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OR, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:30:59 AM EDT
Just finished reading Storm of Steel and am now watching They Shall Not Grow Old for like the 10th time. It got me thinking that if your much under 30 you probably never new or had met anyone who fought in WWI.
I had a neighbor when I was a kid in the early 80s who had fought in the war. I was too young to be told war stories but he did give me what he told me was his pack. I don’t have it anymore sadly. They also had vets from WWI come and speak on Veterans Day when I was in grade school. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:33:54 AM EDT
[#1]
Back in the '90s. Guy was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by the French Consulate there.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:36:04 AM EDT
[Last Edit: Paul]
[#2]
I'm in my mid-60s and have never met a WWI vet that I can recall.
I met plenty of WWII vets living at Air Force Village West in Riverside CA. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:36:34 AM EDT
[#3]
None that I can recall.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:37:38 AM EDT
[#4]
This guy occasionally attended a church I went to when I lived in Martinsburg. I didn't know him, but said hello a few times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Buckles |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:38:33 AM EDT
[#5]
Absolutely. They didn't wear all the hats you see today, but there were a lot of them around when I was very, very young. My great grandfather was in WWI and he died when I was young, but I certainly remember him. They fired one torpedo during the war, but he didn't see a darn thing.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:38:40 AM EDT
[#6]
My grandmother used to work at the VA Mountain Home in JC TN in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I used to go and the old vets from WW1 would tell stories to me of their experiences during the war. I think they were the ones who really got me interested in joining the military later in life.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:39:01 AM EDT
[#7]
family who fought in WWI all passed away before I ever had a chance to meet them.
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MO, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:40:11 AM EDT
[#8]
Yes just one, he was very kind.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:40:39 AM EDT
[#9]
Yep. My grandfather. Got gassed and it screwed his lungs up for the rest of his life. I was still a kid when he died.
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NC, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:41:20 AM EDT
[#10]
No, they were starting to go to old soldier homes when my dad was in high school.
My Dad is a Vietnam vet. He is 82. |
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KY, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:41:30 AM EDT
[#11]
My maternal grandfather was a WWI vet. I only met him once, and was too young to remember anything. He died when I was about two years old, of complications arising from his exposure to mustard gas during the war.
My great uncle I knew better, though he too passed away when I was a child. I knew others, quite a few actually, but never knew much more than the fact that they had been there. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:42:06 AM EDT
[#12]
I got to spend a couple days with my great-grandfather back in the summer of 1982. He was an Infantryman in the trenches of WW1.
He was a hoot. He and my great-grandmother lived in Detroit. While we were there, they took us to Belle Isle for a day. To get there and back, we had to drive through inner city Detroit, which was already pretty bad. Grandpa Richard tended to drive fast and aggressive (it might be genetic) and Grandma Ora would sit there and chastise him for it. Then, he'd tell her to leave him alone and let him drive. It went back and forth like that for quite awhile, with me looking out the windows and seeing a bunch of people milling about on the sidewalks drinking from brown paper bags in the middle of the afternoon. I think Grandpa Richard was well aware of where we were and was doing his best to ensure we got out of there as quickly as possible with as few reasons to stop as necessary. He loved spending his afternoons in his chair, listening to his beloved Detroit Tigers on the radio next to him. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:43:19 AM EDT
[#13]
My wife's grandfather, a Canadian, was in both WWI and WWII.
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TX, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:45:04 AM EDT
[Last Edit: John-in-austin]
[#14]
Quite a few. I'm 65. A lot of my friend's older relatives were WWI and WWII vets. Seeing the occasional person in a store with a number tattooed on their arm was not unheard of.
At the same time, a hell of a lot of women that worked as store clerks, teachers etc were war widows. My grandmother's neighbor lost her husband in WWI. He died of the Spanish Flu when deployed to France. My 6th grade teacher's brother was a Japanese Army pilot and died on Truk. In your day to day when I was a kid folks would interact with vets all the time. They owned businesses, farmed etc. everywhere you went. A goodly number were German since Texas had a lot of POW camps and they settled here after both wars. Mr's Degger's story was the most horrific. He was a WWI infantryman. His unit charged a trench and he jumped into it for cover from machine gun fire. He landed with both feet on a mine, blowing his legs off at the knee. A day later he woke up laying with a row of dead that were being transported to the rear. He didn't make it back to the states until 11 months after the surrender. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:48:31 AM EDT
[Last Edit: Rodent]
[#15]
For several decades I hunted at the Catskill mountain cabin of a guy who fought in WWI with the Vermont Cavalry. They left their horses behind, though, and served with engineers instead. He had a great story about trying to hide under railroad ties while being strafed by a Fokker triplane. He was present at the world's first tank battle, in 1916 at the Somme.
