Did your grandparents talk about the war or did they not talk about it at all?

Can't rape the willing

My grandparents were too young or not alive during the war

My great-grandma told me how when the Germans marched through her village, she and her husband took their cow and hid in the forest, and when they went back home their painting was gone - she blames their neighbours

My grandpa says he found a gun while playing in the woods as a kid (must have been within a few years after the war ended)

Granny was born in 44, grandad was born in 45, ethier way they were both irish so it doesn't matter.
[spoiler]I miss them so much.[/spoiler]

My family is russian. My great grandfather was a high ranking member of the white army. He cut a soviet's head off in the first soviet revolution in 1905.
He and his family were taken to gulags in WWII. The only one who managed to escape was my grandfather. He fled to Germany and enlisted in the wehrmacht, where he got medals of valor. I don't know much more except personal stories of the war.

What region of France are you from?

>great grandfather was a high ranking member of the white army
>cut a soviet's head off
>escaped gulag
>enlisted in the wehrmacht, got medals of valor
>don't know much more except personal stories of the war
>personal stories
Literally at the edge of my seat, senpai.

My grandpa died at Auschwitz. He fell off the guard tower while being drunk on duty.

doubt.png

Sweet, even the jokes are historical here

My paternal Grandfather saw action in Guam

Had tons to say about the good time he had with the boys. Spend his whole life regretting the "mom" tattoo he got on his forearm because that's what everyone else in his unit was doing. He had nothing at all to say about the actual fighting and avoided the topic when asked.

My maternal grandfather taught swimming in Hawaii. Both of my grandfathers were among the first wave scheduled for the invasion of Japan but he was among the first wave of the occupational force, seeing the Nagasaki blast sight within two weeks of its detonation. Talked about going into Japanese villages and rounding up military rifles that were equal in number to the total number of occupants (including children). Spoke glowingly of the Japanese people, and of course being the old poon hound that he was, described all the hot, wild sex that he and his boys had with actual geishas.

My great-grandfather fought at Ypres, he didn't talk about it much but he once told me about a time when his column over-ran a german trench with grenades and the sickening gooey mess the explosives made of the germs.

He was a gentle man who loved nature and god, I feel sad for the awful burden he lived with all his life because of that war, where he lost his only brother and saw such terrible things.

The one who escaped gulag was his son, my grandfather. He didn't get to Siberia, he escaped before. He enlisted in the wehrmacht to avenge his family.
The personal stories are that he escaped to Argentina after the war ended and found his wife who he hadn't seen in years here too. That was a huge coincidence.

Yes I'm an argie.

My grandparents on both sides grovelled beneath Nazi oppression. My mother's father turned into a hardcore, USSR-supporting communist after the war because of it. All my grandparents died young and I never got to meet them.

Thats a /int/ernational joke though.

I'm pretty sure that joke long predates /int/

I recall getting a good laugh out of English lads when I told it in the late 80s.

My great grandfather was in the Dutch resistance and flew to Britian and Holland a few times, He then served in Indonesia to keep it a colony. My grandfather said he wouldn't talk much about the war in general so I think he saw some shit.

according to my father my great grandfather was a grumpy old British cunt who joined the 7th Armoured Div and fought in North Africa, Italy, and Germany until the war ended and he went home and worked as a berry picker on some rich estate.

Never met him, sadly.

Likely, it just that thats where I have seen more or less developped.

My grandfather fought in the continuation war and was even wounded(a bullet hit his lung), but he's never talked about the war, or talked very much with us in general.

My great-great-grandfather fled to America in the year 1900 after being drafted into the tsar's army. According to my grandfather in his village when you got drafted they would have a funeral for you before you left. A term of enlistment was 20 years and no one ever returned.

Fathers side: Both died before I was born.
Granpa fought in Russia and was hit by a grenade splinter. Don't know anything else.

Mothers side: Grandma can't stop talking about the flight out of romania. She was a tenager back then.
Grandpa fought in Russia too, got captured and locked up in a POW camp in eastern Poland. Never talked about anything.

Thanks for all these stories user, good reads.

