I knew my grandfather had served in the German Army in WW2, but that was it, he wouldn’t talk about it, at all, and would simply turn and walk away, when asked about it. I would occasionally see a picture in two of him in an Officer’s Uniform in an album, but that was it.
That changed after he was given his final cancer prognosis, and the floodgates opened, likely because he knew I had a real interest in history, and was about to leave for the Air Force.
That weekend, the boxes came down from the attic, and he opened up about everything. He died about 9 weeks later. I had suggested that he send all but a few things he had to the Smithsonian, which he did.
How wonderful for you to be there for him...and for yourself. And how great for the Smithsonian!
MOST of the soldiers I knew personally were from the Vietnam War and they never wanted to talk about it either.
I knew a couple interesting fellows, long ago; one had been a German parachute regiment soldier in 1944-1945, and the other had been a U.S. Army Air Force services techncian at a steel mat field up off of Omaha Beach shortly after D-Day, June 6, 1944.
They were good and longtime friends, having been brought together to work on projects for a firm in New England after World War II. Both men were very skilled at their work.
I found it funny, speaking with the German vet, because his accent was still strong though it had been decades since the end of the war. His accent and past experience was in contrast to his having become an American citizen, raising a family, and his kids becoming *so American* in almost too many ways ... that kind of boggled his mind.
All I know of the German vet’s experience, was that his technical skills had kept him from military service in Germany, until the Allied invasion of France, after which, he’d been ordered to duty with the parachute regiment. After training, he was among troops facing Brits and Canadians along the northernmost approaches to the border between Denmark and Germany, in 1945.
The American USAAF vet was assigned to an steel mat emergency airfield built above Omaha Beach, where he worked on P-38’s and P-47’s that could not make it back to England.
That was really intriguing, as an old friend of our family, had the same assignment, and I wondered if the two USAAF vets had known each other.
I can still picture the German, smoking a pipe and muttering to himself about “kids” and how the “boob tube” and drugs were messing up the lives of “today’s youth.”
The German vet and the American vet who worked together in New England, both had silver hair, and it was difficult to know exactly their respective ages ... because exposure to combat can turn a man’s hair to silver-near-white.
The first U.S. Navy SEAL whom I met in 1971 had such hair, and he was only 25 years old.
I had a feeling that the German vet was older than he let on, but he seemed to be at peace and happy with his work, and I did not wish to upset that, so I did not enquire much, in any attempt to clarify some of what I was told.