What did you do in the region?

It's a general refining question, a relationship of mine, while not in active combat, was a mechanic of the HMMWVs used by US forces (1st Gulf) and an 'overwatch', but never fired a shot. I was just thinking people who were in a similar situation (in a region with fighting but never engaging) could be unsure about posting.

I MAY go overseas soon, but it's unsure given forces being pulled out.

where to?

Afghanistan, the national guard isn't as needed anymore and I have lower precedence to sending because of me also being a student.

My brother, my best friend, and my neighbor's son were all in Afghanistan during active fighting, and my best friend was hit by an improvised explosive while on patrol. I have been in some rough places, but I've never been involved in an actual war.

I've never served, but a close relative of mine participated in the Battle of the Bulge. I don't know what division he was in, but I know he was in Patton's Third Army.

Another relative of mine served with the 34th ID for the duration of WWII on the front lines, including the North Africa and Italy campaigns respectively.

A couple of other relatives served in Vietnam, one in the Navy and one in the Marine Corps.

My grandfather served on the battleship Missouri throughout WWII. I know that he spent some time in Turkey, and in the Pacific. Lived to be 90, just passed away last month.

He once took me aboard the USS Alabama, Mighty Mo's sister ship, and it was an incredible tour. I didn't fully appreciate (at 13 years old) the history lesson that I was getting. It is still one of my fondest memories of hanging out with him.

I've never served, but my father served in Vietnam and did 20 years in the Air Force.

My step-grandfather (or grand-stepfather?) served on the USS Fanning (DD-385) for the duration of the Second World War. I've heard some interesting second-hand stories (like pulling in to Pearl Harbor a few days after the attack, patrolling Ironbottom Sound during the Guadalcanal campaign, and fishing survivors out of the water after the Battle off Samar), but unfortunately, he died before I ever had a chance to meet him.

My grandfather survived from 1914-1918 in the British Army. Two of his brothers were killed - one in France, one at Gallipoli. Three uncles served in WW2, one of whom met and married an Austrian in the process.

I fought in many wars on the streets of my home town. I was a general on my bike, and I would appoint a captain to watch the bikes while we kicked the fences of the dog corporals. We would use rocks and sticks and beat our enemies into submission for their lunch money. But I am wiser now and no longer think that war is good thing. I look with sadness on all.of the kids I killed in battle.

+5000000000000000000000000 ^

My foster parents taught me war, Mr & Mrs Foster, they went to live in Gloucester.
That is when I knew they had to die, they knew too much.
I had a check mate, he was a king, but of course being a real man I preferred the queen, she had all the moves, boy she could dance but I gave her up to a rich knight, Now I do pawn, it's just one step at a time.
Anyway I'm not a retard or a spastic, they are not ruthless killing machines, to be hunted by bears for food, just like I caught my food, out of bins or stolen from orphan children on crutches, they had to die, they knew too little.

@ Crazy Anglican

USS Missouri (BB-63)? She is an Iowa-class. The USS Alabama (BB-60) is a South Dakota-class. Not quite sister ships. Regardless, I am appreciative of your grandfather's service.

I figured somebody would call me on that one. Not really that up on the equipment myself. Just starting to look at it really. I was under the impression that he was on the Missouri for the entire war, but it only came into service in 1944. Not sure where he served before that. Probably that ship was one of the South Dakota class ships.

I'm appreciative of his service too. He was a good man, really my mom's adoptive dad. Her dad died of bone cancer in his thirties. After the war he met and married my grandmother and raised my mom as his own.

I served in the IDF before and during the 2nd Lebanon war.

@ Crazy Anglican

Do you know what he did on the Missouri? Gunner? Engineer? Yeoman? I'm not familiar with naval ratings; sorry for the sloppy use of terminology.

My mother's-father's-father was awarded a (UK) military medal and bar. It is unclear what he got the medal for but the bar was awarded for leading a group of soldiers who captured an artillery placement during WW1. We found a lot of his other things recently including campaign medals from both World Wars. This was all a surprise to most of my family as he point blank refused to talk about anything that happened to him while he was in combat because he never quite recovered from being gassed.

My dad served on the Enterprise and another carrier that I don't remember during Vietnam, he was a mechanic. I know that it was the other carrier that he spent most of his time on, but he doesn't like to talk about it, so only rarely have I heard about it.

philcore for the win!

I'm posting in this thread, but I cannot post details

I was with the 101st in The Perisan gulf during papa Bush time. I dont talk about it much, but I saw enough then to know there is nothing glorified about war.

