World WAR I/ II veteran stories

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Do any of you have any stories about anyone you know who was a soldier in either of the world wars? Maybe someone who was once a neighbor or a relative or a friend? Or if you know of any books are articles on some veterans that I could read about (preferably if they were Catholic).

I had purchased an antique military pull chain rosary off of eBay, and I am trying to see if I can find out about the soldier that once owned this rosary. The item was used in either or both World War I and/or World War two. I have contacted the seller but found out little about the rosary except that it was from a veteran from Ohio.

This rosary is a gift to my fiance who is in the military and will be deployed within the next few years, and I am hoping to find the backstory to this rosary. Or at least dig up a few stories that he could read about some of our great heroes of those wars.

If anyone has tips for me to track this would also be greatly appreciated, but the main focus of this post is just to have some stories about great heroes of these wars. It’d be nice to at least imagine some of these soldiers and gain a little bit of connection with whoever had this rosary last.

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Here is an image of the rosary. I wasn’t able to access the other photos which includes a few other items not shown. I can take photos and upload them if any of you want to see them.
 
Your Rosary is very shiny and new looking. It could possibly be a reproduction, and not a real antique.
 
Irishmom2 said:
Your Rosary is very shiny and new looking. It could possibly be a reproduction, and not a real antique.
Click to expand...
I agree. Military issue rosaries did not tend to come with 3-way Pardon Crosses for the Crucifix. That, and the additional medal, suggest it’s a repro.

Having said that, my husband’s grand uncle was Catholic and fought in WWI. He got gassed, I think. He came home and died a few years later of a diabetic coma. I have his prayer book. We went to his grave in an old untended cemetery, it’s completely overgrown by a tree that grew right on the grave.

My dad fought in WWII and Korea, but he wasn’t Catholic then. He saw the ship next to his blow up and a lot of guys die (then and at other times). It affected him. He converted in his late 30s.

That’s about all I got.

Here’s a good WWII story to read.

 
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My father was in the army during WWII. He was in the East African campaign, captured by the Germans and was held in a POW camp for over 2 years. I have my dad’s dog tags, his rosary, and the top of a Red Cross package with the names of the guys in his Stalag. I also have a small prayer book that he was given and a small notebook he wrote some notes in.
 
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Lt. John Scagnelli was the senior surviving crewman from the USS Eagle 56, a subchaser torpedoed by a U-boat within sight of the Maine coast in the last few days of WWII. He was the chief engineer. As the ship was sinking the crew saw the U-boat (with a distinctive tightrope walker on its conning tower).The navy didn’t want to admit a U-boat could get that close the the US coast in April 1945, and whitewashed the whole thing: The navy said a boiler explosion sank the ship (and Scagnelli was the engineer, remember?). Part of their reason: Where was the U-boat? The Germans surrendered a week later and their U-boats were ordered to sail to allied ports. No such U-boat could be found.

60 years later, some divers in the Chesapeake Bay (600 miles away) found the wreck of an undiscovered U-Boat…with a distinctive tightrope walker still visible on the side.

A historian but 2+2 together and, with a lot of diligence, got the navy to reverse itself.

Lt. Scagnelli lived long enough to be vindicted; and to finally be awarded a purple heart (as were the crew who perished). I met him a few years ago before he passed.

 
My great grandfather fought in the Canadian Army on the Western Front in WWI. I actually have his journal.
 
My grandfather fought in WWI and was gassed. He survived and returned home. Sadly, he had PTSD long before anyone knew what was. He became an alcoholic and drug addict. He died 10 years before I was born.

My father was in the US Army during WWII. He served in army hospitals in France and Germany until the war ended.

I worked for a man who flew bombers in the Pacific Theater. He was shot down after bombing a village. After seeing how many civilians he had killed he refused to drop any more bombs and spent the rest of the war ferrying planes around the pacific.
 
I spent hours of my childhood and adulthood at my grandfather’s knee, listening to his stories about “the first war,” as he called it.

He was drafted in 1918 and was in until 1921, having spent most of that time convalescing from nearly losing a leg to a German shell during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

He never mentioned a rosary, and the only place I’ve ever seen anything about them is on CAF.

