Gertrude Lowthian Bell

[Lowtardog]

I have been doing a bit of family tree diggind and though I have found a branch of my family in Canada (quite a large branch actually) nothing else really jumps out to whet the whislte until I stumbled on this woman

I am still trying to see if it is another branch of the family (though I think in reality it would be a tenuous link) on the Paternal Side

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Bell

Interesting read and all the more astonishing are her achievements consdiering the times and islamic countries...hmm wargaming with ancestors does anytone else do this sort of thing?

[twrchtrwyth]

Well, 4 German Afrika Korps soldiers surrendered to my grandfather in North Africa. In reality there wasn't much commotion as such, they'd escaped from a POW camp and when they couldn't find any food they knocked on the door of the hut my grandfather was staying in and surrenderd. However, when I read about it in his diary one thing I did think was that there was a scenario for a game in there somewhere. Does this mean I think to much about gaming?

[white knight]

Well during the war, my grandfather was a choir (sp?) boy an the most action he got up to was not getting caught by the priest when he drank from the wine for the mass.

Actually... there could be a scenario in there.  ::

[Plynkes]

My existence was nearly obliterated in World War Two when the Germans bombed Church Stretton. My Grandad was manning one of two searchlights on top of the Long Mynd hill. A gunner on a German bomber fired down the beam of one of the lights, killing the entire crew.

Luckily, my genetic material was stored in a fellow manning the other light.

Don't think that would make much of a game, though.

Also had a relative who flew Lancasters, but that kind of thing doesn't really interest me from a gaming perspective. Dropping firebombs on the grandparents of Grimm, Björn and Chris etc. doesn't seem like fun either. Well, it ain't really that aspect, just that WWII aerial gaming doesn't really grip me.

And I had a cherished great-grandfather who was at Ypres (but I don't know which one, I, II or III). He was in the Royal Artillery, but was shell-shocked and never spoke of the war to me, sadly. So I know nothing of what he did. He was an odd fellow to the end of his days (though a lovely, kind man), and one can't help but feel it was the Western Front that did that to him.

In my childhood I had a small legion of elderly maiden aunts who lost their beaus in the Great War, and never looked at another boy afterwards. Would be nice to know the stories of the men who might have gone on to provide me with uncles, and unnumbered second and third cousins, had history proved more kind. But I don't even know who these men were, let alone what they did.

Another relative on the other side of the family was in the Royal Engineers in the Great War. I have his medals, but I never knew him, so missed out on whatever stories he may have had too.

So a big blank really, unfortunately.

[Weird WWII]

My grandmother worked a war room switch board in Nebraska during WWII.  One day coming back from lunch she was surprised to see a couple jeeps pull up in front of her and the MPs pulled out their weapons and started running right at her.  Being the crazy woman she was she reared her purse up to attack and just before she walloped one of the MPs she was told to get out of the way as they ran past her.  Well, what she didn't see was a group of Italian POWs were trying to escape to the parking lot behind her and the MPs were giving chase.

One of my grandfathers were killed rescuing the crew of a downed B17 out of the Channel.  I guess a German plane strafed the boat plane he was a crew of.  Several of the boat plane's crew and one of the downed B17 crew were killed as well.

My other grandfather was a Tech Sgt and drove one of the Wrecker Sherman's with the big crane boom on it.  He had all sorts of crazy stories but the most thrilling was he was part of a recover group that were headed out to recover a tank at night just short of the front.  Well as they rounded the corner of a heavily wooded road they didn't realize that the vehicles in front of them had driven into the woods for cover because up the road right smack in the middle of the road was a Panther tank.  They thought it was the tank they were there to recover but as they got closer they realized it was a bad guy and they smashed into the woods for cover and dismounted and ran back down the road.  Luckily for them the Panther had been immobilized by the tank they were they to recover and it was abandoned by it's crew.  He said that he faced allot of combat but that was the most frightening because if there was a German behind that gun they would have most certainly been killed.

Oh and the twins he meet in Germany were pretty scary too but that is for the porn blogs :wink:

The rest of my kin during the war were farmers.  My mother can remember doing paper, tin and rubber drives for the war effort.  She helped my grandmother make a Victory Garden and volunteered to help decorate the USO for the parties they had there for the wounded troops that were in a nearby hospital.

