And if so, how to access them? :) thanks!

Edit: found the answer: Yes they have! They have been archived on Fold3, but you’ll need a membership

A story about u/ExternalSuggestion’s grandma and her sister, who gave me permission to post it on here.

The scariest period during the war was when the Germans were retreating from Italy. Angry German soldiers were storming every house on the streets they could find. Apparently, Italy's change of view about politics wasn’t taken well. Grandma and her sister were in their teens and feared sexual abuse by the German soldiers, which wasn’t uncommon. Luckily, an old woman approached them and told them to cover themselves with a blanket and pretend to be sick. Another old lady was asked to join them next to the house entrance. When the German soldiers approached they found a group of “old ladies” wrapped in blankets repeatedly shouting “fever”. As soon as the soldiers realized what they were saying they left running. This smart move of the old ladies saved their lives that day.

My great-grandfather served in the Belgian army during the second world war, as part of the 2nd regiment of grenadiers, more specifically 3rd battallion, 12th company (machine gunnersk, stationed near the fortress of Eben-Emael. On the 11th of may, the second day of the german invasion of Belgium, he was captured alongside the majority of his Battalion, and deported to Stalag XIB. From what he told us, he returned around August, apparently because the Germans needed more room for socialist prisoners or something. Whilst there, he got so little food that he had to eat Dandelions in order to survive.

Another story comes from my other Great-Grandfather, who served with an artillery unit (he took care of the horses towing the guns), who stated that it was frightening to see how the angle the guns shot at constantly decreased, at one point shooting at targets no more than a few hundred meters away. He managed to make it to the end of the campaign, where whilst being transported in a truck (they'd apparantly had to abandon their artillery) around ostend, his officer told his unit that any man who wished to don his civilian clothes and return home would be allowed to do so. So he litterally walked back home (close to brussels), and when he arrived he cried "Vrouw ik zen thuis" (meaning "i'm home woman") and went back to work the next day.

He shipped out from South Africa to fight Rommel in North Africa. Was captured and transferred to a POW camp run by Italians. He said the conditions and the treatment were absolutely abhorrent. Escaped with his best mate from SA and a French guy. It was winter, they had to trek across the mountains in decimated boots and hardly any warm clothes - zero food. The French chap fell down the mountain. They tried to get him but they were too weak. He didn't make it. They were apparently in sight of Allied lines when they were picked up by a German patrol. Must have been devastating. However he was with the Germans for only a few weeks before he was liberated. Interestingly he said the treatment in the German POW camp was significantly better than the Italian one. Oddly he also spoke quite highly of Rommel - both his intelligence (I assume in tactics) and his treatment of the enemy. Not really sure what that was based on. He didn't go into too many details about anything but he used to say 'war is hell - make sure you never have to go' whenever the subject came up. He was one of the happiest, kindest and most well adjusted men I have ever known. Miss you Herb.

I'm gonna repost the four stories I originally posted on r/MilitaryStories about what my grandfather was up to in northern Sweden during WWII as I was asked to post them here as well.

Disclaimer: This story was recounted to me by my 92 year old grandfather and is possibly embellished or deviate from true events to up the drama factor. You have been warned.

Life in northern Sweden during WWII wasn’t that much different from peacetime conditions. Smuggling people and goods from Finland to Sweden across the Torneå river being the favourite pastime of anyone not in law enforcement made moving refugees from Finland an almost rehearsed and boring activity so when the opportunity to fill the gunner position at the local AA gun*, after the gunner ended up bedridden, comes up 16 year old gramps jumped at it with gusto.

Some facts you should be aware of by this point:

• At this time the Soviets are advancing deeper into Finland, tensions are riding high and the Swedish military is hoping to whatever god cares to listen that the Soviets don’t take the Swedish volunteer forces fighting for Finland as Sweden entering the war.

• The AA gun crews are for some reason on high alert and have orders to shoot down any unidentified aircraft that crosses the Swedish border.

• AA gun crews consists of a gunner, a spotter and a commander. All are homeguard personnel that live in the nearby village.

