My grandfather's infantry unit

[Reto.Gargamel 324]

Like many of you, I am interested in World War II because my grandfather saw combat. He didn't like to talk about it, however, and I didn't understand enough Italian to follow the stories he told when he was still alive. Except that one time, when my dad translated for me and I listened with great fascination. And yesterday, based on what I remembered, I found the unit in which he served. I do not have absolute confirmation, but all the details match.

My grandfather Giuseppe was captured by the British at the Battle of El Alamein. Like other conscripts from Calabria (the toe of the boot), he would have been drafted in the 27th Infantry Division "Brescia". I remember him telling that this "motorized infantry" division only had trucks for the equipment: the men had to walk all the way through Lybia and Egypt. The linked article confirms this: "The Brescia was classified as an auto-transportable division, meaning staff and equipment could be transported on cars and trucks, although not simultaneously." This was symptomatic of the Italian Army's poor leadership and logistics. One memory that really upset my grandfather was that a man carrying a mail bag, with letters to the soldiers' families, eventually got tired of hauling it... so he cut a hole at the bottom to "lighten the load", and at some point the others started finding their letters in the sand. I can't imagine how they must have felt, considering their already low morale.



Division "Brescia" fought alongside Rommel's Afrika Korps. I don't know if Giuseppe ever got to see Rommel in the flesh, but it's not entirely impossible. The better-supplied German troops would sometimes offer their surplus cigarettes and chocolate rations to their Italian brothers-in-arms. One time, while struggling to overcome the language barrier and ask for a cigarette, my grandfather noticed a "Rauchen verboten!" sign on a fuel truck, so he asked the Germans if they could spare a verboten. Close enough!

Granddad was from a poor village, and only attended school until about the 6th grade, after which he tended flocks as a teenager. He knew just enough mathematics to calculate a parabola and aim a mortar or artillery gun, so that's what the army gave him to do. His unit faced British, Australian and New Zealand troops (maybe your grandfather was there?). He was not at all enthusiastic about going to a foreign land and making bolognese sauce out of complete strangers, and even less so when it started raining shells on his head for an entire night (Operation Lightfoot, I believe). The Italians fought bravely, but got the ever-living §@#$ smacked out of them. In fact, Giuseppe came out of the carnage doubting his Catholic faith and longing for a quiet life. After the war, he moved to Canada and worked in factories. I remember him as a wiry, taciturn old man, somberly smoking his eternal cigarettes among the tomato plants in his garden.
 

[Vudu_guy 1,545]

I can smell a good movie script material in here! it even ends like the Godfather.

 

Thanks for sharing this personal history Gargamel.

[Lobo[PT] 557]

 10/10 story.

Edited December 11, 2019
Wont joke on this x)

[drhoops 2,319]

Both of my grandfathers were in the war.

 

One was in the Merchant Marine.  He was an AA gunner on a liberty ship.  He really didn't talk about it much and always said he never actually saw any enemy action.  Luck for him, I guess.

 

The other was in the 30th Infantry Division:

 

He joined as a replacement when the division was being rested and refitted shortly before the Battle of the Bulge.  He said that they were ordered to move to Malmedy area to block a German attack in that area.  He said he was in a foxhole when the Germans began to shell the area.  Being a new guy, he had heard all about the famous German 88 mm shell.  When the shelling started his curiosity got the better of him and he peaked out his foxhole to see what they looked like.  Sure enough, he saw more than he wanted and was wounded (not too seriously) by a shell and was evacuated.  He rejoined his unit about a month or so later.

 

I guess I'm lucky that he was lucky.  Had that shell killed him, I wouldn't be here.