>mom's mom
>lived in Berlin as a little girl at the end of the war
>every night, she would lay out her clothes in perfect order so she could put them on in the dark and get to the bomb shelter within minutes
>once told us she sat down there just screaming "We're gonna die" over and over and over

>mom's dad
>was wounded in the war and had shrapnell in his body for the rest of his life
>got cancer from that and died when I was two weeks old

>dad's mom
>lived in eastern Prussia
>fled by ship, mere weeks before the Wilhelm Gustloff desaster
>died a couple years ago

>dad's dad
>grew up in a strict SPD (social democrats) family
>was involved in an incident where his father accidentally burned a flag of the German empire
>saw Hitler drive by in a parade one day
>got drafted and fought at the Eastern front
>got hit by shrapnell from an artillery grenade
>his arm had to be taken off
>had to learn to get by with just his left arm for the rest of his life
>still became a succesful teacher of German and history and a beloved member of his hometown
>died in May this year
I really miss him.

Did he tell any stories about the war?

Great Granddad was redcross in the Boer War. Saw the concentration camps. Fucking english. And WW1 as a medic. Dontt make them like that anymore.

Grandpa was captured in Libya by Rommel in 41. POW for 4 years. 2 in Italy, 2in Austria. Liberated by Patton and his boys. Real good cunts apparently. Knows lots about it. Too sad though.

Dad was a conscript in the bush war. Africans can't shoot for shit thankfully.

All on my Dads side. Fathers fathers father. Feels bad that I never joined the army like all these legends. Breaking the tradition feels bad. Ill make sure my son joins up though

>great grandpa is from central serbia but close to the south
>so close that bulgarians actually came by 2 or 3 times to help patrol for the germans
>he said that the germans were alright, and never caused trouble
>but he gets all kinds of triggered about bulgarians
>they ransacked his barn looking for weapons and beat him up
>he actually had a gun in the barn, but they didn't find it
>his father also lost his leg in the second balkan war
>commie propaganda before the tito-stalin split demanded saying good things about fellow commie countries
>he would threaten anyone who he heard say that bulgarians are our brothers, he threw a brick at one dude (tho he thought that the dude is the one who told the bulgarians about the gun in the barn)

He told the tale of how he lost his arm a few times, but I can barely recall it safe for what I already posted. I remember he thought the medics who were treating him were a bunch of hacks and they pretended everything was fine and dandy until there was an inflammation engulfing his whole arm up to two inches under his shoulder. If they hadn't amputated it right then and there, he would have died.

He showed me a bunch of primer books from the Nazi era. They showed soldiers marching after their flag on one page, and six year old boys marching after a red flag on the other. The books were full of shit like that. They really hammered in their ideology from as early as possible.

My mother recently found out that she was raised after principles from a certain book. It had been a mother's bible during the Nazi era, and remained so for decades afterwards with slight revisions taking out the most obvious propaganda. But it still advised parents to lock kids in their playpen and let them keep screaming at night without taking care of them.

Oh yeah and he went into a British POW camp after returning home from the eastern front. He spent two years there and weighed less than 50kg when he got out.

My grandfather was Jewish and he got gassed before his 4th birthday

Yeah such a shame you didn't die pointlessly in Iraq so that dick Cheney could profit, so sad.

>Ill make sure my son joins up though
Let him make his own decisions.

Nice dubs commie

Fuck off female

cucks who want to die in Iraq schlomo Shekelsteinbergowitz gets a 3% increase in his oil stock dividends

Sad!

My great great uncle was at d-day and fought in the Normandy breakout. He also fought at the Battle of the Bulge.

my grandparents got gassed 600000 of times

...

I'm not even a Yank. Fighting in a war is glorious regardless of the motives, the act itself is sacred, the rest is secondary.

>Tfw first grandfather too skinny to join the army
>Tfw second one was born too late and did artillery testing for DARPA during Korea and 'Nam instead
>Tfw both grandfathers dead, estranged from one grandmother
>Tfw my grandmother only has stories about the home front.
Yeah, the stories about VJ Day and all that are cool, but nobody in my family ever killed a Nazi. Closest my family ever got to combat was testing crazy shells for the gummint.

Different countries are different. In South African army I would be fighting for the ANC.. I bet you'd be okay that though. Other country's weren't even in Iraq.
I've lived in switzerland though and seen the good the military can do for a society.
Of course it would be nice to live in a world without violence and war. But we will always need people to protect and maintain what our ancestors have secured for us.

The bulk of the stories I've heard were from grandma (born in 1929) and her older sister, but they're more about the occupation, final stages of the war, and "clean-up".

