History in your family

College Confidential Community
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<p>A thread to talk about history in your family and anything remotely related to it. Why? Because I think it’s interesting. XD If you think it’s interesting, too, then read and post your own family’s stories. Deal? (This may not end up being very popular, if solely for the fact that I write too much. But prove me wrong, kids. Prove me wrong.) </p>

<p>I’ll start.</p>

<p>So I’d known for years that my great-uncle Wes (“Unkie”) had been a prisoner of war during WWII. He died when I was too young to hear his war stories, and afterwards it was never really a subject that came up; I really only knew that he’d been in the European theater of war and that Auntie still has license plates on her car that say “Former POW.” Since he was in Europe and he was with the Allies and I’d never heard of him griping about the Italians (he probably did, though, but it was the French I knew he really hated—“The French make good Nazis,” I’m told he used to say), I assumed it’d been the Germans who’d held him. (I’m not sure how many prisoners in Nazi POW camps actually survived... maybe it’s not even plausible that he would’ve gotten out alive. These are assumptions that I formed rather early in my studies of history.) </p>

<p>Well, the other day the subject did, in fact, come up during dinner. Naturally, my mom had heard the stories, so she was able to relate them to us. And here’s what she told us:</p>

<p>Uncle was a navigator in the US Air Force. His plane went down—shot down?—over the France-Switzerland border. (He used to tell about the absurdity of trying to get the papers with the codes and flight plans and such to burn... while the plane was going down in flames. He couldn’t get the damn fire to catch, but it was his duty to do it, regardless of the high probability that they’d burn anyway when the plane hit the ground. XP) They managed to crash-land and, in varying states of injury, struggled over towards the Swiss side in search of assistance.</p>

<p>I learned that, at the end of it all, Uncle hated the Swiss more than he even hated the Germans. The Swiss government, we’ve all been taught, was officially neutral—that’s why they went towards Switzerland and not Nazi-occupied France—but the Swiss people, ethnically and linguistically, are made up in large part by... Germans and Italians. And French, who “make good Nazis.” There was a lot of Nazi/Fascist sentiment in Switzerland, regardless of the official edict of neutrality, and the Swiss did indeed take prisoners of war. They took prisoners from all sides. And then they treated them (especially the Allied ones, I would assume) in nasty, underhanded ways. They didn’t do it openly because they weren’t officially enemies with any of them...</p>

<p>As far as Mom knew, they didn’t exactly torture Uncle. They just starved him. For over a year. When I was four or five, Uncle died suddenly (and fairly young) of heart failure; according to the doctors, the damage t hat led to his death was caused by the malnourishment he endured in the Swiss POW camp. 8-( I was shocked. I looooved my Unkie when I was little—and Auntie is still the relative outside of my immediate family that I’m closest to—and I was shocked to learn how he really died. </p>

<p>And I definitely didn’t know that about the Swiss. O_O Not that I’m going to hold it against them now; I don’t even bear a grudge against the Germans, and all my life I’ve been horrified beyond words by what they did back then. Then, when I was little, like 5 years old, I remember crying myself to sleep thinking about what we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Americans don’t still hate the Japanese, so the Germans must not still hate everyone that they used to hate, either. <em>shrugs</em> And I just can’t stay mad. Not at my parents. Not at a whole nation.</p>

<p>Your turn.</p>

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<p>Thats pretty cool. Both my grandpas were in WW2. One had something to do with supply,I think he was kinda young and didn't get into any battles. I'm not sure but I don't want to push the subject if it is a really touchy subject or something. And all I know about the other, is that he did something with planes and he took the goggles off some dead asian(Korean?) as a souvenir. He died before I knew him, but my grandma has like 3 bullets in a box that he kept and she's like really afraid of them. And apparently I can trace back my ancestors back to one of the first ships to come to America in the 1600s, but not quite Mayflower or anything like that.</p>

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<p>My grandfather died long before I was ever thought of (in 1974 14 years before I was born) but he also served in WWII. He and all his brothers old enough to enlist, joined up and were stationed in the Pacific (this was after Pearl Harbor though, my grandpa joined up in Jan 1942 I know). He was in the navy and I'm pretty sure he did something in the Philippines at one point. I don't think he was ever involved in anything in Japan. His brother (my great-uncle Earl, who only died about 5 years ago) was actually at the famous raising of the flag in Iwo Jima. He apparently saw alot of Japanese combat but he always refused to talk about it to anyone. </p>

<p>Nothing in my family is particularly interesting though. On my mom's side, I have one great great great grandmother who was a Native American (Creek or Seminole, we're not sure which) who was several years younger than the white man she married. This was in about 1870's-ish. That side of the family (my matrilineal line through my mom, her mom, my grandmother's mom, etc) lived in east central Florida until my grandmother was about 6 years old and they moved to where most all my family now lives, in east Alabama. I don't know much about my mom's father's family history other than that they've pretty much lived here in east Alabama their entire lives, and my grandfather's parents also lived here their whole lives. Past his parents (my great-grandparents, both of whom died before I was born) I have no idea. The only reason I know so much about my grandmother's side of the family is that her first cousin "Aunt Betty" did a crazy in-depth family tree that goes back to the Civil War. </p>

<p>On my dad's side of the family, I know hardly anything because I'm not very close with that side of my family. I'm quite positive there's Native American ancestry in there somewhere (my dad is way too dark/reddish toned to be just completely European). It probably comes from my dad's dad's side because they look very similar. My grandmother is pretty fair and naturally blond besides the white. I don't really know anything about either side of great-grandparents, other than that my grandfather's mother only recently passed away in her 90's (I never met her).</p>