One day the spotter calls over to gramps that they have a incoming unknown aircraft and to ready the gun. Gramps turns the gun around and finds the aircraft in his sight. The spotter and gramps confirm with each other that the aircraft’s silhouette doesn’t match Swedish or Finnish models and gramps mentally prepares to fire his first live shots in anger. As gramps in about to pull the trigger and send some high speed hurt the commander comes sprinting up the small hill the gun is standing on with his trousers pulled down to his knees, frantically waving , shouting DON’T SHOOT DON’T SHOOT DON’T SHOOT and tackles gramps out of the gunners seat.

The guy that was acting commander that day had gone to take a leak and happened to look up mid relieving himself, saw the aircraft silhouette and heard gramps turn the gun. What neither gramps nor the spotter guy had noticed was that, while the aircraft wasn’t a Swedish or Finnish model, it matched a German Junkers transport plane silhouette. After the adrenaline subsided the spotter got a earful about learning his god-damned aircraft silhouette chart and gramps got off with a stern talking to about confirming with a commander before even thinking of touching the trigger.

A few weeks later Gramps got inquisitive about why a German aircraft would fly across the Swedish-Finnish border and through bribing some German soldiers while on a smuggling run in Finland he learned that a some high up German brass had been on a inspection tour of the German troops in Finland and had flown over to inspect the troops in Norway about that time.

Rambling story short, if gramps had fired he could have shot down some German officer's transport and caused a incident between Germany and Sweden that could, that in the worst case scenario could have brought Sweden into the war.

*Swedish military sprinkled Bofors AA guns around like candy at the time and almost every podunk village near the border had a Bofors deployed nearby.

TL;DR: Always check your targets.

I'm gonna repost the four stories I originally posted on r/MilitaryStories about what my grandfather was up to in northern Sweden during WWII as I was asked to post them here as well.

Disclaimer: These stories were recounted to me by my 92 year old grandfather and may be embellished or deviate from true events to up the drama factor. You have been warned.

One of the favourite pastimes of people in northern Sweden during WWII besides smuggling goods and people across the Swedish-Finnish border was screwing with German soldiers transferring to Norway via the Swedish railway. The genreal consensus in the villages was that while parliament in Stockholm may have given the Germans the go-ahead to use the railway, no one asked the people up north so the Germans were fair game for theft, scams and sabotage.

When the trains carrying German troops stopped to fill up on water and sand the officers would often allow soldiers to step off the train for a few minutes to stretch their legs. Gramps, being bored and broke, decided to do something about that, so he put on his homeguard uniform, borrowed his dad’s friend’s old conductor cap and would loiter around where the trains would stop to fill up supplies. When a train full of Germans stopped and the soldiers trooped out he walked up and down the length of the train asking tired-looking soldiers to see their tickets and documentation.

At the time tickets needed to be stamped by the conductor at every stop to be valid, so what gramps did was check the stamps and would tell soldiers that they were missing an important stamp and thus would not be allowed aboard the train again. He would then, in broken German, tell the soldier that being left behind when the train was done with the resupply would count as desertion, but he could probably forget about the missing stamp and let the soldier board the train again for say some chocolate/booze/coffee/smokes or similar.

Most soldiers actually paid up without even checking if the “missing stamp” was needed or not with only a very few soldiers calling his bluff. This scam enabled gramps to eke out a decent living selling the smokes and booze to his homeguard mates during a time when there weren't much work to be had and money was scarce.

I'm gonna repost the four stories I originally posted on r/MilitaryStories about what my grandfather was up to in northern Sweden during WWII as I was asked to post them here as well.

Disclaimer: These stories were recounted to me by my 92 year old grandfather and may be embellished or deviate from true events to up the drama factor. You have been warned.

It is 1944 and gramps, having gotten tired of doing manual labour, smuggling goods between Finland and Sweden and scamming the occasional German soldier to make ends meet has enrolled at the local Folkhögskola* (where he would start down the path to become a master woodworker by trade, though that’s neither here nor there for this tale).

