World War II in the Pacific, narrated by my grandpa

My grandpa, Richard Williams, lived next door to me when I was a kid, and he helped raise me like a parent. He taught me carpentry, plumbing, and electricity, and through countless days together in his workshop he was the one who got me excited about hardware engineering.<p>I hope to live as he did: to travel every part of the world; to meet and befriend people of all cultures; to be easygoing, and full of childlike wonder; to be a friend even to former enemies; to be driven and hardworking to the point of exhaustion; to cheat death repeatedly; and to make the absolute most of our incredible time on this wonderful world.<p>:)

How wonderful. Thanks for sharing this.<p>My grandpa was in the French resistance. He left the family farm at 17 to join the maquis (French wilderness) where he lived for 2 years, trying to hamper the German forces (eg. blowing up trains). He then participated to the liberation of Royan, and received the croix de guerre. It blows my mind to think about what he must have felt like- when I was 17, I was reading computer magazines in my bedroom.<p>My cousin and I wanted to record him talking about his life, and then he died unexpectedly. There&#x27;s always a &quot;next time&quot; until there isn&#x27;t.

I&#x27;m fortunate to have my grandfather&#x27;s writings of his time in World War II: <a href="http://86thchemical.us/Site/Bills_Memories.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;86thchemical.us&#x2F;Site&#x2F;Bills_Memories.html</a><p>Back in college I spent a semester in France and during the weekends I tried to partially retrace his steps during the war. I went to Normandy and photographed the graves of the seven men from his unit buried there and I visited the bridge over the Rhine he helped capture—my family has the Nazi flag that flew over the Bridge at Remagen, which he removed and replaced with the American flag.<p>He never <i>talked</i> much about his time in the war but he did write it down.

WWII was unbelievably vast. If you look at the numbers, men, equipment, fronts, battles...all with logistics, supplies, planning and other administrivia handled <i>by hand</i> before computers and modern communication systems. It boggles the mind. I mean, they didn&#x27;t even really have good photocopiers<p>When I was in high school, I had the honor of being chosen as a &quot;musical exchange student&quot; along with a dozen other musicians from local schools to spend a summer in and around Yekaterinburg. While there, we formed a small chamber ensemble and played music for various local groups, including several WWII veteran retirement homes (Great Patriotic War Vets). After our performance, many of the very old vets came up and were beyond warm in thanking us for coming and playing for them. A few mentioned remembering the Soviet-American alliance and lamented our animosity since then, they hoped our countries could be friends and we&#x27;d have a long future together.<p>Curious, we visited various GPW memorials and museums and such. It was a pretty intense education. It was the first time I had ever really heard a non-American perspective on the war and the scale of the Soviet involvement, something I had been completely ignorant of before that point, kind of blew my mind. It really set in my mind the importance of not accepting the education I was fed and to expand my horizons to try and look at things from different angles.<p>It gave me the travel bug and I try and go out of the country at least once a year since then.

My grandpa didn&#x27;t talk much about the war. I&#x27;ll never know what he went through. He went all the way to Berlin with the Soviet Army, that&#x27;s the only thing I know.<p>The other one was sent to China, Canton (not sure how accurate this is, as that is in the South, not North or West, as I would have imagined). It was to &quot;help fight off the Japanese&quot;. He also never wanted to talk about the war.

Around late 1990s and early 2000s, right when the internet started getting into people&#x27;s homes with Mozilla web browser and IE, I noticed many memoirs that were put up by the old veterans themselves. I spent much time reading through them.<p>Sadly many of those memoirs are not around anymore as their accounts were shutdown or the web hosting company itself went out of business.<p>I fear much history is being lost in the transition from pen&#x2F;paper era to digital era.

Bookmarked to listen to later. listened to the first few minutes and it sounds great. I did my Eagle Scout Project to honor the Veterans at my church. It ended up being more or less a book with a 1 page general biography of each veteran (unit, rank, commendations, notable events etc). I really wanted to do some more in depth personal interviews and recorded narratives with each veteran but they did not really care to talk much about it. The ones that did, was off the record. I had quite a few wonderful conversations that I wish I could have captured doing it. The sad thing is most of those guys are not around any more.

E. B. Sledge&#x27;s autobiography, <i>With the Old Breed</i> describes his combat experiences as a Marine in the Pacific and is worth reading if your interested in that history.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891419195/ref=redir_mdp_mobile" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;aw&#x2F;d&#x2F;0891419195&#x2F;ref=redir_mdp_mobil...</a><p>My grandfather served in the 504 PIR. He never talked with me about his experiences at great length, but the two vignettes he related that stick with are both about his being terrified, the one I remember from my teens was: They were holed up in a house in the Ardennes. It was night and he had to urinate so badly that he took the risk of stepping outside [historically. the 504th was trucked in from reserve to stop Panzer Group Piper and stem the rout]. As he relieved himself, he looked up and for a moment mistook the snow covered saplings for enemy soldiers.<p>The second, is from my early twenties. Blunt and simple: being in a trench in Italy while the Germans dropped antipersonel bombs on him was more &#x27;unpleasant&quot; than I could imagine. That was true. He had a successful professional career after the war. but fought depression up until his death. I&#x27;m both sad that I miss him, and glad that I do.

My great grandmother spent some time in a work camp. I don&#x27;t know which one, I don&#x27;t know how long, all I know is that she gave birth to one of my dad&#x27;s aunts inside the camp. According to her it &quot;wasn&#x27;t that bad&quot;. Apparently the guards would even play and joke around with the baby.<p>Her feelings about the war might be colored by having found the family farm burned down to the ground by the partisans (communist version) upon her return.<p>Such a shame she died before I was old enough to truly appreciate having a sit down with her and listening to the experience she&#x27;d have to share. All I know are scattered bits and pieces, mostly from second-hand retellings. Unfortunately as a kid I never liked talking to her - her voice was feeble, she had a thick accent and local dialect, both of which made her very difficult to understand and kind of scary to talk to.

The story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, mentioned in the narrative, is an extraordinary and tragic one; at that stage of the war the US Navy&#x27;s Pacific operation was so vast that the ship&#x27;s disappearance essentially fell through the cracks of the bureaucracy and was not noticed for several critical days. &quot;In Harm&#x27;s Way&quot; gives a compelling account of the sinking and the subsequent ordeal of the survivors.

I have always wanted to record an interview my grandpa on his military experience, and I did. I was not smart and didn&#x27;t record the interview. I may interview him again, but just record the whole interview if he is willing to again... I am also a fellow Minnesotan, not sure why, but I felt a little pride there.

This makes me really sad as my grandpa passed away last year and i just realized i could have saved his life&#x27;s story for everyone that cares. Good stuff, we should all do something like this, maybe even build a database to share these kind of live stories ?

Reading the other comments reminds us that in general the men who fought in the war were reluctant to talk about it, which is why first-hand testimony like this is so valuable for future generations.<p>Of course, many of them were horribly traumatised by their experiences, which goes a long way to explaining their reticence. My stepdad, for example, was in a position that was overrun by a German attack - he shot a fellow who fell dead on top of him with his hand over my stepdad&#x27;s face. My stepdad then had to &quot;play possum&quot; until a counterattack in turn evicted the Germans. For the rest of his life he would wake up terrified and in a cold sweat from the recurring nightmare of that dead hand on his face.

It&#x27;d be awesome if you could get a transcript done, although I realize they can be kind of expensive.

Interesting to listen to, wish there was more.<p>Is the hissing in the background an oxygen machine?