When NY computerized hunting licenses, we had a terrible time renewing his, because the system only went back to 1900, and he was born in 1897. He lived to be 100, and hunted until he was 97. The last few years he "hunted", we'd drive him uphill a bit in his old Willy's jeep, sit him by a tree, and hand him his old Marlin lever-action that we'd pretended to load. One time I checked in on him from above, and he'd tumbled down the hill. I ran down there. He was lying in a very awkward position, and his hat and rifle were still uphill where he'd rolled down. I opened his coat and was trying to listen for his heart and he scared the crap out of me by saying, "What are you doing?!" Turns out he'd just fallen asleep. |
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CA, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:48:37 AM EDT
[#16]
My mother says I have multiple times, but I don't remember as war never came up in conversations. I had a girlfriend who's father was in the Navy in WWII as a gunner and saw combat plenty of times. I never knew until many decades later while researching my father's burial site in a national cemetery. I found him there, along with his wife, and their youngest daughter that only lived for a couple of days.
They had four daughters named Kathleen, Colleen, Maureen, and Doreen. Doreen, who was the daughter I dated, told me that if they had another girl it was to be named Kristeen. That was the girl's name on the headstone. I guess experiencing pain like her father did made him a loving father who appreciated what he had. There's an age gap between her father and mine. Mine joined the Navy out of college after the Korean police action ended, but was a Vietnam vet. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:49:04 AM EDT
[#17]
My grandfather. He was in both WWI and WWII. In Finland. He lived until 1992 (born 1895) so I got to know him well.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:49:22 AM EDT
[#18]
My Grandfather on my Mother's side served in the Navy during WW1. He was a tailor to Navy brass during WW2 and knew Bull Halsey. He passed when I was still in grade school so I never had the opportunity to talk to him about it.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:49:25 AM EDT
[Last Edit: AlabamaFan64]
[#19]
Knew a handful of them growing up. Last one I met was 1977 or so. He told of a young French girl who would bring flowers to him and some other US troops they found murdered a few months after she showed up. I had one great uncle that served and was injured from being gassed. He died as a result of the gas in the late forties, but that was a little before my time. He was part of the Alabama NG in the Rainbow Division.
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KY, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:50:00 AM EDT
[#20]
and Grandma Ora would sit there and chastise him for it. I had a grandmother named Ora. The other was named Lalla. Late 19th and early 20th century feminine names were definitely different. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:50:09 AM EDT
[#21]
I remember at least one was in a group of vets who came to my school to talk to the kids on Veterans Day. I might have been 10.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:56:40 AM EDT
[#22]
Even the youngest would have been in their late 80s when I was born.
All the WWII vets I knew are dead now too. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 8:58:10 AM EDT
[#23]
1993 while stationed at Ft Riley. 1ST ID would do a BRO week and all the old vets were invited. Very cool.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:00:09 AM EDT
[#24]
My dad's uncle, my paternal great uncle Buller. Machine gunner WWI was in the Alsace-Lorraine offensive. Also was in the Merchant Marine in the Pacific during WWII and Korea. He passed in 1981. Lifelong bachelor and really kind of an asshole. He would talk at times about being at sea but almost never about WWI.
I'd met a couple of others, one who was pretty sharp and quite talkative - I was fresh out of the Army and the old boy took a shine to me. He'd talk about life in the trenches and how lucky I was to have not had to fight the Russians. No one I ever met who served in WWI had anything good to say about it. |
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USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:03:17 AM EDT
[#25]
We visited veterans at a VA hospital when I was in my elementary school's student council in the mid-'90s. I'm pretty sure I remember them saying at least one was a WWI vet.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:04:22 AM EDT
[#26]
A few. I was born in 1969, and by the time I was old enough to have anything resembling a conversation the surviving veterans would have been around 80. Some were feeble, some were spry. Mostly I remember old men in parades.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:10:05 AM EDT
[#27]
When I was growing up in the 70s they were all over our community. Knew many.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:13:13 AM EDT
[#28]
I met two when I was really young it was my great grandpa and his brother they fought for the Kaiser. I vaguely remember him and this was back in the 1980s.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:14:07 AM EDT
[#29]
50 here, Never met or seen a WWI vet that I know of, if I did I did not know.
WWII, Vietnam and others yes... |
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USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:19:40 AM EDT
[#30]
At least one that I know of. He was our neighbor and landlord through the mid 60’s. There were probably others but Mr. Newman was the only one I actually knew who served.
Two of my great grandmother’s brothers served but both had passed before I was born. |
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TX, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:20:58 AM EDT
[#31]
Quote HistoryOriginally Posted By AlabamaFan64: Knew a handful of them growing up. Last one I met was 1977 or so. He told of a young French girl who would bring flowers to him and some other US troops they found murdered a few months after she showed up. I had one great uncle that served and was injured from being gassed. He died as a result of the gas in the late forties, but that was a little before my time. He was part of the Alabama NG in the Rainbow Division. "Rainbow Division" is a name I haven't heard in a very long time. Decades before America re-discovered racism, I was told as a child it was called that because its troops hailed from nationalities all over the world, and had come here to become part of the great Melting Pot. Of course that was in a segregated era and the rainbow didn't include blacks, but ideals are never perfectly realized by flawed humans, it's the striving for perfection that makes us great. My next door neighbor growing up was a WWI vet. He had artillery shell brass sitting on his hearth in the living room. He was not afraid of anything. He once walked right up to a 5' rattlesnake slithering down his sidewalk with a sledge hammer and smacked its head completely flat with one lick. That snake's body still trying to continue slithering with the remains of its head still fixed to the porous concrete he had smacked it flat on remains frozen in my 10 year old's memory. It did that for a good 15-20 mins after he killed it. That was over 50 years ago now. He had a huge garden in his back that he encouraged my free roaming dogs to hunt and poop in - he would hoe the poop into the soil after they did their business. He would sit on his back porch with his huge (to me) collection of shotguns and pick off any critter that dared to sample his veggies, and regularly encouraged me to come down with a pellet rifle to shoot squirrels out of his pecan trees. It was a different time. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:23:35 AM EDT
[#32]
My Grandfather. An awesome man. He was in France, was able to sign up when he was 15. Family story is that he had to go down below(he was from Michigans UP) to a town that no one knew him enlist, becasue he was so young.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:24:25 AM EDT
[#33]
Never met my Grandfather that was in WWI, but I did of all things meet a WWI German soldier.