[Guest]

my gramps actualy got shot in the arm when he was a basic infantrist in the wehrmacht , as a kid I didnt understand why he had a big hole in his arm  until he told me when I was older , he was  part of  barbarossa  but not directly on the fronts and saw relatively little combat  before beeing captured by the soviets , he was holding  a small strip of land with only a few others for supplies and got hit by a shot through the arm , the feldsanitäter  told him that they had to amputee the arm because the bone was hit too and they werent sure if the wound would get infected because of the unsanitary conditions , he refused the amputation , stood up from the lazarett , took his helmet and his gun and went back  with his arm in a cast , pretty much unable to accurately hold his gun he was later captured by the soviets

He told me  when he was in captivity it was the coldest he had ever been  in his entire live , later when he got relocated   and taken over by  the americans he remembers one of the G.Is  giving him a blanket because he was hurt  and  freezing , one of the soviet soldiers who was visibly angry by this tried to take his blanket away  but the G.I insisted on it 

 

This left a big impression on my gramps , the soviets were pretty revenge luster for the germans after the horrible things they had done during their move to the east  and  that one bit of mercy from the G.I  influenced my gramps to always highly praise  the US forced  and damn the soviet soldiers

 

He also told me that their truck once  to strafed by a british plane and said that he would never forget the fear  the sound of that caused in him even tho the truck remained mostly unharmed apart from a few holes in the cover nobody was hurt

Edited December 11, 2019

[geezer5150 43]

Nice stories. my dad too was in the Merchant Marines. Deployed after Hiroshima.  He never saw any action but the stories he and his buddies told about the girls in the South Pacific were always fun to hear. 

 

[rui_troia 56]

Very interessing, all I know about the desert is that at night it's a beautiful sight to look at the skies.

 

 

My grandfather and great-grandfather of my mothers side managed both to not get in the warfare duty in both world wars in the Italian and German side, but many close relatives of theirs did (from what I've been told).

[dadeoplanets 127]

My grandfather was reasonably educated and could do some math, so he was employed as an artillery forward observer (FO) in the Wehrmacht.  He spent the entire war on the eastern front.  Sometime during the war he was shot in the shoulder and after recovering could not move some of the fingers in his hand because the nerves where severed.  When I was little he used to show me illustrated histories of WWII, but I don't recall him ever actually talking about his experiences on the front.  A friend of mine recently lent me a copy of "The Forgotten Soldier" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forgotten_Soldier).  This is a must read if you want to get a glimpse into the deep horror that is a war between superpowers... after reading that book, and reflecting on the fact that my grandfather spent most of 1941-1945 on the Eastern front as a FO, I am somewhat amazed that he was such a well functioning member of society after the war: he was a teacher who cared a lot about his students, and he spent a lot of time with me as a kid when I was visiting, teaching me to play chess and helping me draw stick figures of cowboy and indian fights.

 

My uncles have recounted a few interesting stories of my grandfather that gave a tiny glimpse into both his experience and state of mind - one relates to my mom bringing friends over for dinner in the 1950s.  They had not finished the food on their plates and where about to get up - my grandfather became rather livid and said something to the effect of "no one wastes food in this house" and made them all sit down and finish off the whole plate.  If you read the Forgotten Soldier and see what the folks on the eastern front suffered as far as food shortages goes, this reaction makes a lot of sense.  It's kind of funny, but that story still reverberates with me and I also hate wasting food, so the impact of the hunger on the eastern front was passed down at least 2 generations.

 

Another story related to how conditioned large elements of the german population where by the Nazi propoganda machine... even near the end of the war apparently my grandfather made a statement to my grandmother to the effect of "we are going try to push back the Russians and might just succeed".  I'm not sure how accurate that statement is, but it is kind of mind boggling to contemplate given the multi-year slow retreat across the East that was in progress.

 

In addition, the family had an interesting split before the war - my grandfather's brother was a communist in Germany (to come to the US of all places, not the USSR!), and he left the country sometime after Hitler came to power in 1933.  Those two halves of the family never really got in contact in any serious way all the way to the modern day.  I would have loved to have chatted with my "great uncle" to understand his thoughts that led to leaving the country, and also chat with my grandparents and directly ask them why they stayed and basically supported the Nazis.  It is an interesting life lesson to me to realize how complex humans are - my grandparents where super loving and supportive of me, and raised good kids with good morals, yet when push came to shove they and they had to make choices, they were part of the majority of Germans who basically supported the Nazi regime and bought the propaganda hook line and sinker as far as I could tell... though I never pressed them directly on this point when I was young because I just wasn't aware enough to do so.

