My grandfather was in WW2 also, as an infantryman in the Army. I personally only ever heard him reference it in the most simple ways. I.E. maybe something like “I was in that city in Belgium,” or what have you.
As an adult, were he still alive, I would point blank ask him more questions. He died when I was around 23 years old, and I wasn’t super close to him, despite seeing him regularly. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to talk to him more as a grown up.
So, when he died, my dad and his brother - both of them being super close to my grandfather and doing things with him all the time, my dad told his older brother that “dad never told me that much about WW2.”
My uncle told me and my dad that my grandfather had went into some detail with him about WW2 on a handful of occasions. In short, he said it was really awful, he killed people, and he alluded to the fact he shot children, almost assuredly of course Hitler Youth, who were being put on the front lines near the end of the war.
My grandfather entered the war early, which I think they all went to Scotland first, he broke his back, came back for a couple of years to heal, got better, and went BACK for the last year of the war. He ended up in the Battle of the Bulge which from my limited knowledge of WW2 was one of the nastier battles and I believe where my uncle said he saw some of the worst things of the war.
Watch band of brothers if you want to see what it (battle of the bulge) was like. The 6th or 7th focuses on it
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