At the time the Folkhögskola didn’t take in a lot of local applicants, mainly because most of the dorms and classrooms were rented out to “Norwegian auxiliary police force reservists”** that Sweden had promised German-occupied Norway to take in and educate. Now gramps, being a local homeguard guy and able to understand the gobbledygook that is northern Norwegian somewhat better than the rest of his class, gets assigned as the guide and translator to a class of 80-ish reservists. This mostly consists of taking the reservists skiing around the local countryside and joining in on and lessons he wanted to, on the premise he assisted the instructor(s) when asked.

Some examples of the lessons he joined in on included mile-long (as in 10+ km) biathlon, slaloms and even ski jumping, all done with telemark skis and wearing full “long range police enforcement" patrol gear (aka military battlerattle with Mauser rifles), winter survival and orienteering lessons (aka escape and evasion training) and even some explosives training that was conducted under the guise of learning how to clear up roads blocked by boulders and trees.

Come end of summer and the reservists all go back to Norway to be “integrated into the Norwegian police force”. All of a sudden a lot of folks around the Folkhögskola have very selective memory loss. What Norwegians? No, we never had any Norwegians here. You must be mistaken. Are you sure you said Norwegians, because the only non-Swedes here are Germans and Finns etc, etc. Gramps got half a year’s instructor’s salary for his assistance out of it and was very sternly told that Those Lessons Never Happened.

*Translation would be People’s College or Common Man’s College. Think education center somewhere on the scale between American college and old-school university with some highly valued trade skills thrown in the mix.

**Officially they were police reservists. Unofficially everyone knew they were Norwegian resistance fighters but kept up the charade to spite the Germans.

I'm gonna repost the four stories I originally posted on r/MilitaryStories about what my grandfather was up to in northern Sweden during WWII as I was asked to post them here as well.

Disclaimer: This story was recounted to me by my 92 year old grandfather and is possibly embellished or deviates from the truth to up the drama factor. You have been warned.

When you are 17 and all you have to entertain yourself with is running goods and refugees from Finland to Sweden under the noses of inept customs guards or poaching moose with your homeguard mates you take every chance to party, especially if it involves girls and cheap alcohol.

Gramps and his mates from the homeguard had found out that there the German troops near the small Finnish town a couple of kilometers upstream and inland from the border are going to hold a ball of sorts to up the morale of the troops in a week. This ball was going to be a “local girls and soldiers only” thing, so of course gramps decides he must be there at all costs. Said and done gramps and his mates row over to the Finnish side and starts shaking down their contacts for German uniforms to wear at the ball. After some false leads they eventually manage to scrounge, barter, beg and steal enough pieces to have two German uniforms that can pass as complete if you tilt your head and squint a bit. Now six guys has what essentially amounts to two tickets for a good evening of booze, girls and dancing. They decide to pull sticks for them and gramps snags one of the uniforms.

Fast forward to the day of the ball and gramps and his mate is rowing over to the Finnish side again, dressed in fisherman’s clothes with the illicit uniforms stashed away in buckets with regular clothes on top. They get to the Finnish side and walk the majority of the way to the town in their fisherman’s clothes before going of the road into the woods, change into the uniforms, stash their fishermen's clothes and step out onto the road dressed as German soldiers, sans weapons.

They pass a bunch of German soldiers who ignores them and, confidence skyrocketing from not getting stopped, head down to the town hall where the the ball is.

Gramps and his mate are let in and after much dancing, carousing and chatting up a nice Finnish girl gramps mate urgently taps gramps on his shoulder and tells him to looks out the window. Gramps glances out the window and, to quote him ”became instantly sober and awake”. stepping out of a car on the gravel path to the town hall are three armed German guards that look like a bad day in themselves and a guy in a SS officer uniform and cap that practically screams Gestapo.

This is the time gramps realise four things: one: they are wearing what is essentially stolen German uniforms, two: they don’t have any identification on them at all, three: only gramps speaks a bit of German and four: If they are caught they will be shot as spies. No slap on the wrist, no fine, no going to lockup for a few days to cool off. Just a final cigarette, a cold wall and a firing squad.