 

Having learned so much about the horrors of WWII and totalitarian regimes both in Europe before and during the war, and in other places after the war (Africa, South America, the Middle East, Asia), one of my greatest fears in life is to look around and realize that I am "suddenly" in a country that turned into a dictatorship and I sat by and did nothing about it because the changes that lead there where incremental and individually did not raise a big enough alarm (the slow boil).  I would consider myself someone who believes in "regulated capitalism", so don't paint me as a commie or a socialist, but looking around at my home country, the US, I can't help but believe that is exactly what is going on now.... however, I'll stop there since this is not intended to be a political post (so dont flame me for that point folks).

 

Thanks for sharing the story Gargamel - kind of a fun thread of family history stories here 🙂

 

 

Edited December 12, 2019

[RussianSniper01 628]

12 hours ago, Reto.Gargamel said:

Like many of you, I am interested in World War II because my grandfather saw combat. He didn't like to talk about it, however, and I didn't understand enough Italian to follow the stories he told when he was still alive. Except that one time, when my dad translated for me and I listened with great fascination. And yesterday, based on what I remembered, I found the unit in which he served. I do not have absolute confirmation, but all the details match.

My grandfather Giuseppe was captured by the British at the Battle of El Alamein. Like other conscripts from Calabria (the toe of the boot), he would have been drafted in the 27th Infantry Division "Brescia". I remember him telling that this "motorized infantry" division only had trucks for the equipment: the men had to walk all the way through Lybia and Egypt. The linked article confirms this: "The Brescia was classified as an auto-transportable division, meaning staff and equipment could be transported on cars and trucks, although not simultaneously." This was symptomatic of the Italian Army's poor leadership and logistics. One memory that really upset my grandfather was that a man carrying a mail bag, with letters to the soldiers' families, eventually got tired of hauling it... so he cut a hole at the bottom to "lighten the load", and at some point the others started finding their letters in the sand. I can't imagine how they must have felt, considering their already low morale.



Division "Brescia" fought alongside Rommel's Afrika Korps. I don't know if Giuseppe ever got to see Rommel in the flesh, but it's not entirely impossible. The better-supplied German troops would sometimes offer their surplus cigarettes and chocolate rations to their Italian brothers-in-arms. One time, while struggling to overcome the language barrier and ask for a cigarette, my grandfather noticed a "Rauchen verboten!" sign on a fuel truck, so he asked the Germans if they could spare a verboten. Close enough!

Granddad was from a poor village, and only attended school until about the 6th grade, after which he tended flocks as a teenager. He knew just enough mathematics to calculate a parabola and aim a mortar or artillery gun, so that's what the army gave him to do. His unit faced British, Australian and New Zealand troops (maybe your grandfather was there?). He was not at all enthusiastic about going to a foreign land and making bolognese sauce out of complete strangers, and even less so when it started raining shells on his head for an entire night (Operation Lightfoot, I believe). The Italians fought bravely, but got the ever-living §@#$ smacked out of them. In fact, Giuseppe came out of the carnage doubting his Catholic faith and longing for a quiet life. After the war, he moved to Canada and worked in factories. I remember him as a wiry, taciturn old man, somberly smoking his eternal cigarettes among the tomato plants in his garden.
 

Respect to all those who have served and died fighting for their countries. And to those who lived to permanently have those scars of war.

[CommanderZORG 84]

amazing stories...

im glad that i could talk to some of my relatives about the war

I remember stories that my great granny told me.She had to flee the country side bec of the red army,
I've been told also by my grandmother that russian soldiers were up for vengeance, raped women aso (thats what the nazis did on their campaign in first place)
She had to walk(hike) like 150km through weather and terrain, not using public roads until she reached Viennas safety.

