Ancestral military veterans

[SensibleLuxemburgist]

My great-grandfather fought in the Mexican Revolution and my great uncle fought in Vietnam. My father was almost recruited into the FMLN during the Salvadoran Civil War sometime in the year 1979. Who of your ancestors were military veterans?

[RedAnarchist]

I research my family history, so I know of a few.

One of my 4x great grandfathers was a soldier who was stationed in what was then Ceylon and now is Sri Lanka, whilst a 3x great grandfather was a soldier from Ireland who was stationed in Kent, where his daughter was born, but other than that I have no idea of who he was, or who his wife was.

Seven of the brothers of one of my great grandmothers (there were nine siblings in total) fought in WWII, one was killed in a plane crash in Malta that killed numerous British and Polish servicemen. Their father fought in WWI, as did another great grandfather of mine who was in one of the last horseback cavalry charge made by the British Army. A great grand uncle of mine died at Ypres in 1917 aged 19 - he was one of nineteen children, only nine of whom survived to adulthood, with the mother dying in 1914 and the father in 1916.

More distantly, a second cousin five times removed of mine, who emigrated to Michigan from Suffolk, fought in the American Civil War for the Union, dying at Andersonville in 1864.

Others include -

A 2nd cousin 4 times removed who died at Ypres in 1915 aged 18.
Another 2nd cousin 4 times removed who died at Salonika in 1917 aged 18.
A 1st cousin 4 times removed who died at Calais in 1918 aged 41.

A second cousin 2 times removed from Pittsburgh, who was actually born in my home city (her parents were emigrants, her father worked in the steel mills), was a Army nurse during WWII, and she's still alive as far as I know, aged about 91. Her mother lived to be 105, but her father died in his fifties.

There's a lot of more distant American and Canadian cousins who fought in both world wars as well.

[Slavic]

My great uncles were SS and were on the Eastern Front. Most of them were killed during the USSR occupation of eastern Germany post-war. Besides them most of my family was either too old or two young during any major wars.

My father was a few months from his number in the Vietnam draft, but he was planning on going to Canada if that happened.

[Hrafn]

I come from Sweden, which means my people hasn't been in a "real" war since 1814. There has been a large number of Swedish volnteers in foreign wars though, and in modern times Swedish "peacekeepers" have seen combat in Congo, Afghanistan, etc. Fortunately, none of my family are to blame for such things.

A lot of people from countries involved in WW1 and WW2 have, or so it appears, bizarrely many cool or tragic family stories from those periods. My relatives weren't much for military duty at the time - for example, during WW2 two of my great grandfathers owned farms and thus avoided the draft, as to not increase the food shortages. Another one was a crippled union activist, and didn't get taken in either. My maternal grandmother's faher though, he was conscripted. Posted on the Norwegian border. His tales were quite harrowing - he spoke of having no artillery to fend of the blitzkrieg, he and his comrades having to chop down spruces, clear the trunks off and paint them black, fashioning dummy cannons. And he spoke of guard duty - standing out there during the night. Trains would come over the border, unlit carriages. The troops were instructed to look the other way, as the government helped transit Nazi troops from occupied Norway to the Finnish Front. So, neither very cool or tragic, just sad.

Prior to that, I got a few ancestors who served as part of the allotment system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_allotment_system) during the 19th century, but none saw any type of conflict.

The only "interesting" thing I have been able to find is the fact that one of my relatives, the son of two ancestors and of course thus the brother of another, was conscripted by Charles XII, and defected during his Norwegian Campaign in 1716 to the enemy side. I highly approve, I must say.

[Queen Mab]

My great-grandfather fought in Burma during WW2 and died of malaria. My grandfather took part in the invasion of Egypt during the Suez Crisis. That's all I know really.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I have two relatives that I know of who saw active service, both in WWII

My Nan's uncle Jimmy Reid was an Irish immigrant who joined the RAF, becoming a tail-gunner. In 1944 the Lancaster he was in was shot down. It was his last sortie before leave and he was 23.

My granddad's eldest brother Ray saw some service in France and Germany late in the war, but I think he spent most of his time in the army as a guard at the Nuremburg Trials. Saw what was left of the Nazi leadership in the flesh, I believe. He died the year before I was born and he made chairs as a hobby.
E:
I have two half-litre steins Ray bought back from his time in Germany somewhere, they're pretty nice to drink out of.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I'm a genealogist, so I have an entire list.

Private Joseph Gatchell (1743-1793), Pennsylvania Militia, Revolutionary War (my maternal 5th great-granduncle)

Private David Gatchell Sr. (1751-1808), Pennsylvania Militia, Revolutionary War (my maternal 5th great-grandfather)

Private Jacob Grindstaff (1760s-1844), North Carolina Militia, Revolutionary War (my maternal 5th great-grandfather)

Private English Crawford (1767-1842), Mounted Volunteers of East Tennessee, War of 1812 (my maternal 4th great-grandfather)

Sergeant William David Kelley (1828-1909), Union Army, U.S. Civil War (my maternal 3rd great-grandfather)

Corporal William English Crawford (1838-1920), Union Army, U.S. Civil War (my maternal 2nd-great-granduncle)

Corporal Edward Mackintosh Sr. (1870-1937), British Army, 2nd Boer War and World War I (my paternal great-granduncle)

Lance Corporal Robert Sutter Mackintosh (1879-1938), British Royal Marines, 2nd Boer War and World War I (my paternal great-granduncle)

Private Gordon Albert Joseph Dee (1889-1951), Canadian Expeditionary Force, World War I (my paternal great-granduncle)

Private Russell Dee (1892-1917), Canadian Expeditionary Force, World War I, Killed in Action at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in France (my paternal great-granduncle)

Private First Class Alford Preston Crawford (1904-1980), U.S. Army, World War II (my maternal granduncle)