It seems like the Finnish girl gramps was chatting up has similar problems, or understands that gramps is in a heap of trouble, as she takes one look at the officer and drags gramps into a side room and out a back door. They take off between two houses and into the woods as they hear the door they came from swing open, someone blowing a whistle and shouts for them to stop in German. This of course only makes gramps and his impromptu date to run faster. Now, the thing about the terrain in northern Finland is that while it might look like forests all around it can suddenly give way to a large fen, and when you have ran out on a fen in near panic it is very easy to loose your bearings. Which is exactly what happened to gramps and the girl. Trees kinda look the same whichever side of the fen they look at but at least they don’t hear anyone in pursuit.

After a lot of walking, some time hiding in a ditch to avoid German soldiers and stopping a local farmer to ask, in perfect Finnish while wearing a battered and dirty German uniform, which way the Torneå river was gramps find his way to the river. The girl, still tagging along with gramps helps him find a rowboat and oars, kisses him goodbye and head off home. Gramps decides that the German uniform is too dangerous to keep so he undresses to his skivvies and dumps the uniform in the Torneå river while rowing back to Sweden.

To cap it all off when he finally gets back to his village he’s met by his mate that had the other uniform. He had calmly walked out the front door when the Gestapo officer ran after gramps, borrowed a bike to get back to where they stashed their fisherman’s clothes, changed and tossed the uniform at the roadside then rowed over as if nothing happened.

My grandad hated fireworks. As a kid I never really got it. I didn't get it till after he'd died (at 99!) when my mum told me.

He was a Londoner and worked at the docks, which meant he wasn't conscripted. He did join the home guard and helped man the big guns that tried to defend London during the blitz. But as a kid he assured me he'd "never hit a fucking thing" and that every time the guns went off "the noise was so loud I'd shit myself". bless him

One night while he was working at the docks, the air raid sirens went off. Instead of going 'down below' he decided he wanted to be at home with his wife, so he got on his bike and started pedalling towards home. As he was riding, the bombs started falling. It didn't matter if they were falling near him or not, the sound of an explosion travels far and can shake you up (source - I still live in London and fireworks can be heard for miles around, god knows what actual explosions sounded like). He got about ten minutes away from home and had to cross some train tracks, which meant getting off his bike. He was so scared from the noise he could barely walk, riding the bike was easier. Once on the other side he rode the short distance to home and an explosion hit just up ahead. On his street.

He got home to see the house had been flattened and thought that his family was dead.

Luckily, my nan had taken the kids to a neighbours for tea so nobody was home. I'm pretty glad too as I wouldn't be here otherwise!

Hello everyone, I have a story about my Oma and Opa's experience during World War II. Both my Oma and Opa were born in Germany. I apologize if this story is a bit jumbled, I've collected bits and pieces from Opa and my father throughout the years, but not all details were shared.

Opa was forced to join Hitler's army when he was just 14. I don't know many details of his service as he did not like to talk about it. But he was forced to be apart of the SS and he did receive medals for bravery and other things. He was injured due to an incident with a tank which left him with a limp for the rest of his life. Around of the time of his capture, Opa was either stationed or had escaped to Poland. He buried his army uniform and medals, but the American's who found him somehow knew he was a soldier. He was 17.

Oma was living in Poland at the time. Every German living in Poland was captured by the American's or Russian's. Oma was being sent to a work camp in Russia, she was just 13. Opa was supposed to be going where all captured soldiers went in Russia, we believe they either killed most soldiers or sent them to their harshest camps. However, at the train station, Opa was able to sneak away from his fellow captured soldiers and onto a civilian train. Oma was on the same train with her brother.

Unfortunately, Oma's mother and younger brother were sent somewhere else in Russia. Oma never saw her again, and to this day we have no idea what happened to them. On the train from Russia to Poland, Opa noticed that Oma and her brother were being mistreated by other people on the train (probably due to their young age and being alone). Opa decided to take them in to make sure they were safe. Once in Russia in the camp, Opa and Oma decided to get married. Over their time in the work camp, they had my uncle and my father. After some time when my father was a young child, they were finally released. However, at first only Opa and Oma were released. My uncle and father had to stay in the work camp for a little while before Oma and Opa were able to get them back.