I was about 19 working my first job. Went to this old farm that was encroached on by a subdivision. We were to level out this big berm. Old dude comes out smoking a pipe. Told us its where they use to bury the horses. Went into he was a WWI Vet. A horned German putting his hand on his head. I though wow thats rare. He asked me how you doing Abner? Im 57 now wish I would have asked him some questions. |
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NE, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:26:02 AM EDT
[#34]
Yes
My mother's uncle. A tall gentle man, who sent on to a professional career as an accountant. He was a medic [or what amounted to a medic] in the trenches and in a behind the lines field hospital. This is all I know about his service. He never talked about it and family members advised those not in the know to not ask him about it. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:26:23 AM EDT
[#35]
Yes, my grandpa and his brothers.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:28:11 AM EDT
[#36]
My great gand father up until I was 12
1916-1918. Cavaliere del Vittorio Veneto |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:28:44 AM EDT
[#37]
My grandfather, my moms dad.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:30:05 AM EDT
[Last Edit: NachoDip]
[#38]
Unfortunately no. Not old enough for that. When I was a kid there may have been a few still around, however the number would be dwindling quickly and nearly single digits in the USA alive by the time I was a teenager. Granted the last American veteran of ww1 passed on at the age of 110 in 2011. God rest his soul.
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WA, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:34:18 AM EDT
[#39]
Only one that I'm sure of but probably more. I'm 51 years old. He was our neighbor when I was very young like less than five. I remember his garage full of war mementos. Also my first memory of someone reloading. Only reason I know he was in WWI is that my dad told me later. RIP Don.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:34:51 AM EDT
[#40]
I have two pictures of my Grandfather in Military dress
One from his native country of Greece and one as a US soldier during WW1 |
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IA, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:35:07 AM EDT
[#41]
My grandpa on dad's side was a WW1 vet. I have his helmet, assorted papers and photos, and his dog tags.
Dad was active in vet's organizations. We actually met a Spanish American War vet when I was a kid. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:35:43 AM EDT
[#42]
My Great Grandfather was in during the war.
He passed when I was around 2 but I do have pictures of him holding me on his lap. |
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NC, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:36:50 AM EDT
[#43]
Yes, my Great, Great Uncle Leland. He was in the artillery during WW1. As a kid and teen, I remember him telling stories about his time in France.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:38:18 AM EDT
[#44]
Yup,my great-grandpa. Had a big divot in his forehead from amd explosionof some kind don't remember.
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VA, USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:39:56 AM EDT
[#45]
Yes. Wally was an elder at my church in the mid '80s. He'd been some sort of medic in WWI per my dad's retelling. By the time I knew him, he was a stooped 90 year old fellow who wore a tidy black suit and gave out butterscotch candies to all of the kids.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:42:22 AM EDT
[Last Edit: VidaEterna]
[#46]
My great grandfather was in WW1. He died when I was young and my memories of him are faint. I worked in his huge garden, but don’t remember much other than stabbing my mom’s foot with a sharp rake. I refuse to eat collard greens and okra to this day. He was a tough hard country man. He was born in the early 1890’s outside of Nacogdoches. I miss spending time at his house with my great grandmother. She was kind and loved the Lord. She died in 1982.
They could fend for themselves. They didn’t need a bloated debaucherous government to tend to them. I miss their mentality, it’s what made this once great country great. They would be disappointed to see what the U.S. has become. |
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:44:46 AM EDT
[#47]
Yes, a few including one of my grandfathers. They're all long gone now.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:46:23 AM EDT
[#48]
My Grandfather was in WWI. The only thing I ever heard him say about it was that France was to coldest place he had ever been but seeing that he never lived anywhere other than Georgia that makes perfect sense.
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:48:46 AM EDT
[#49]
I was born in the mid-60's and never knowingly conversed with a WWI vet. My maternal grandfather was there, but he died in 1960
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USA
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Posted: 3/28/2024 9:50:29 AM EDT
[#50]
None that I recall, but to help with timeline comprehension, my father saw Civil War vets march in an Independence Day parade when he was a kid in the 1950s.
I’ve known many WWII vets, many Vietnam vets, and I have a close friend who fought in Korea who’s young enough to have grandchildren under the age of 4. |
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