In short, he had a very no nonsense view of war and would’ve chuckled and said, “You’re all nuts,” at the flag brandishing patriotism that’s endemic these days.

I doubt he ever read Owens’ poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” but this verse pretty much summed up his feelings about war,

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

My dad was drafted when he graduated high school in 1945 and was inducted on V-J Day, which was a great day to be inducted.
 
I’ll have to inspect it when I receive it. I got discovered it off of vatican.com and looked at the seller reputation and thought it was trusted to be antique. I’m a little disappointed if it isn’t since it was a $230 rosary . I appreciate the feedback on it
 
My uncle was a waist gunner and flight engineer on a B-24 bomber, European Theater. One mission his plane was badly beat up. Two of the control cables that control the flaps were shot through. My uncle was able to reconnect the one. For the other, he was able to overlap the ends and hold them together with a pair of pliers. He held that cable together by holding on to that pair of pliers the remainder of the flight.

While he was doing that, the rest of the crew were throwing out machine guns, oxygen bottles, anything that wasn’t nailed down so they could make it back to England. Hit or miss for a while.
 
I had a grandfather who fought in WW1 in the US Army Signal Corps. As he could speak several languages, he assisted in the interrogation of prisoners. Later, he fought in the Russo-Polish War in the Polish Legion. He told of men fighting over stale bread crusts. Kept a graphic account of his tour of duty and could write letters to his friends in Polish with both hands simultaneously. Medalled several times. His discharge papers signed by Marshall Jozef Pilsudski. A member of the VFW, he died almost a decade before I was born.
 
I have a great story about my great-uncle who was a Prisoner of War in WWII. But I am reluctant to post it because I have posted it elsewhere. I prefer to remain as anonymous as possible on the CAF and if I post the story, someone may recognize it and then know who I am.
 
Can’t you give the gist of the story without names or places or dates? I would love to hear it.
 
He and his unit were captured during the Battle of the Bulge and spent the next four months in a German POW camp. In April of 1945 all the POWs from the camp were loaded on a train, destination unknown.

While underway, the train was spotted by Russian allied aircraft and was attacked causing the train to derail and wreck. In all the chaos the POWs were able to overpower and kill the few remaining guards.

They took off in a westerly direction hoping to find friendly forces. After two weeks they ran into a British patrol who told them Germany had surrendered and the war was over.
 
Wow, that’s a story! That’s for sharing it. As I stated above in my post, my father was a POW too.
 
My father in law enlisted in the Navy in WW 2, and became an electrician. His job was to keep PT boats running while he was stations in the South Pacific. At one point he was in JFK’s squadron, although on land, not running around firing POS torpedoes at Japanese warships - so he missed the big swim.

My dad was a “cannon cocker” in a 105 battery in the 41st Infantry Division in the South Pacific and the Philippines. He most seriously did not want to talk about his experiences, which included numerous banzai charges on the gun emplacements.

One of his first cousins was a P-51 pilot. I did not learn of this until after his death, so I do not know which theater he served in.
 
Great stories here.

My father was a WWII veteran ( as were three uncles, an aunt, and a granduncle) and another granduncle was a WWI veteran; in fact, he was one of the last living WWI vets.

Dad served in India. He used to say proudly, “I enlisted!,” meaning he didn’t wait around to be drafted when the war broke out. If you enlisted you could choose your branch of the service if they had a place for you and he chose the Army. He often said later that he should have chosen the Navy as he didn’t like sleeping on the ground.

And he used to say that at one time there were two chaplains (one Catholic, one Protestant) and even though he was a Protestant he got along better with the Catholic as he was more of a cool guy that would hang out with the guys and have a beer with them.
 
My grandfather was a veteran of both world wars. He joined the US Army from Michigan and served in Europe during the First World War. After the war, he joined the US Navy, and when WWII came around he served mainly in the Pacific, between Hawaii and ports in California, as a machinists mate. He was also on the USS Iowa in the Atlantic during its trial runs. When I knew him, he used to meet with a group of veterans from both world wars who called themselves “retreads,” after the tires that get used twice.
 
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