D Day Photos

[Snipersnest]

I'd like to go to Europe someday and visit where my Dad fought during the war. I have a friend who was a Dutch Marine. It'd be a good trip seeing the battle areas and also visiting my friend.

[SemperFi1977m]

great link; thanks for sharing :-). I would love to go see Normandy myself someday.

[Riverpigusmc]

Originally Posted by Snipersnest

I'd like to go to Europe someday and visit where my Dad fought during the war. I have a friend who was a Dutch Marine. It'd be a good trip seeing the battle areas and also visiting my friend.

Me too..my dad went ashore at Normandy..lost him last year..be interesting to see

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by Snipersnest

I'd like to go to Europe someday and visit where my Dad fought during the war. I have a friend who was a Dutch Marine. It'd be a good trip seeing the battle areas and also visiting my friend.

Where did your dad see action? did he come out of it unharmed?

Originally Posted by Riverpigusmc

Me too..my dad went ashore at Normandy..lost him last year..be interesting to see

If you come this way, do let me know, it's not that far from where i live.
And i live near the Westvletern abbey, we gotz great beer round these parts.

Offer stands for any of you , be happy to offer a tour of the Ypres Salient, and some of the WW2 sites North of France... Just gimme plenty of heads up if you want to come, so i can make the time.

[Snipersnest]

Originally Posted by svandamme

Where did your dad see action? did he come out of it unharmed?

He was with the 3rd Armored Infantry (Spearhead Division), Belgium, Germany and France. He received no wounds, but as a result of being a sole survivor of an ambush, he did have severe PTSD.

[svandamme]

Did he talk to you about it?

My grandfather, well, he only was a drafted soldier briefly,
basically the location where they were supposed to organize themselves was overrun before any of them even got there during the Blitzkrieg advances in the early days.

He was captured, sent (marched) to Stalag XIIIa where he was POW for 3 to 4 months.




After that he was sent home again, and later ordered to Hamburg as a forced laborer in some kind of chemical factory (special paint coatings, we think for V2)..

So he never saw real combat, i don't know if he actually had PTSD..
But for the rest of his life he never wasted any bit of food, never threw away a single screw he could re-use...
He never said much about his experience in captivity... I presume they endured allied bombing in Hamburg and i can't imagine what that must have been like.
But he never really talked about it much... He passed away 6 years ago..

In his final years he became more at ease with things.. but i wasn't around i was abroad.. much to my regret...

So now , i've been looking up info on where he was during the war, planning to visit Hamburg, i've heard that the place where he worked still existed 15 years ago, now trying to find out if it still does exist...