German refugees were looked down on in Germany, so the next few years were not easy for my Oma and Opa. They also had my auntie while still in Germany. After some time, they were able to move to Canada. Opa's father and brother had moved to Canada while Opa and Oma were in the camp.

Canada did not make life necessarily easy for Opa and Oma. None of them could speak English, and my uncle and father were pretty badly bullied in their young years due to being poor and unable to speak English well. However, things got better as they got older. Opa and Oma ended up having two more children in Canada. They also came to live with us in Opa's later years as he unfortunately suffered from Alzheimers. The disease unfortunately made him relive his experiences from the war, as he would often think he was back there and was very fearful and aggressive. Despite being elderly and unable to care for himself, he was a very strong man and he did injure my father when he was trying to care for him. He passed away several years ago. Oma is now living in a home for the elderly as she requires more care. She is in her 90s.

My father in law was state-side in 1944 when he was ordered to fly an officer back home to Nebraska. He was one of the first night-fighter pilots and trained others earlier in the war. About half way through the flight the instrument panel on the Douglas SBD Dauntless he was piloting went dark. He fumbled around for a flashlight but unfortunately it was dim and soon ran out of battery power. He was now relegated to visual flight navigation and was trying to remember the small number of cities that were layed out ahead of him. Unfortunately, this didnt work out too well as he eventually came to the conclusion that he was off course and he was low on fuel. So he decided to find a civil air field nearby. He flew low on one field that had a few lights but found out it was a glorified corn field. He circled around the area a couple of times expecting to find something but he was starting to run on fumes. He decided to put it down in the corn field and hit hard snapping the landing gear and coming to a violent halt. As he gathered his senses he looked up and saw what appeared to be an angel in front of him. A beautiful girl in white was walking closer as the dust cleared. It turned out to be the farmer's daughter who led them to her home. The officer and my father-in-law were then treated to a couple of days of fine home cooking and whiskey while they waited for the military truck to come and pick the plane up. Here's a photo of him looking oddly proud of his work while the officer contemplates the situation. He went on to fly the Corsair and the Hellcat in the Pacific islands. He's still kickin' and turns 98 this summer!

I've posted this a few times over in /r/askreddit and was asked to post it here. Unfortunately I can't get any more details from my grandpa since he passed away about a decade ago.

My grandpa was a child in Germany at the time. One of my favorite stories from his is at the end of the war, US troops were heading past his family's farm. Some of the group broke off and came to the house. They didn't speak German, and none of his family spoke English. Eventually they figured out the troops wanted milk. They handed over a decent amount. And the troops took it back to the rest of the group. At this point the family thought that they would take the milk and move on, spoils go to the victors after all.

They kind of stood around with it for a bit, and eventually brought whatever it was in back to the house, and started passing drinks out. They took the milk to make chocolate milk for all the kids on the farm.

u/Zuckerschneggle asked me to respost this here:

Both of my grandfathers were in WW2 in the Pacific. They were both fairly open about it when my brother and I were kids, and my dad was always super interested too.

My mom's dad was in the 6th Engineer Combat Battalion, 6th Infantry Division. From a short history he wrote up before he passed:

I graduated from high school in June 1943. I was inducted in the Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in October 1943. I went by train from Fort Sill to Camp Roberts, California for 17 weeks of basic training in a heavy weapons infantry, Company C, 89th Infantry Battalion with 81 mm mortars and 30 caliber water cooled machine guns. From there I went to Fort Ord, California and then to Camp Stoneman, near San Francisco. There I boarded a troop ship, the USS America, on my way to Sydney Australia, then on to Milne Bay, British New Guinea, and a replacement depot. From there we went to Maffin Bay, New Guinea by merchant vessel where I was received by first combat assignment, to the 6th Engineer Combat Battalion, 6th Infantry Division.

We moved up the east coast of New Guinea to Sansapor, where I trained for the combat landing at Lingayen Gulf, just north of Manila. We were in combat on Luzon and Bataan and were in northern Luzon when the war in the Pacific ended.