My grandfather served in the Romanian artillery during WW II; he went all the way to the Crimean peninsula while fighting the Russians and then advanced westward as far as the Czech Republic after Romania "stabbed" Germany and joined the Allies in '44. The end of the war found him in the Czech city of Humpolec; he always liked to remember the partying and dances that went on there once the war was finally over... Another thing he always talked about was how incredibly well the German soldiers were equipped and fed compared to everyone else who was fighting on the Eastern front. The Germans had butter and white bread every morning, coffee, milk, meat, everything, while Romanian soldiers would only get some kind of soup or stew once a day... Also German radios (used to guide the artillery) were light enough to be carried around in backpacks, while Romanian radio equipment needed to be carried around in horse drawn carriages...

Yeah... in Holland we know why they were so well fed... Unfortunately.

A distant relative of mine was in the USAF Special Forces (don't know exactly what he did, maybe a PJ or a Combat Controller or a Combat Weatherman or something like that; all I know is that it was pretty black) for many years, before retiring and becoming a defense contractor. Last I heard, he had made it back from Afghanistan (as a contractor) and retired very wealthy.

My old dad was in the RAF WW2, aircraft engineer, he told some stories about north africa, monte casino, and the bouncing bomb - later worked for BOAC and british airways and was stationed in Bahrain for the first commercial fight of Concord to australia

You know Redhouse, my grandfathers both fought for the German Army, and one of them told me that MANTY of the Dutch had rabbits in their houses/property he said he never saw so many peple eating rabbits before, of course he understood the 'why they ate them' but he just wondered why more people did not take the same course.

Civillians suffer the most in any war, always has been like that, always will be.

Alex, my grandfather fought on the Eastern Front, and he told a different story about the supplies they had. He was German, so maybe in Army group South (that is the Army group your grandfather would have been in if he was Romanian) they were fed better, but I know my grandfather, said they often 'liberated' food from locals, because they usually were moving too fast to allow supplies to keep up, and in the last 2 years, it was painfully rare to get meat at all he said.

btw, he was in Army group Center, the main thrust towards moscow.

@Stressed
They were guarding the rabbits for another (even worse) time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_winter
From what I know from family, essentially all pets had been consumed at the end of the war and many children had become pretty skilled at making catapults that sometimes hit birds. I know people who chewed on leather builds to suck out nutrients. I know people who removed the doors out of their homes to have fire in the chimney.

Stressed, it's so nice to hear other stories from back then. I can see how troops blitzing forward would have trouble maintaining their supply lines; also during the last part of the war the situation clearly deteriorated for the German troops, but by that time Romania had switched sides in the war, so my grandfather didn't get to see it.

Redhouse. Just for the record europeans eat far more rabbit than americans I eat it lots cuz I raise them and its very healthy but id say if u poll americans on this site I may be the only one who eats it on a regular basis

My grandpa was a great swimmer, on the same Junior Olympics with Johnny Weissmuller but broke a leg and couldn't go to France with the team. In the U.S. Navy in WWII, he would be brought in a small boat as close as possible to Pacific islands and other locations where the U.S. had spies and had to swim in to bring them payment, in gold. He led some patrols in the jungles of Panama too, looking for Japanese infiltrators (which he never found). We have photos of some of the huge snakes they found. He told me a bunch of stories like the time he was leading a patrol and they heard a loud "thump." They looked back and saw that a huge snake had fallen off a branch onto the last man in line on the trail, killing him immediately just by the weight of the snake. One of the snakes in the photos was strung out over the shoulders of 8-10 men, and in one of the photos there's a 28-foot-long snakeskin of a snake they killed. He was also a loan shark and we have some interesting things that he took as collateral on loans that turned out to be bad... like an opium pipe, Yap Island stone money, and some carved sticks that he claimed were more valuable than any of his other stuff.

Sorry, Junior Olympics was something else. He was on the Olympic team--We have his old Olympic swimsuit (woven wool!).

Personally I was never in the military, but I did arrive in a country one morning after a military coup the night before (and no, it was not Egypt). For three days each week a group of us had to walk by Army Headquarters, located downtown in the capital city, and out front were pillboxes made out of sandbags with very young armed soldiers behind them. Next to the sandbag fortifications, the street was blocked off except for a narrow passageway wide enough for just one person to walk at a time, and those guns were trained on our heads each time we walked by. I was young at the time and didn't believe deep down that I might die. I know better now and should not have taken that route.

No one was shot, but a young man with a beard (which supposedly showed communist sympathies--Fidel Castro, Che Guevara) on the other side of our block disappeared for several days. He was one of the lucky ones who returned home, having been shaved by an army barber, and he was afraid to talk about where he had been or what they had done to him and others around him.