Just a snippet of my kin during WWII.

Brian

[Ironworker]

My grandfather drove jeeps in WWII.  He didn't speak much of it but he was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Silver Star for bravery.  We have a telegram about the Silver Star I think but the location is blacked out due to the fact that it was sent during the war.  He got the Silver Star for driving his jeep filled with ammunition across a pontoon bridge under direct artiliry and machine gun fire to a group of pinned down men who were out of ammunition on the other bank.  He owned the pistol of a german officer who nearly killed him during the Battle of the Buldge.  A buddy of his killed the german first.  One of his jeeps was his by a greanade which destroyed the jeep and injured him in the resulting crash.  He spent some time in the hospitle due to and injured hip from the crash.  While there he turned down a purple heart because he didn't want to worry his family and didn't feel his injury merited one.  He suffered from the injury later in life and had to walk with a cane.
 
That's pretty much all I know other than he was spared at D-Day because he was assigned to drive a general who went in well after the beach was secure.  

We have a great picture of him sitting in his jeep with a pair of goggles pushed back on his head.  There is a truck with troops riding in the backgroud and a little boy and girl walking down the street.  French or English kids I assume although he did participate in the occupation of Germany so I guess they could be germans.

[Jules]

OK - This will be a little bit long but here goes.  My Father fought on the North west frontier between the wars.  He was buried in the 1933 Quetta Earthquake and lost all of his body hair.  Later during the war he worked codes and cyphers in the intelligence Corp and claims (always interesting if not ness true with my dad) to have served for some time in each of the major theatres except northern Europe.  He claims he worked with lay force pre LRDG.  He was captured by both sides first by the Italians which lasted three days till the front line changed again in 1940/41.  Once by the Brits later.  He was moving around a bit between HQ to work on cyphers and had taken to using a bmw and sidecar as his mode of transport.  He was stopped by some British soldiers who thought he was a spy as he was riding a German vehicle he thought they were Germans dressed as Brits, in fact they were South Africans.. He painted a very amusing picture of the scene... took a few hours to sort out.

My wife's father won the MC for stopping the German attack at Anzio.  But talks little of the events as he lost all his closest friends in about 20 mins of battle.

My Grandfather on my mums side surrender in the First World war with his entire regiment ( they were Czechs) and was in Russia during the Revolution which influenced him into being a life long Communist.  Escaped from Germany in 37 Czechoslovakia 38, Poland 39 to end in England were my mum stayed after the war. Lots of story's of the escape attempts he was particularly wanted as he was a prominent member of the so called degenerate artist.

My other grandfather killed a guy in Macon County and escaped to England as a horse handler with Buffalo Bills circus. (he was a Cherokee).  

And it just goes on and on... I, by my ancestors standards are a quiet normal sort of guy... well maybe there's a little of that weirdness in there.....

 Maybe I'll put it down on paper one day.

[VonAkers]

My Dad syas his uncle "Pat" flew Hurricanes for the RAF during  the Battle of Britain.
Twice to Buckingham palace to be decorated he says.
cheers

[Westfalia Chris]

Interesting thread.

My maternal grandparents were refugees from Pomerania, and I´m understandably reluctant to game something like that - however, shortly after the war, my grandfather allegedly swapped a bucket of potatoes for a painting which some soviet soldiers had "requisitioned" at Schwanenwerder, allegedly from Joseph Goebbels villa... a lot of "allegedly", but it makes for an interesting story.

Now, my paternal grandfather had invented the radio tube that made the "Volksempfänger" radio set possible and had quite a reputation at the end of the war, going by the moniker "Röhrenpapst" ("radio tube pope"); subsequently, in 1946, he and my grandmother were "evacuated" by the Soviets to a research facility south of Moscow, where my father and uncle were born in 1947 and 1949, respectively (since the Soviets didn´t get too many of the rocket people, they took what they could get).