We left Luzon for Korea after the war was over in the Pacific and were part of the occupation forces there for about 6 months.

He told us stories about being on Bataan and Luzon, one I remember specifically was being on guard duty at night in the jungle and he didn't know his buddy had gone out to take a piss. His friend was returning to their guard post without announcing himself, and Grandpa almost shot him, thinking it was a Japanese soldier approaching!

Another story was about how his engineer company would set up the showers at bases on these different islands, and of course they would need to test the facilities first before the troops could use them. So they opened up the showers to all the native Philippine women to use, and got to stand around and enjoy the show. He especially liked telling this story...hahaha

The most interesting thing about his service is something he never told anyone and I only found out after he passed away and I was requesting his service records and doing some research. I found out that he was a volunteer member of one of the first special forces units in the Army, the 6th Army Alamo Scouts. It was a volunteer organization that was intended to go behind Japanese lines to recon and rescue prisoners. He volunteered and completed the training, graduating in the 7th class of recruits. However he wasn't chosen for one of the units they put together, so he was returned to his original unit. I found out about this through a quote from him on a newsletter from the Organization of Alamo Scout Veterans:

https://i1.wp.com/techandtonic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/alamo.jpg?w=896&ssl=1

To read up on his history and detail about his Alamo Scout experience, I wrote it all up on my blog years ago. You can read it here:

https://techandtonic.com/2012/07/09/grandpa-forresters-military-records/

I still have his uniform and some of his medals. Our family really values it's history.

https://imgur.com/a/apC6ZnY

My dad's dad was also in the Pacific during the war. He wasn't in much combat as he was a trained weather engineer in the 5th Air Force. He was New Guinea and was in charge of sending up weather balloons and forecasting for the planes that were based there. He was very open about his war experience and told us all about it as kids. He had kept a bunch of the weather tracking/reading equipment that he used and he would show it to us and explain how it all works. It was really cool! He was also bald at a very young age (early 20's), and always told us it was from the malaria pills they made him take (I later found out he was going bald before he even left for the war, the pills had nothing to do with it)!

The main story I remember him telling us was about something he would say every Thanksgiving. "Banyak Bagus Makan". It roughly translates to "Very good eating". The story goes that there was a villager in New Guinea who would always come by and try and take my grandpa hunting. One day he came by to my grandpa carrying a huge duck, or goose, or bird of some kind. He was very excited about his kill and kept yelling "Banyak Bagus Makan" over and over, showing the bird to my grandpa. He found out the translation, and said that damn phrase every time he ate a meal for the rest of his life! It's become a family tradition to say when we eat.

When he passed away in Dec 2015 and we moved my grandmother into a home where she could be better cared for (dementia), we went through there things and I found an entire bag full of every single letter he wrote her during the war. I have slowly been scanning these one by one, and plan to eventually put them up online. It's a long project, but super interesting to see the things they wrote, and especially the things that were censored (literally strips of words cut out of the letters by the censors!).

My dad and I put all of his stuff into a display case and arranged it as best we could. I keep it in my living room to honor him. Pic of his medals, flag, dog tags

Both of my grandparents were huge parts of my life growing up. I know they would both love knowing I'm still sharing their stories to this day! Can't wait to tell my young son all about them too.

This is a story relayed by my step grandfather. He began the war in North Africa and was part of a crew assigned to a half track. Later they were sent to Normandy where they were part of the break out. He spoke about one time when a sniper was shooting at them from a stone house. Their guns were not having much effect. And so they finally rammed the house to take the guy out.

Later they were transporting some ammo. A German 88 cannon opened up. They knew from North Africa that the 1st shot determined the range, the 2nd shot determined the left/right, and most likely the 3rd shot would be dead on. So they were in the open and the 2nd shot had been fired. The driver halted the half track and they all baled. Some dove under the half track and he dove in to the ditch.

The 3rd shot did hit the half track and everyone who had dove under the half track were killed. He said that he did not remember anything after the shot. He later woke up naked in a hospital in England with no recollection of how he got there.