 

another story my grandpa told me that had kinda of an impact on me when i was younger :

after hitleryouth my grandfather was stationed at a luftwaffe airfield at prague,
it was about the time at the end of the war...
The airraid alarm sirens went off, the airfield was targeted by allied bombers.
So my grandpa and his fellow comrade (and best friend at the time) went running for the bunker,
but they had to run all across the field to get there... unfortunately they couldn't make it in time, 
and as the bombs went off a chunk of steel or some kind of debris cut off his comrades head as they were running.
He said he was probably 3 feet away as he looked at him that moment... but my grandfather kept running and did make it to the bunker.
I believe my grandpa is certainly a little traumatized from the war, my grandmother once told me a story of an earthquake.
They dont occur very often here in Vienna, and when they do its probably around 1 on the richter scale.(maybe glasses start shaking on the cupboards etc)
So my grandfather started kinda panicking and running around shouting stuff like "i dont wanna die, were all gonna die"
My grandma had to calm him down and told him to get underneath the doorframe and keep calm bec its gonna stop soon.
She found it kinda hilarious, but at the end i think its remains from the war...

 

There are alot other (not so cruel) amazing storys that my grandpa told me about that time.

For me this is always interesting and precious, to hear from someone who was there, witnessed that time...

my grandpa is still alive btw

Edited December 12, 2019

[PrivateMarkosL 390]

My Grandfather didn't fight in WW2...because he was a kid at that time!

 

He was born in 1938. After Axis captured Crete in 1941 Greeks were suffering from hunger.

 

He used to get fed by Italian soldiers.My father said Italian soldiers would call all kids to feed them.

 

It just tells you that not all soldiers are bad.Another friend of mine's Grandfather was called by German soldiers for execution but his Grandfather escaped to Italian occupied lands and that once a German soldier called his grandfather in his BMW motorbike and force his Grandfather to scream He*l H*tler.

 

My Grandmother was born in 1945 so she didn't experience the war.

Edited December 12, 2019

[_Finnish_Gamemaster_ 2,256]

My great grandfather fought in the winter war in the unit 6./JR 6 (Infantry regiment 6, 6th company) 

I've got very detailed documents about him and his unit, their actions, etc, down to personal and official letters.

On the 3rd of March 1939, 3 days before the end of the war he died (immediately) after taking a direct hit from a 45mm Anti-Tank gun in the village of Kaskiselkä in the Karealian isthmus

[starkdog 534]

gargamel that's a great story! pic of my home for 18 mo..

[KriegsSchwein 197]

I had 2 uncles that where in the WW2 on the German side. One would never talk to us kids about the experiences he had .

The other one ,my mom's brother died on the eastern front.In his last letter that they got from him he told his family that he was saving the last kugel (bullet) 

for his-self because he wasn't going to be taken prisoner .

After the wars end they try ed to search for him (Red Cross ...) but no luck .

[Reto.Gargamel 324]

I called my parents last night, and much to my joy, my dad remembered some more details about my grandfather's life on the front!

Literacy

As I mentioned in the original post, Nonno (that's "Granddad" in Italian) was lucky enough that he knew how to read and write. Many of his fellow Calabrians were illiterate, coming from one of the poorest regions in Italy. You have to keep in mind that Italian soldiers in North Africa couldn't simply phone their families. Writing was their main lifeline to their loved ones.

One of the men in Nonno's unit requested his help to read the letters he received from his girlfriend — and of course also needed him to write the replies. You can imagine how weird it must have felt to write passionate letters for someone else. It got to the point where my grandfather told the guy, "Listen dude, this is getting awkward. How about I show you how to read and write instead?" There's not much to do to kill time in the desert, so Nonno gradually taught his comrade, until one day he could read and write on his own. The man was crying for joy. Now he could write his own "sexts"! 😄

Off-course
After marching an entire day, following what they assumed to be the tracks left in the sand by friendly troops preceding them, my grandfather's unit began stumbling upon pieces of their own discarded equipment and trash. Yup, the old classic where you think you're following a straight line in the desert, but in reality, your path is ever-so-slightly curving to one side, and you end up where you started, exhausted and thirsty. It's not just in movies. Fortunately some Germans eventually drove by in a Kübelwagen and said something like, "Need a lift? Stay here, we'll send a truck to pick you up".

El Alamein
When I told my father how I singled out the unit to which Nonno must have belonged, I asked "He was in El Alamein, right? So he must have been on the receiving end of an artillery barrage that lasted an entire night?" To which my father replied, "Three! Three days and three nights, uninterrupted! The noise of guns never paused for a second. Nonno wept and trembled every time he told the story." So yeah, definitely PTSD.

