Wwii Veteran Quotes

When you go home Tell them of us, and say For your tomorrow, We gave our today.

Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they scarified, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book {Unbroken} is dedicated,

Were there atheists in foxholes during World War II? Of course, as can be verified by my dogtags . . . A veteran of Omaha Beach in 1944, I insisted upon including ‘None’ instead of P, C, or J as my religious affiliation.

This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.

It is for their descendants, the descendants of all Americans, and for readers everywhere that the veterans tell their stories and pass on their memories and their spirit. So, here, they kiss their wives and sweethearts goodbye, turn to brush a tear from their cheek, and rush to the enlistment center, eager, fearless, and very naive.

Perhaps what unites this group of disparate souls is their unique sense of humor, one only an eighty or a ninety year old has. With each of those who shared their tales, I’ve smiled, chuckled, laughed out loud, and occasionally doubled over and laughed till I cried.

Like their counterparts who served on the front lines, however, they too rushed to enlist on hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They served just as proudly and proved every bit as instrumental in winning the war, whether they served in Europe, in North Africa, in the Pacific, or at home. They, too, have stories to tell.

Somebody is in a queer state of mind, perhaps behaves oddly, and no reason for this can be discovered at the time. Later—a month, a year, 10 years—the cause of this effect reveals itself. Because of where or what or how I am now, I behaved in such a fashion then.”54 Priestley called this the “future-influencing-present effect”—not unlike what later researchers would call presentiment but unfolding in many cases across a much longer timeframe of an individual’s life. In his 1964 book Man & Time, Priestley described several examples. One letter-writer was a WWII veteran with what we would now call PTSD, who experienced a “breakdown” during the war and relapses of his condition thereafter. He credited his recovery to a somewhat older woman with children whom he met and married after the war and, by the time of his writing, had a teenage daughter with. But “for a year before he met his wife or knew anything about her, he used to pass the gate of her country cottage on the local bus. And he never did this without feeling that he and that cottage were somehow related.”55 Another, older letter writer recalled being a girl during the First World War and when out walking one night in London, “found herself looking up at a hospital, quite strange to her, with tears streaming down her cheeks.” Years later, she moved in with a woman friend, and they remained partners for 25 years. “This friend was then taken ill and she died in that same hospital at which the girl so many years before had stared through her inexplicable tears.”56 Priestley also gives an example from two acquaintances of his own: Dr A began to receive official reports from Mrs B, who was in charge of one branch of a large department. These were not personal letters signed by Mrs B, but the usual duplicated official documents. Dr A did not know Mrs B, had never seen her, knew nothing about her except that she had this particular job. Nevertheless, he felt a growing excitement as he received more and more of these communications from Mrs B. This was so obvious that his secretary made some comment on it. A year later he had met Mrs B and fallen in love with her. They are now most happily married. He believes … that he felt this strange excitement because the future relationship communicated it to him; we might say that one part of his mind, not accessible to consciousness except as a queer feeling, already knew that Mrs B was to be tremendously important to him.57

While at sea, a Marine officer displayed a giant map on a wall. It showed the volcanic island known as Iwo Jima. “We are only in reserve! The other divisions will be landing in the morning, and we will stand by in case they need us,” an officer shouted to the men. As Woody’s ship floated out, the men started to get worried. The other divisions had 80 percent casualties on the first day.

Since there was no need for Woody as a flamethrower-wielding demolitionist, Woody went back to being a rifleman.

Marines were raising a flag on top of a mountain. It was the iconic event later known to the world as the flag raising on Mount Suribachi.

my flamethrower nozzle fit perfectly inside of it.” Woody inserted the flamethrower into the smokestack and held down the trigger. It poured a violent stream of fire down into the fortification. In a single act, he burned the occupants to death and silenced the machine guns that had killed dozens of U.S. Marines.

Of the eight million WWII veterans who used the GI Bill, only about sixty-five thousand were women.34 That’s 0.008 percent.

Learn it right, and you will do it right the rest of your life. Learn it wrong, and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to get it right… and in battle, you meatheads that get it wrong—the rest of your life will be very short.” —Sgt. Steve Prazenka, WWII veteran, 28th (Bloody Bucket) Division

And whereas in WWI and WWII the symptoms of stress were apparent during or just after combat, and were treated using frontline clinical care (sometimes called “forward psychiatry”), combat stress during the brutal Vietnam War was rare.62 The spike in the prevalence of combat-related trauma among veterans of the Vietnam War only occurred well after the United States left Vietnam—hence the postwar development of the apt term “post-traumatic stress disorder.”63

He befriended Adolf Galland, and once, when walking into a room full of Luftwaffe veterans, he raised eyebrows when he said “My God, I had no idea we left so many of you bastards alive.

When the big German guns at Calais fired on us, we realized, we had been strafed by Spitfires from the RAF during working up exercises for the invasion, accidentally attacked by the USN off Normandy after D-Day and shelled by the British Army in the English Channel. It was about time the enemy took a few shots at us too!" Jack Harold, RCNVR, Signalman HMCS TRENTONIAN Chapter 9, White Ensign Flying -The Story of HMCS TRENTONIAN.

A wedding is a mash-up between loved ones and strangers, who politely spend the hours attempting to sort out complex familial alignments while slowly getting plastered.

Not long ago we heard about a group of students visiting the Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah, Georgia. The docent leading their tour, a P-47 veteran from WWII, was asked, “Did you serve in World War eleven?” Sadly, the person asking the question was the teacher. God help us.

In full uniform, the color guard marched by as part of the parade. And as they did, he forced his horribly slumped and deeply aged body out of his worn wheelchair and stood to ram-rod attention. He held a salute until the guard had passed, and then he feebly collapsed back into his wheelchair. As I stared in ever-warming admiration, emblazoned across his hat I saw the words “WWII Veteran.” And while I deeply admire his stirring passion for our country, I stood there wishing that my passion for the cause of Christ might someday be strong enough to lift me out of the many wheelchairs within which I sit.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 A gentleman who had read One Heartbeat Away emailed me one day. He said he was a WWII veteran. He made the fatal error of putting his phone number in his email, so I called him! We had the neatest chat. He was a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge! I told my mom that I had history on the telephone. So I picked his brain for a while. He said he had seen a copy of One Heartbeat Away lying on a table at a VA hospital and perused it a bit. He also told me he loves to read, so he figured that if it was left on the table, then he could take it! When he emailed me, he had already read the book once and was half way through it for the second time. He said, “I have three hundred years of Catholicism in my family. After reading this book, I am now trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, for my salvation.” All I could say was, “Wow!” Then he said, “My mind is sharp as a tack. I love to read. You got any more books?” Well, we sent him everything I had at that time. In his next email, he let me know that he had read One Heartbeat Away three times through, front to back, and he was telling everyone he could about Jesus! If you live in Ohio, there is an 89-year-old evangelist roaming around, so you better watch out! This veteran made the decision to break the cycle of Catholicism in his family. No more rituals. No more good works to get to Heaven. No more, I hope I get there. No more infallibility. He is trusting in the blood of Christ, and nothing else, for the washing away of his sins. He now wants everyone else to have that same blessing as well!

Once, in a village cafeteria, a woman asked how he would like his coffee. "Serve as in Hell, boiling hot.

I do not worry about dying – when you get to my age you never think about it, you just carry on with life and enjoy it.' Vernon Jones - Ox & Bucks Light Infantry - D-Day Veteran