Originally posted by Whisky58
However, no stories but something for the psychologists amongst you. . .One would tell his stories, the other never.
I know somewhat of what you mean. My wife's grandfather was an artillaryman, served in France in '44. He apparently never told anyone, not even his wife, about any of his combat experiences.
This makes me "special" in an odd sort of way. My wife mentioned during a conversation that one of my hobbies was "all that World War Two gaming stuff." Later that evening, he pulled out a book that was a unit history for his cousin's division, if I remember correctly. He said his artillary unit was kind of a roving one, never assigned to one division for too long, but it basically followed where his cousin went.
As I paged through the book, he explained that he was proud of the fact that his unit was one of the few that could fire two rounds, one at greater than 45 degrees and the second less than 45 degrees, and be able to do it fast and accurately enough that both rounds hit the ground at the same time in the same area.
I stupidly said something to the effect that he was lucky to be in the artillary and not a footsoldier. He kind of snorted. Best I can recall, his next description was this.
"There was this one time we were trying to get the hell out of the way of some Tigers. We couldn't get one of the trucks started, and it was to my gun, so we were sitting on this road waiting for the truck to get fixed. Then we hear these squeeky wheels. We didn't know what to do, and our gun was pointed down the road, so a buddy and me load the thing thinking maybe we could scare them off if they come into sight.
"Sure enough, this Tiger comes around the bend. Well, he was so dang close my buddy starts angling the gun, and says "I think we can hit it." I'm telling him "lets get the hell out of here", and he's saying "wait a second". He fires the gun, and he hit the tank! Well, of course its a 155, and powerful and all, but no good against a Tiger. This thing is still coming down the road. My buddy says "reload", and like an idiot I help him do it. He fires again without aiming, but it's still coming straight down the road, so it hits it again. This time the Tiger moves to the side a little and drops in a ditch and stops.
"The sargent comes out of his hiding place, looks at me and my buddy, calls us a few names, and then tells us since we're so bright, we should go have a look at the Tiger and make sure the Germans won't cause us any trouble. We went up there and opened the hatch. There was nothing wrong with the tank, but the Germans were all dead. Best we could figure, the concussion from the first round probably killed them. There was blood coming out of their ears and stuff. A bunch of kids. Looked like damn 12 year olds except the one. Dead, every one of them."
I could see he was kind of upset, so I didn't ask for any more details. I kick myself now, but I only saw him once or twice after that and never asked to hear any more of his experiences. He was kind of quiet usually, and I didn't want to "bother" him with a bunch of questions. Unfortunately, he died a few months later.
That was a couple years ago, and "grandma" has been declining herself ever since. As her mind slips, she is having trouble remembering what year we are in. She once told my wife that she "found Harold under the bed again this morning". After a few puzzled questions, we found out that for a couple years after he got back from the war, almost every night he would actually climb out of bed and crawl under the bed to sleep. She took to waking him by prodding him with a yardstick because sometimes he would throw punches at her before realizing where he was. But, times were different then, she never questioned why, just accepted it. No one went to "head doctors" back then, and a lot of other people were going through similar things, so it was "no big deal" and they just lived with it.
I was told Harold wanted me to have the book he showed me. Oddly, no one can find it. "Grandma" says she knows she put it with his other "war stuff", but it is all missing.
