The Last Voices of World War II

| May 25, 2020

 

WWII documentaries from NatGeo:

https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/05/07/nat-geo-commemorates-75th-anniversary-wwii-ve-day-new-documentaries.html

And this one, with WWII vets relaying their memories of it:

https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/05/06/national-geographic-magazine-honors-last-voices-world-war-ii.html

 

A fitting salute, to those few, those happy few, who are still with us: The Non Nobis and Te Deum

 

 

 

 

Category: Real Soldiers, War Stories, We Remember

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ninja

Thank You for sharing, ExPH2.

Looks as if the ninja family will have to wait to watch the National Geo documentary when the Channel does a Rerun on that Episode since it aired last Thursday.

aGrimm

PDF re the statistics of deaths and woundings in America’s wars (via the VA; 2016 update)

https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/va-veterans-62017.pdf

As done regularly and every year at this time, I offer a special prayer for those who died in our battalion during my time there. To every soldier who fell in the service of our country – a long, slow salute.

David

Interesting, especially if you compare the 16 million total in uniform and 300,000ish dead with the Covid hysteria.

5th/77th FA

Thanks for sharing Ex. Like ninja, I’ll have to catch a rerun…at somebody’s house that has cable tv. Digging around to see if I can find a www stream on it, no joy yet.

I would have loved for our Papa to have lived long enough to want to talk about his WWII experience with C Battery 741st FA. To my knowledge he never said more than a paragraphs’ number of words about it. To any of us. Researching the history of his unit and speaking with one of the survivors of the 741st is the only way we got any idea of what they went thru. He survived everything from Normandy Jun ’44 to Patton’s staff car accident in Dec of ’45 and was killed in a truck wreck not 5 miles from home. His oldest was not yet 15 and the youngest was born 7 months after his death.

David

Try Pluto, they are streaming a 2003 series on WWI. Well done, very informaive. Factoid: from three nations alone, over 150 generals died. Bit of a contrast with now…

USAFRetired

The last of the WWII generation of my family died last year. She was my Mother’s oldest sister originally joined the Navy (WAVE) during the war. After separating she rejoined the USNR and retired as a Chief Yeoman in the late 60s.

We still have a veteran of the Korean (and Vietnam War) amongst us, an Uncle elder Statesman who married my Mother’s number 2 sister.

FuzeVT

The first time I was really aware of the WWII generation passing away was about a decade ago. I belong to a WWII forum started by the daughter of one of the men in my grandfather’s unit in the war (540th Combat Engineer Regiment). We had about a dozen WWII vets on there that posted quite frequently when I joined in 2007. After about 3 years, there weren’t many left and after about 2013 there weren’t any. We had always gotten obits of the moderator’s friends she had made passing, but they really accelerated around that time. It was sad to see these guys I had just met pass on.

If you are interested in WWII history (especially US Engineers) then check out the link on my name. Sadly, there is not a great deal of traffic there any more, but there is a lot of archived conversations with WWII vets. I’m CaptO on the boards.

FuzeVT

I found an updated “America’s Wars” PDF:
https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf

It’s amazing that there is still 1 Civil War child still on the VA benefits rolls. 29 (and 36 spouses) from the Spanish-American War?! Holy crap!!