Great-granddad had a big farm and sometimes let the Polish resistance hide or treat their wounded there. Grandma's older sister worked with the resistance directly, mostly as a messenger. Great-granddad spoke good German and was on good terms with the local garrison so they didn't suspect him.

Immediately after the war the communists stationed soldiers at their farm as they hunted the remaining Polish resistance in the area. Grandma said they spat into the communist soldiers' food.

Grandma's older sister wanted to be a teacher after the war but great-granddad didn't let. He said that "the communists would teach her to lie". She became a nun instead.

Fucking commies. Ive heard the old Poles hate the Soviets even more than the Nazis. The way the reds abandoned the resistance prior to Warsaw, and the execution of all the entire officer class. There must be stories like your families all through that poor country.

I bet you say sexually assault he probably didn't those German woman couldnt keep their hands off the American freedom fighters.

Im from Italy
My grandfather on mother's side fought in north Africa with the fascist army, fell prisoner of the British until the end of the war.
My grandfather on father's side fought with the resistance against the fascists and German army in Italy.
They were on opposite sides.

Grandma always said Stalin was much worse than Hitler but I wouldn't say the family was particularly keen on Germans either. Great-grandad (himself a WW1 veteran conscripted to Austro-Hungarian army) said Versailles was too lenient and was angry about Germany not being punished more severely after WW2.

Still, by grandma's stories as heard by my young ear, the Germans seemed like dangerous and evil people but ones you could reason with. Her descriptions of the Soviets and Polish communists were much more negative and vivid. The former were disgusting savages who had never seen an indoor lavatory and thrived on petty thievery and violence, while the latter were less primitive but more morally reprehensible.

My grandad fought in WW2 on the german side, korea, and nam on the american

He has a shit ton of ww2 and even some ww1 stuff in his attic, old franks, uniforms, maps/battleplans, and helmets.

Pic related it's the only thing i was ever allowed to take out of the attic, everything else is under lock and key. It's a miracle the thing is held toghether he's had it since he was like 18.

He doesn't talk about the war at all, since a lot of his family died during it but he actually has talked about how he fled to the west n shit.

Dude was even a neighborhood hero, when a dog went full cujo and attack a middle schooler, he saved em, treated their wounds, and killed the dog.

Granted he was also a cirppling insomniac and depressing person, on top of being /pol/ levels of racist, but yknow was still a good guy all around.

My Dad's Dad

>British soldier
>In 11th armored division
>Fought in North Africa for first few years, generally repaired tanks and other artillery
>Arrived in the western front few days after D-Day
>drove through Belgium and Netherlands
>Met some Americans, generally had a relaxed time
>Liberated Belsen concentration camp
>Utterly scarred by what he saw
>Said there were things there that were unforgivable
>Hated talking about the war
>After the war, became a salesman for a large engineering business
>Travelled to the Soviet Union a lot, made friends there.
>Hated Germans for the rest of his life

Excuse my ignorance, but why were thee Soviets hunting Polish Partisans? I take it this was towards the end of the war, after the war. Who were these Partisans? Anti soviet resistance?

You're Great Grandfather sounds like a legend. Having a young family during that period of history... I wish I could have met him

>Excuse my ignorance, but why were thee Soviets hunting Polish Partisans?
Poles and Baltic resistance fighters fought against the Soviets as well as the Germans. They didn't like either of them.

And my Mum's Mum's Dad

>Enlisted into british army at 15
>Became machine gunner
>At somme
>Apparently killed 6 men
>became alcoholic afterwards
>Also fought in ww2 (pretty sure, might've been my mum's dad's dad)
>fought in Burma
>died in a motorcycling accident in the Netherlands 3 years after the war

The Soviets intended to destroy the Home Army because it was loyal to the London goverment, not the new communist authorities.
They even betrayed the partisans that previously fought alongside them as allies:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ostra_Brama

Is that really all you can say? Iraq was a pointless wasteful war that never should have happened. I should know, I was there.

Truly spoken like someone who has never fought in one. After my first taste of war I wished there would never be another.

In September 1939 Poland was attacked and occupied by both Germany and the Soviet Union, so various resistance groups fought against both German and Soviet occupations depending on the areas.

Later on when operation Barbarossa started and the Germans pushed the Soviets out of Poland most of the resistance (by then more coalesced and pledging allegiance with the Polish government-in-exile in London) ended up fighting only the Germans, and were in fact under Allied orders from London not to fight the Soviets.

