of the guards were walking camp around proudly telling all the POWs they saw "I son of b***h!" The prisoners caught a beating for it when the guards found out what they had been saying but from the way he told the story it was worth it.

My Grandfather lost his twin and his mother in a German b*****g raid during the blitz. He was 15 at the time and an alcoholic for most of his adult life.

My Great Aunt told me she and her friends used to play in the b****d ruins of buildings near their home in West London. In retrospect she realised how dangerous it was to be three stories up a crumbling building but at the time, they didn't care at all.

My great grandfather had a hobby of [annoying] off the N**i's. Like going down the street in bright orange (national colors), waving the national flag, blasting the forbidden resistance radio over the street. Anything to annoy the n**i's. He was put against the wall multiple times, after which he quit whatever he was doing for a while. He also sheltered jews and some that were wanted by the reich.

Needless to say, it was a stressfull period for the rest of the family.

My grand uncle was part of a “clean up crew” in Japan after the battle of Leyte. So after all the fighting was done, they’d send his unit in to clear out the bodies of the fallen Japanese. He said that they would loot their bodies (take “treasures” like knives, swords, gold off the teeth) and then put their bodies on a giant landing craft (the kind that open up on a beach), and take them out to sea to dispose of them. He says he’ll never forget watching the sharks just go to town on the d**d. Haunts him to this day.

Edit: this was in Philippines, not japan. But it was a battle against the Japanese

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Another edit: The intention was to give them a sea burial since the Japanese left their d**d upon retreat. It wasn't meant to desecrate the deceased further.

OK, so let me first insist that the story that will follow is absolutely serious and nowhere near to be a joke.

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This happens in the middle of the war, in Brussels, occupied by N**i forces.

The uncle of my grandmother, Arthur, had a dog, which he always took with him when he would go outside. For a walk, to the shop, to visit family, etc. Everywhere. And everybody knew it.

One day, Arthur meets the local butcher in the street and he doesn't have his dog with him. The butcher is surprised so he asks him how comes. Arthur tells him the dog just d**d the day before. The butcher says sorry, condolences, blahblah then asks him what he did with the corpse. Arthur tells him he buried it in his garden.

The morning after, there's a hole in the garden and the corpse has disappeared.

The very next day, the butcher who's shop was pretty much empty for months now due to the obvious food shortages of the war, suddenly has kilos of sausage for sale. Not really difficult to understand what happened but of course Arthur also had no evidence so he couldn't do/tell anything.

Now what's even more surprising is what happened later:

- A few years after the war, the son of the butcher committed s*****e, hanging himself

- The butcher himself d**d shortly after. He was ice-skating on frozen lake and the ice broke

- A new butcher took over the shop. His son was k****d during a robbery by an infamous gang, [the Brabant K*****s]

- After this it became a laundry shop, whose owners k****d himself at 17 with a gun

- New owners came in and two years ago a fire completely destroyed the shop.

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It's been rebuild now but I can tell you this: the place is f*****g cursed.

My grandfather was pretty rich from real estate in the coastal province of Zhejiang in China until the Japanese invaded. He and his family relocated to the inland wartime capital and worked as a telegraph operator for the war.

The Japanese took everything from everyone back then, and nothing was the same afterwards. Coupled with a civil war right after and things were pretty s****y.

My father was a medic in WWII and was part of the Normandy invasion where he had to do what he could with pieces of soldiers. It must have been horrifying.

On his d****bed he admitted that he stole two small bars of silver from the body of a German soldier somewhere in France. He wasn't proud of it and in fact he was quite ashamed of his actions even 60+ years later. When he returned home he sold the silver and in a small way it helped him purchase a small trailer in which he and my mom lived while he finished college.

My grandfather was a paratrooper and the translator for his squad.

When paratrooping in to, I believe, France his entire squad was either shot out of the sky or captured and k****d except for my grandfather. He hid until he came across a patrol that was looking for him, k****d them and stole a uniform. Putting one of the Germans in his uniform and dragging them back to the nearest base so they would stop trying to find him, he spent the rest of the war pretending to be a German soldier and relaying information to the allies anonymously.

My grandmother had been told, when his squad was shot down, that he was KIA and not to expect him back.

In 1948 there was a knock at my grandmother's door, when she answered is there stood my grandfather who, after walking all the way back from Berlin, just said to her: "What's for dinner? It has been a frightfully long day."

**Edit: For those of you questioning legitimacy**, I can only give the information I have. My grandfather was a paratrooper in the British army, the story was told to me by my uncle after my grandfather p****d and was told to him by my grandmother when he was sent to the Merchant Navy by my grandfather as a kid. My grandmother, prior to her d***h, confirmed that she was told he was KIA and that he showed up again in 1948 with the what's for dinner line because that was the "how your mother came to be" story.

As for actual legitimacy, I have no sources to follow up with to corroborate anything as all that is left of my family is myself, my mother (whom does not speak to me), my two brothers (who have the same information I do), and my aunt (who I have not spoken to since before I moved to the US 10 years ago).

The post asked for his story, this is his story as it is known to me and what remains of his family.

Posted this already in another thread some time ago:

My German grandpa fled from what is now Poland. He's born in 1937. His dad owned a larger farm estate and they were some of the wealthier farmers in the region (they owned a car for instance, which was a luxury). When worst came to worst in 1944/45, his dad was drafted in the Volkssturm (n**i recruitment of children and elders). But because he was a stubborn farmer, he said f*** the n***s and hid out in a forest nearby.

One day the Red Army arrived and my grandpa (who is still alive right now) recalls it that they literally parked in front of the main house, knocked down the door and yelled in broken German to them to pack their things in 10 minutes and leave or they'll all be shot. So my grandpa (about 7 or 8) had to flee with barely anything. They marched for weeks through war-torn wastelands, burning villages, all while artillery and tanks were roaring in the distance and war planes flew over their heads. He recalls playing with some gas masks they had found on their way (probably next to some burned out vehicles). They rejoined the larger streams of refugees and made it to east Germany, where my grandpa's dad was "re-educated" into socialism and lived bitter and angry until his d***h. My grandpa eventually fled East Germany in the 1950s with nothing but his rusty bike and the stars above his head to the west.

To this day, my grandpa refuses to visit Russia (my grandma always wanted to go to St. Petersburg). He doesn't hate on the Russians as a people, but he has never lived down this childhood trauma.