Wow! There are so many stories like that, going both ways. I'm 82 and that Sunday is one of my earliest memories...
Remembering Pearl Harbor
- Thread starter GrayTide
- Start date
Yes, there are many such tales. I wonder if there are any collections of interviews of veterans in the national archives or other repositories. Most veterans did not talk much of their experiences during the war.
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No, they didn't. I wish I had pumped my two older brothers for more information. Sometimes, their kids will ask me questions, since they didn't talk with them either, and I have to just say "I don't know; we never talked about it"...
That's a shame. I was thinking along the lines of the tape recordings circa 1930's of former slaves.
I didn't think of it. Oddly, I know more of what happened with the older of the two, a navigator on a B-17 out of SE England that I do of the other, who was stateside, doing anti-sub duty off south Florida...
I worked with an ** Major at Homestead during the mid 90's (rebuilding the base after Andrew) and he told me his Father was on B-17s (not sure in what capacity). By the time his Dad had made the requisite number of combat missions (which was increasing regularly), his weight dropped from 160 to 90 pounds.
Talk about stress!
The Germans would have likely seized the Suez Canal, cutting off a lot of supplies to Britain . We were already supplying the Russians so the eastern front may not have changed. The Japanese would likely have better secured their supply lines, and taken territory with raw materials, so it may have actually been tougher in the pacific.
Wow! My brother didn't do that, but he was caught in that same trap. They would think they'd served their time and then they'd increase the number of missions...
Was it Sherman who said war is hell?
Here is my uncle's Pearl Harbor work ID badge. I tried to send it earlier but it would not go. He was around 21.
One more story I heard third hand about the Peal Harbor salvage work. My uncle would suit up in diving suit and metal helmet. He had a Phillipino man working topside managing the air pump and lines. The dive protocol required that certain items would be found, secured, and retrieved.
Top items were codes and other top secret documents.
In order to access the ships safe, my uncle had to cut the hands off of a corpse. Evidently rigor mortise had set in!
My uncle placed the hands in his diving suit pockets. When complete, my uncle signaled and his assistant pulled him up. His assistant started securing the dive equipment and when he pulled two hands out of the suit pockets, he freaked out and said, "Mister Mallon, I cannot work with you anymore!"
I guess that was the end of their partnership!
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