This broke down in 1944 and 1945 due to the Yalta agreement and the Soviets themselves cracking down on the resistance (which was largely right-wing and nationalist and labelled Fascist by the Soviets). Many groups fought both the Soviets and Germans, and some even ended up entering ceasefires with the Germans to focus on the Soviets.

Various pockets of resistance fought on until the mid-1950s (communist authorities called them "bandits").

Iraq wasn't even a war, just a bunch of obese Yanks in air conditioned tents chugging coke, playing vidya and occasionally going on a humvee ride.

>m-muh I've seen the horrors of war

No pussy, you haven't seen shit.

What was it like not being able to fight properly because of ROE restrictions?
That shit would have driven me mad. Having to just observe the cunts ealking around cos you can't fire until fired upon, while they butcher and maim and do what the fuck they like. No wonder you guys got tossed around.

When sober, he refused to talk about it. Everything I know about his service comes second hand from stories he told my dad/uncles while he was drunk.

>101st airborne paratrooper
>fought at Carentan, Market Garden, and Bastogne
>purple heart

He seemed like kind of a badass, but who knows how much has been embellished over the years. Supposedly he shot a deer near Bastogne and had a cookout with his buddies.

One grandpa was in the army. Old noble family with a military tradition, of course his father was WW1 veteran, officer in the cuirassiers, got wounded 6 times. All the family was somewhat involved in politics, used to be very into monarchism until after the first war, where they turned to all those proto-fascist, anti-communist veteran associations. We got our shit kicked in, he escaped to England and joined the FFF. His younger brothers were executed for helping the Resistance, his father volunteered to be taken as hostage after the Resistance attacked a convoy near the village he was the mayor of, and he died of typhus in a camp. And the Germans occupied then burned down the family estate while retreating.

They were all pretty sympathetic to fascist ideals, but they hated the Germans more than hated Commies or Jews. He's still alive, and I try to see him as often as possible. He became a diplomat after the war.

His wife, my grandma, died when I was young, so I don't know as much. She was a bit younger than him, so she was in her late teens when the war happened. As far as I know they just went in hiding in a family house in the South, her father was a rich industrialist so the war wasn't too hard on them. Her father was suspected of collaboration after the war, but he cleared his name. I know a lot of their factories were bombed, though.

On the other side of the family, one of my grandpa was a Spanish refugee. He never talked about what he did in the civil war, if anything, we just know that he had just started working as a teacher when the civil war broke out. Once he arrived in France, though, he was interned in a refugee camp, escaped, then joined the local resistance. He died a few years ago, so I guess we'll never know for sure.

My grandma was in her early teens, too young to do anything. She helped her parents run the family's bookstore, and she remembers having to throw out a bunch of books twice, and then another time at the Liberation.

Is it okay to feel this much sympathy for Poland? Or do the Poles dislike it?

great grandps killed some germans

I don't think there's that sort of dislike. Poles certainly enjoy self-pity just fine. But it may not be a good idea to indulge it. It gets a bit pathological at times since Poles tend to shun realpolitk, take an emotional/sentimental attitude to politics in general, and take pride in noble defeats more than victories.

You could say that faced with overwhelming odds, the archetypical Pole will briefly ponder the two options: 1) glorious victory and 2) glorious defeat, then charge straight in. Rather self-destructive.

The above is a caricature but being raised in Polish culture it feels very appealing to me.

My great-grandpa was a Blackshirt who fought in the 2nd Italo-Ethiopian War, and settled in Addis Ababa when the war was finished. According to my grandma, he owned multiple plantations and the first Chevy dealership in Africa. He fought in WWII, and became a POW in 1941. He still had enough money to do business in Africa after the war was over. After his brother was shot by a Kenyan during the Mau Mau Uprising (which is a bizarre story unto itself), he headed to Greece. While there, he found his wife who also happened to be from Tuscany. Under a Greek passport, they moved to New York, which is where I reside today.

Do you still live in Africa?

>Great Granddad was redcross in the Boer War.

Sure
And my dad was grenadier in the Napoleonic Wars while my grandad was a centurion during the Conquest of Gaul

Small world, eh?
Did they get along later in life?