When the Axis front collapsed, 27th Division "Brescia" escaped encirclement and began retreating. But as my grandfather and his men were pulling out, a heavy artillery shell landed frightfully close to their position, heaving tons of sand into the air. Instead of being killed on impact, they suddenly found themselves buried alive, desperately clawing their way out from under a dune that wasn't there ten seconds earlier. When they emerged, the first thing they saw was British rifles pointed at them.

Captivity
Nonno was an NCO  (he held the rank of caporale) which meant that the British did not require him to perform manual labor. But again, because life in a POW camp is fantastically dull and monotonous, my grandfather insisted on being handed some task or other, to keep himself busy instead of just chain-smoking. He was assigned to a warehouse which stored mechanical parts, hardware, tools, etc. There he assisted a technical quartermaster by the name of Churchill (no relation to the Prime Minister) in keeping things neatly sorted and inventoried. The two soon became good friends, and when came the time to part ways, Churchill wanted my grandfather to have his leather wallet as a gift — empty, mind you. 😄

In fact, Nonno said that he was treated better as a prisoner of the British, than he had been as a soldier in the Italian infantry. And that's in no small part why I'm telling you this story in English and not Italian 😉.

Happy holidays!

[fatal-is 717]

Thanks for sharing, interesting indeed!

[rui_troia 56]

Very interessing read!  

 

Thank you for sharing.

[Lobo[PT] 557]

🙏 that was a nice read to be fair.

ty for sharing such experiences.

 

 

(maybe one day we will fight on north africa in hng....soon(tm))

[Krlutin 1,172]

I can share a story, but a bit different then what was writen above, its long and has some not-so-nice details, so be warned before you start reading.

 

I will put it in a spoiler as it is quite long.

 

Edit: formatting

 

My gramps saw a lot of action as well, but not as a soldier, but as a partisan fighter instead.

He lived in a small village near the town of Okucani in present day Croatia.

Now in those days in that area it was normal to have two parts of the village, an upper and lower so to speak, with usually the Serbs living in the upper near the hills tending sheep, and the Croats living in the lower part.

When the Independent state of Croatia formed and the mass killings of Serbs started he was 21 years old, being born in 1920.

His former neighbours from lower village came up one day with Ustase soldiers and slaughtered everyone in sight, with only a few survivors who managed to hide or get away.

He was in the hills tending sheep when it happened.

He found out about it when some people who were running away picked him up and told him about the massacre, so they all hid in the woods together.

Some days later they stumbled upon a partisan patrol and being young and having no where to go he joined them.

My grandma told me how he made his first action by walking into a village tavern and shooting two Ustasa soldiers in the head.

He spent the entire war on that territory, had a fake name he went by and im told his unit had a price on their heads for blowing up some railway.

Researching it later on led me to believe the Wermacht's Operation Arras was directed on the wider partisan group he was a part of.

When the war was nearing its end he was in what was at that time a full on pursuing army.

After the war he moved to Belgrade and formed a family.

What little i remember of him was a gentle, soft speaking man with sad blue eyes, whose only passion was sitting around watching us kids play, and going fishing of all things 

My dad tells me he had a thing where he would just sit there in his chair looking at us, his grandkids play, and he would just start crying softly for no reason.

He died in 1993 during the civil war in former Yugoslavia.

Dad says his heart gave up cause he realized that what little was left of our people in that village and surrounding area will face a similar fate his family and neighbours had in '41.

 

Edited December 26, 2019

[SirMrGuyHuman 477]

My great grandfather was imprisoned by the Japanese during their occupation of China. You can read a little about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._C._Chao

My great aunt escaped to the south of China and eventually escaped to the United States in 1944. You can read about her here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Luorui

My great uncle went with my great aunt but he was labelled a rightist when he returned to China after the war. He later committed suicide, probably to avoid getting executed (which is why I'll always hate the CCP). 

 

My maternal great grandfather would be an informant for the US and ROC military in Burma.

 

May all four rest in peace now,

 

My step great-grandfather, on the other hand, was a general that commanded the Chinese 5th and 9th armies at different points, and would once be governor of Xinjiang, commanding tens of thousands. You can read about him in my signature

Edited May 11, 2020