Private First Class Neal Eldred Crawford (1910-1963), U.S. Army, World War II (my maternal grandfather)

Private First Class Phillip Herbert Sanders (1911-2002), U.S. Army, World War II (my maternal granduncle)

Private William Arthur Dee Sr. (1912-1980), Canadian Army Reserve (my paternal grandfather)

Sergeant Millard William Crawford (1913-1982), U.S. Army, World War II (my maternal granduncle)

Private First Class William Arthur Dee Jr. (1941-), U.S. Army (my father)

Staff Sergeant Neal E Crawford (1953-), U.S. Marine Corps (my maternal uncle)

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

One of my ancestors was apparently a member of the Culper Ring, the famous spy ring during the American Revolution. He was caught and was imprisoned in one of the infamous prison ships docked at New York Harbor. The only reason he survived was due to a prison exchange between the Redcoats and General Washington.

Lessee.....I also had a couple of ancestors who fought for the Confederacy...one of whom was apparently a full-blooded Cherokee, which means my ancestry also stretches back in American Indian history.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Both my grandfathers fought in WWII. One in the navy and one in the army. I have a great-great-great grandfather who fought in the civil war. I believe he fought for the union but I'm unsure.

Sent from my C6522N using Tapatalk

[Devrim]

My fathers' father fought in four wars, the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War. You would wonder how he found time to have nine kids really.

Devrim

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

One of the direct ancestors of my mother through the paternal line - my great-times-something-grandfather - was a captain in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, fought in some colonial scuffle or another, and was raised to the petty nobility.

Both my grandfathers fought for the Partisans during the Second World War.

My father legged it in order to avoid the civil war, proving that he had more brains than any of the people listed above in my post.

[Igor]

my all grandfathers fought in ww2 on the finnish side and one of my great grandfathers fought on the red side in the finnish civil war

e: oh yeah one of my grandmothers was a veteran too, in lotta svärd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotta_Sv%C3%A4rd)

[Fakeblock]

An ancestor of mine was killed by British colonials in the First Chimurenga war in Zimbabwe in 1896.

[Ro Laren]

My great great something grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War and then eventually helped build some Baptist church up here. I've been to the church and seen his gravestone but don't really know that much.

My grandfather just barely missed being sent off in WWII. Other than that, and some random cousins who fought in Vietnam, I don't really know.

[Durruti's friend]

Most of my war-involved direct and indirect ancestors were fascists :unsure:

(long stories alert)
My paternal great-grandfather's brother Stjepan was a pretty high ranking ustaša (nazi collaborator) during WWII, like deputy minister of the interior or something like that. He got to that post in a weird way, though. His other brother got beaten up to death by the police for being involved in the assassination of king Alexander in 1934, but had before hidden some bombs in that guy's house, which were too found by the cops. He was then listed as an ustaša supporter by both the royal secret police and the ustaše movement themselves. Later the ustaše, once in power, gave him an offer to join their movement and he was soon promoted to that. He was shot in 1945 by the partisans. His daughter's husband lived in his house while being a Communist party informant, surviving the war.

My paternal grandfather's uncle was a Jewish man under the name of Aron Fleischmann, christianizing himself somewhere in the 1930s and becoming Zvonimir Mesić. He got conscripted in the royal army in April 1941 and after its collapse he returned home, only to find he has been proclaimed an un-aryan. I guess he pulled some strings then, because a few months later he got the title of an honorary aryan. That meant he wasn't in any direct danger of getting sent to a death camp, but also that he could be recruited in the fascist army, which happened in 1942. A year later (1943) he was killed in combat.


My dad's grandfather got enlisted in the royal Yugoslav army in 1941 as well, deserting a few days later and never getting back in uniform.
All of my grandparents were too young to fight in WWII and too old to do so in the 1990s. That said, my paternal grandfather almost got taken to the Jasenovac death camp by the ustaše for living in a Serb house and for being of Czech descent. He was saved by a German soldier who threatened he'll kill them if they try to enter the house. Later on, during the 1950s, he was conscripted in the JNA and served his time on the Yugoslav-Albanian border, becoming a warrant officer (for being a doctor) and seeing some pretty sick shit there as well.
My dad also served in the JNA in the mid-1980s and almost volunteered in 1991, thankfully rejecting the idea at the last moment.

My mother's side of the family is similar - with her father serving in the JNA in the 1960s and getting the rank of corporal for joining the Party. His native village was burned in 1991 and he was close to joining the army, even though he was over 50 at the moment. My grandmother was born after WWII and only served in some civil defense units, which also meant handling guns and some sort of military drills.

Concerning that village of his, it was a famous ustaše stronghold during WWII and almost all of his older brothers and uncles were fighting on their side. My great-grandfather and a few of his brothers didn't join because they were already taken prisoner by the Italians, in whose occupational zone the village was situated. In the psychotic chaos of that war, they were imprisoned by their alleged allies in the Rab concentration camp for being "Croatian nationalists". All but one of them survived the camp, but I don't know exactly how they got out.
That granddad's older brother was, unsurprisingly, in the fascist militia, but his war story went on a little different. He was part of the force occupying the western-Bosnian town Bihać when the Partisan offensive in late 1942 begun. Soon, Bihać was liberated by the Partisans and my great-uncle got wounded a few days prior. He 'welcomed' the liberation in a hospital. When the Partisans entered it, they presented all the wounded fascists with a deal - they'll join them or they will be shot. My great-uncle was quite a wise man and chose the first option, thus becoming the one and only partisan fighter from his native village.

I think my maternal grandmother had some cousins who joined the partisans as well, but I'm not sure about that. Further in history I've had cousins who fought in WWI, one of them dying on the Serbian front in 1914.

Wow that was a lot of typing :lol: