My Dad had the same experience.
He, like my uncles and everyone from that generation, just didn’t talk about their WW II duty.
The comment about the guy walking into a propeller was about all we ever got out of my Dad.
We had a sailor on the Indy trip on chocks he was removing. Lost a leg when he fell over - luckily they were able to reattach it in onboard surgery before medevacing him for follow on...early 90s.