My father proved to be the bane of mechanical alarm clocks ("lookout, the kid´s got a screwdriver!") and gave my grandmother a real scare when they were about to be repatriated in the early 1950s - right on the day of departure, he was suddenly gone, and found just in the nick of time - waiting at the train station from where they would be going.

There COULD be a game in there, I´m sure. ::

[PeteMurray]

My maternal grandfather got polio in the 20s, and so was ineligible to serve in the war. One of his brothers, Uncle Joe, was a radioman on C-47s, and turns out to have been involved with most of the history of the 101st Airborne, including D-Day and the miracle of the pack artillery shells at Bastogne on Christmas Day. Uncle Cholly spent his service in Italy, and never, ever, ever talks about it. Even when the whole family was clamoring for him to join one of those "Greatest Generation" projects that cropped up after Saving Private Ryan, he never said anything.

My paternal grandfather was an engineer on B-29s in the closing months of the war. He was part of the firebombing of Tokyo and the massive raids on the rest of the country. To this day he listens to hokey old cowboy tunes because that was the only record that they had at the airfield on Tinian. Over the years, his attitude towards war has evolved. He was a pretty staunch member of the "we did what we had to/war is hell" crowd, but in recent years he's said, publicly, that what he did was an atrocity and has given him nightmares. He refused to see the Enola Gay, and teared up visibly when asked why.

[Paul Hicks]

My Mother in Law's Father used to tell her during the war he was a rear gunner in a Spitfire. He was in fact ground crew in the RAF.
 
My grand-father used to tell a story about taking some Italians prisoner without any ammunition. He entered a building then gave them a chance to give up, which they did. Problem was he ran out of Ammo, and the rest was in the bottom of his 37 Web equipment pouches. He said he always packed the things in order priority, Smokes, Tea then Ammo.

His brother was said to have sold cooked sausages for cigerettes during the War. Problem was this was on Dunkirk beach .

Paul

[Malamute]

My Grandfather was a leftenant Colonel in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and in 1945 was responsible for looking after  POWs and helped rebuild parts of Holland. He was awards a dutch medal for his services. I am not sure what it was called and haven't see it in a while.

My other grandfather was works manage for Hawker Sidley in Feltham and was responsible for building the hurricane bomber. He worked with  Tommy Sopwith(he of the Camel fame) I have a cool photo of the last Hurricane bomber with my mum aged 6 sitting in the cockpit!
He was also in the Home Guard and the photo of them look just like Dad's Army ::

[Lowtardog]

My Grandfathers were nowhere near as interesting, one was a farmer so reserved occupation he then died in 1945 of a heart attack. My Paternal Grandfather had lost his right thumb to the wrist in a train accident as a kid so was rejected when he volunteered in 1939 he was a marine engineer so worked on ships on the tyne repairing damage, straffed a couple of times during the war whilst working  and an ARP Warden but no tea and medals.

My great grand father was a Bosum in the Merchant Marine in WW1 and was torpedoed twice in which both ships sank

His son (my uncle jumped ship in Australia - to get away from his father a real Captain bligh apparently) and joined the Australian Navy where he was sunk and captured and ended up in an Italian POW camp until the war was over....His name was lucky :wink:

[Hammers]

My grand father sat in fron of the radio most of the war and went "Oh dear..." a lot while lightening the sythetic pipe tobacco*)....

Not much of a story but that's what it is like to be a Swede: no good at war, pretty good at keeping out of it **).

*)With no imports but huge forrests and an an intact labour forc,  Sweden turned wood into all conceivable sorts of goods. Not having a cuisine know for its sofistication to start with made people think that wood pulp meatballs was actually an improvement. Had the war continued for another coulpe of years I am sure they would have come up with synthetic bananas.

**) A cousin of grandpa did his bit not only for Swedish peace but also for world peace as the 2nd secretary of the UN. His name was Dag Hammarskjöld***) and crashed or was shot down in Northern Rhodesia during the Katanga crisis in 1961.

***) Yes, I know; my nome de plume is not much of a disguise.

[Hammers]

...going by the moniker "Röhrenpapst" ("radio tube pope...

What a great name for a wartime Pulp superhero/villain: "Torch of Liberty vs. Rohrenpapst....

But I am being disrespectful. Touching story, Chris.