My grandma was child back then, and remembers how Germans treated them with sweets in '39. But they lost their shit after few years
>slaughtered nearby village
>airfield was also nearby, and when planes were returning from their missions with bombs still on them, they bombed village instead. Two families died that way.
Grandpa was sent to Sybir, but he came back after few years, never said a word how he managed to do that.
And from the other side of family, Germans didn't care about them, and only when they planed to invade USSR, they demanded from village one fur coat.
As for Soviets
>came to my grand grand father, demanded cattle and pigs
>he gave it to them
>they came back some time later, demanded the only horse he had and everything what was still left
>they murdered him, as he tried to stop them
>still stole everything either way

Some people keep track of their family history and keeping track of what your father's grandad did isn't even going that far back. I know for a fact one of my triple great grandfathers served in the Austro-Hungarian navy for example.

Nah we left after Mandela came in.

What is it that you find difficult to believe? He went to Africa from London around 1900. Intended to teach/help out. Saw the concentration camps and helped there for as long as he could. Bought a farm in Orange Free State and married a nice Afrikaans girl.
What else was the guy going to do?

My grandmother was only a child during WW2, but never really talked about it that much. My father said she struggled with a lot of "German guilt," as does my father, really, who completely rejects any notion of being German.

For the last couple of years, she's been developing severe dementia though, and the first time I saw her in the state I broke down in tears. In her confusion, she thought I was distraught because I was being sent on the Eastern Front, she tried to reassure me, but it didn't work out to well. She had lost a brother that was about my age back then.

My grandpa was a paratrooper. As soon as they hit the ground (which was not as smooth back then) his best friend was shot dead. Of course he then had to immediately get his shit together and fight for his life. Other than that I heard that in basic training they stabbed hanging pigs to death to experience the screaming and blood

No, but I'm named after my great uncle who was a Canadian soldier who fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino, and was killed when, after dragging a wounded comrade out of the line of fire, he went out to save someone else.

I also had a great grandfather who served in the immediate post-war Germany and was almost assassinated in his hotel room by a couple Germans, never met him though.

Grandfather fought in New Guinea. Told me about how the Japanese never gave up and were relentless. Told me about all the corpses he would find littered around the jungle and rivers- Japanese, Australians and Guineans.
He was a very paranoid man because of the war and hid lots of supplies in a cave near his home because he was preparing for the Japanese invasion, years after the war ended.

My grandfather was a partisan and my grandmother was a courier. Grandfather never told me anything when he was alive and grandmother forgot most of it by the time I asked her for the first time.

My grandfather woke up to some noise, got out, got scared and shot someone. He was awarded a medal for protecting the flag.
Never spoke about war at all, and he is a very timid man, cries often (though he is also drunk often, and those tend to coincide).

My grandma was Jewish, so she doesn't talk must about the war. The only time she has, she told us how she used to play with German soldiers, until her mother said she couldn't because they'd find out what she was.

She hasn't said more than that, but she still can't stand fireworks because it reminds her too much of the German bombardment. Besides that, she's just mentioned how much she loves Queen Beatrix because she gave her hope.

Never met either of my grandparents as they died young.
One of them named my father Benito, so you could probably guess his political affiliation and general opinion on the whole deal.
The other one was almost killed by nazis but managed to escape.

My great-grandpa died in Auschwitz too, when a drunken guard tower fell on top of him.

Was every direct ascendand of yours born when their parents were 40?

Just shy of 40, yeah. They married girls 10-15 years younger too. Its what you did when you spent your youth adventuring, working and building a business and finally marrying when your well established.
I know its difficult for you to comprehend after growing up in a welfare state.

Just after my Grandpa was captured in 41, when the Nazis were putting them on Transport ships to go to Italy, some crazy shit happened.
There were two transport ships, and they were shuffled into two queues, based on there last name. His best mate, neighbor, and who he joined up with, he was lined up to go on the other boat. So Grandpa snuck into his queue. Didn't want to be separated. They made it to Italy fine. The other transport was sunk by a British transport with no survivors.
I know it sounds unreal, but it happened. Him and his mate made it through the camps together, kept each other alive. They were always hungry.
Also, after Patton liberated and looked after them for a few weeks, the Russian pows would sneak and steal supplies from yanks night after night. Until finally the yanks ambushed them. He heard all the gunfire as they put them down.

