War stories

You don't have to go back to your grandparents generation for war stories. Sadly, you can get frightening war stories are emerging from this generation. A friend of mine teaches wheelchair ballroom dancing to young soldiers who lost limbs in Iraq or Afghanistan. For every war mortality there are hundreds more wounded or disfigured and thousands more afflicted with post traumatic stress syndrome. My mother is psychologist who helps people with post traumatic stress syndrome. She has many many more patients now than before, and many more arriving.

My grandad passed away in December and I flew home to see him in his last few days. He was a remarkable man, grew up in the London boroughs during the war, narrowly missing the draft criteria. He was a pattern maker and was very skilled in his trade. He sold one of his designs to Bissell who have since patented the same design. His main claim to fame was the making of prosthetic limbs. To say he was a genius on a lathe is an understatement. He had a convertible before it was cool lol He would build model ships and cars and spend countless hours telling us about his childhood. I miss him very much but I'm glad I asked him many, many questions when he was alive.

Apologies Thunderbird. I don't mean any disrespect to any of the men and women out there doing an amazingly good job, considering all the media backlash they sometimes suffer. Brave is all I can describe them as.

They know what they are getting themselves into - which is even more scary. They know the risks and it's people like them who keep us safe. I admire them all.

The point I was trying to make is that when our Grandparents went to war, they didn't know what they were fighting for (I know this is true from speaking to some soldiers who have come back from the 1st Gulf war).

Let me amend the post....

"Tell me your war stories"

I don't think that would work as it's too raw for those involved.....

I wish you could have met him as well Scouser My other Gramps was an army pilot in WWII, now he was a trip!

A few years back while working as a salesman I went to an elderly lady's house to give her a quote.

She made me a cup of tea and of course we chatted a bit and WWII came up. I asked hwer what she did in the war and she said "oh pretty much like everyone else, I just did what i could to help the war effort"

Anyway, a couple of months later I'm watching a documentary about an incredible group of women who worked for the British secret services and were parachuted behind Nazi lines in places like France and Belgium, where they spent months helping resistance movements and carrying out acts of sabotage all he while knowing what the cost of capture would be, because eventually most of them were caught.

In this programme they interviewed a couple of the surviving women, and I was amazed to see this old lady who I'd given the quote to was one of them!

And as far as she was concerned she'd just "done what she could".

So you're spot on scouser, they have amazing histories and we owe them a debt beyond measure.