My granddad

[Rogue Admin.]

My granddad, who I am named after, fought in WWII. He did not join the fight voluntarily; he was drafted. He would gladly have stayed home, so he told me, as he didn't know what was even about. They didn't own a radio, and struggled at farming. Once they had to borrow seeds in order to grow corn. Pappaw, as I called him, was a righteous man. This is a sample of what he had to fight against.

"Mussolini argued that Italy was right to follow an imperialist policy in Africa because he saw all black people as "inferior" to whites. Mussolini claimed that the world was divided into a hierarchy of races (stirpe, though this was justified more on cultural than on biological grounds), and that history was nothing more than a Darwinian struggle for power and territory between various "racial masses". Mussolini saw high birthrates in Africa and Asia as a threat to the "white race" and he often asked the rhetorical question "Are the blacks and yellows at the door?" to be followed up with "Yes, they are!". Mussolini believed that the United States was doomed as the American blacks had a higher birthrate than whites, making it inevitable that the blacks would take over the United States to drag it down to their level."

He was shot and nearly killed in Italy. I remember he kept the shrapnel. Anyway, thankfully, Italy and the Axis lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#:~:text=Plato%20was%20an%20idealist%2C%20focused,Lebensraum%20in%20German%20National%20Socialism.

[everything bagel]

Did your grandfather fight in the Mediterranean theater?

[Rev J]

So technically your Grandad was ANTIFA.

C/S,
Rev J

[Undies]

my papaw also fought in wwii. at least according to his obituary, that took up an entire page of the newspaper, which he wrote himself. granted, he was in high school at the time and joined the army just after the war ended. but that didn't stop him. he also married a younger woman, by scratching out the birthdate on her birth certificate and making it several years later. he's also well known for donating the large statue that looks over our family section of the cemetery. he did donate that, the funny story there is that he obtained it by making his son steal it from the company he was working for at the time.

my favorite papaw memories are simpler things. like the time he took us to the amusement park and played the "guess your age" game, and the girl guessed his age so he just said he was 5 years younger than he was and took the prize. or the time on christmas he drank way too much vodka and kept screaming at me to feed the damn cows, which was really confusing because he didn't have any cows to feed at the time so i didn't know what the hell to do. unfortunately i wasn't there, but another fun story was when he drank too much vodka again, and decided that driving down the train tracks would be a good shortcut home.

my other grandpa was less entertaining. he just thought it was hilarious to squeeze my kneecap and make me squirm.

[Audiogen]

Both of Grandpa's fought in Wars, one in World War II, the other in the Korean War. I know very little about my Grandpa that fought in the Korean War, although he came to one of my little league games and walked out onto the field from the stands during the game and he was a prolific alcoholic, died by drunk driving onto some flooded closed off road.

My other Grandpa who fought in WWII I grew up with, he had PTSD. I don't remember exactly where he was stationed but he went somewhere in Europe later in the war and I recall him recounting how the stench of the streets was horrific from all the dead bodies and I enjoyed hearing his stories but he never really was all that eager to talk about them. He was awarded a purple heart, there is a pretty awesome photo my mom and uncles have of him and his unit covered behind some object, forget if it was a tank or container, looking like they might be about to flank some enemies or something.

Aside from travel ball, he made it to most all of my baseball games growing up, picked me up from pre-school most of the time and first couple years of grade school before I started walking from school. He was pretty funny too, always ragging on the local pro sports players and coaches when they weren't doing well, for example when Steve Mariucci was the 49ers head coach and they would be losing he would call him Maricoochie.

Never really thought about it at the time but he was probably at the forefront of using commercial wireless headset technology. Being hard of hearing, he had a wireless headset connected to the television so he could separately adjust the volume while the rest of us had it at a standard volume. I don't think he cared much for the music I listened to or MTV. I sometimes watched older TV programs with him, stuff like Gilligan's Island or Happy Days. In my naive understanding of PTSD, I found amusement when the cat would attempt to jump on his lap while he was napping and startle him.

Other than his flashbacks, he had a stoic reservedness about him that I don't think could be called anything other than Cool.

[Matthew Mussolini]

There is a lot of propaganda about Mussolini being racist that isn't true. There was a huge campaign to make him look like the ugliest scumbag in politics and many false-quotes attributed to him that make him look stupid.

The people who killed Mussolini in cold blood without a trial, urinated on him, threw stones at him, used him as target practice , and pissed on his grave to the point he had to be dug up and hidden in a friary for 12 years, those are the pathological liars that write the history about Mussolini.

Since Fascism has become the ugliest word in politics, leftists went on a campaign to make Mussolini the most hideous leper politics has ever seen, because he founded it. At least they tried to.

Mussolini's favorite visitor who left the biggest impression on him was an Indian Hindu named Gandhi.

Mussolini's favorite author was Indian Nobel peace prize winner Tagore who didn't even want to respond to Mussolini's invitation at first because Tagore was the opposite of a Dictator.

After Tagore actually met Mussolini, he lost fans for, "singing the praises of Mussolini".

He was a slaves abolitionist like Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah, he was really racist.

[Sooz]

My Dad's father was in WWII but was not well when he came home.
He died when we were visiting for boxing day back in 1984

[Meliai]

my grandfather was in WWII as well

He was once gifted a map showing his journey through Europe:

he was in the 4th infantry division

Fun fact, when the 4th infantry went into Paris, Ernest Hemingway acted as their civilian scout because he knew and was friends with some of them

Anyway the war fucked my grandpa up pretty badly, he died when I was 11 but he and I had no relationship when I was a kid even though I saw him pretty regularly. He just was not interested in his grandkids or people in general, except my grandmother. He really loved her which was sweet. Arent they precious?

[Meliai]

my other grandpa went out west by himself when he was 14 and became a rodeo and vaudeville star. I never met him, he died when my dad was a baby but I'm so interested in him and his adventurous spirit

I have this story he wrote once about how he was camping out somewhere in Montana under the stars with a group of men he had met who were also rambling around and exploring, and how no matter how big the sky was or how free you felt you always missed your mother after everyone went to sleep and you were alone

[6-eyed]

My grandfather also was In WWI. He was a surgeon in the South Pacific and spent those years in the Philippines, New Guinea, and Australia.

He wasn’t much of a story teller but I saw pictures of him and the banana tree he planted in front of the infirmary where he worked.

He also sent home this hand carved treasure chest he got in the Philippines to my grandmother. I inherited this bad boy and I keep it in my living room.

[Guest]

My pappaw was In World War II as a tanker in Germany. He was in Pattons army. There was a book written about his division because they captured a key bridge. The bridge over Remagen

[Guest]

My grandfather also was In WWI. He was a surgeon in the South Pacific and spent those years in the Philippines, New Guinea, and Australia.

He wasn’t much of a story teller but I saw pictures of him and the banana tree he planted in front of the infirmary where he worked.

He also sent home this hand carved treasure chest he got in the Philippines to my grandmother. I inherited this bad boy and I keep it in my living room.

awesome chest!!