My one gramps that lived through it died when I was 3. His brothers daughter told me about it 4 years ago though. My granny hasn't said a thing about it, but she was born just at the closing stage of the war.

you sound like a 14 year old off to go play paintball

>In her confusion, she thought I was distraught because I was being sent on the Eastern Front
Fascinating

My grandpa fought in the Pacific on the uss Pasadena. There's one story he told my father, the details are somewhat murky but here's the gist of it

>battle station was loading one of the aa guns
>before one jap attack the gunner has some sort of premonition or some shit, freaks out and asks my grandpa to switch positions with him
>after the battle the other guy was pinned to the wall with bullets, easily could have been pop pop.

>he was a funny ass dude in general, once punched a social security officer in the face (he worked there)

Another time he was a bagger at a grocery store.
>woman and child comes up to the register
>"oh your baby looks just like you"
>"thanks" she says excitedly
>"that wasn't a compliment"

ugh, sunk by a British Uboat, sorry

In the cold of Austria, they spent 2 years building a giant steel works factory of some description. On the day it was completed, casting the first molds they said, a massive allied bombing section, 100planes or so, flew over. A squadron broke off and bombed the factory to shit.
He almost died while working on it for more than a year until his mate, who was digging air raid shelters, managed to convince the guards to get him on the same bunker digging detail. Still digging, but it was not as exposed as digging 4 meter foundation trenches.
Shits crazy.
About 10000 Russians and 3000 Anglo pows in the Austrian camp.

My great-grandmother always says her relatives (italians) fighted against the ottomans (i don't know exactly what war was, probably WWI) and they got BTFO by the turks (turks cut off their heads)

My great grandfather was a border guard at the Norwegian border.

And my grandfather told me that he used to see german bombers flying over the city sometimes.

Eastern front gramps served in the 12. Infanterie-regiment as a Gefreiter and took part in the whole Eastern campaign. At first he was tending to two supply horses, Lotte and Rosa, who certainly didn't make it. Up to Barbarossa things were comfy compared to the rest of the war. As part of the 31. Infanterie-Division he was moving towards Moscow, the easternmost town he saw as a soldier was Tula. After that things got ugly. The temeratures dropped and on moving back to defensive positions it wasn't even possible to sit for days because you simply would have frozen to death. There was one story where his comrades murdered locals including shooting down a child running away. After that story time was over and gramps broke down in heavy sobbing.
There was no heroic stuff whatsoever. The stories were about comrades and other people being killed, one being his friend and partner in his sniper foxhole. -""Let's go, the Russians are coming", but there he was: hole in his forehead."-
He took part in the battle of Kursk and was wounded several times which brought him home for a short while. ->Verwundetenabzeichen in black and shortly after in silver. Kept a shrapnel in his arm for the rest of his life.
Later he was separated from his unit and ended up in Königsberg which they defended for a bit ("Those careless Russians just moved freely about and we could just *piff* put em down"). When the Red Army started to just level the city his CO ordered him to throw away his rifle scope and go into captivity.
When taking a shit too slowly a Russian beat him down with his rifle butt leavung a permanent back injury.

By train they went to Siberia to some camp. He had a cigarette box with a false bottom under which he kept his wedding ring and a uniform photo of his brother that could have got him in deep trouble as his brother served in the LSSAH. I still have that photo.
the POW camp time wasn't as hard on him as on others. Gramps was a farmer and knew how to properly peen scythes which hardly anyone else could do, so that's what he did until he was released in the summer of 1948. He was severely malnourished so the most dangerous thing afterwards was granny's cooking which almost killed him. He died in 1994 aged 83.

Western front gramps served in some office on an airfield near the channel. He was an office clerk for all his life so that fit him well. Apparently he didn't see much combat apart from a when the gtfo towards home at the end of the war. He was interned in his hometown, saw an open door at some point and just went home. Spend some time in the kitchen cupboard each time someone came to the door afterwards. Buried his uniform and medals and tried to dig that up later. All was gone. Probably someone saw him do that.

Eastern front gramps wife, my granny simply stayed home. They lived opposite of a dairy that was bombed late in the war when she was just changing my aunt's nappies. By sheer luck neither was hurt by shrapnel.
Later when the Yankees moved in she witnessed parts of a last stand where a German Nebelwerfer fired into her hometown and then moved out. "That's when I first saw a negro. They're all black, just the palms are lighter." She died last year aged 94.

I can't remember.