Urban legend?????

[jimpy]

I remember my grand-dad regularly wearing his old greatcoat well into the 1960's, it ended up as a blanket for the family dog!
And when I was clearing out the house and garage when my gran died 3 years ago, I found a lot of small pieces, which, with hind-sight, I should have kept, these were mainly tools etc.
The one thing that I do regret not hanging onto when I cleared the house was what we always called the "tank sheet". It was a tank tarpaulin in heavy khaki coloured canvas. We used to put it down on the lawn as a groundsheet. That sheet had generations of kids crawling all over it and if I had known then, what I know now, it would have had another generation crawling on it, my grand-daughter was borne November 2009..........Oh well, we live and learn.

[RH1941]

My Grand-Father was on the USS Vulcan in WWII he was a diver. My Grand - mother and Grand-Father said he brought home a big Japanese rising sun flag that he took off a sunk ship.My Grand-Mother used it as a bed sheet for years.Then she put it in the celler and it got holes in it so she tossed it in the trash. He also had his dive suit but nobody knows where that went.As a kid seeeing it in the celler it would scare the crap out of me. Gary

[LAS VEGAS]

Facinating stories guys ,especailly remembering relatives involved.

[LAS VEGAS]

I have one genuine story where an ex girlfriend wore one of my german m16s,i will leave it there as i dont want to offend??????TRUST ME NO URBAN LEGEND.

[HARRY THE MOLE]

The only 'family' things I have from the last war are my uncles medals and his paybook. He served in the Royal Artillery on Bofor's AA guns. In 1969 I joined the Artillery and also used Bofor's guns before going on to Rapier missiles. I went on to do two tours of duty in NI when the troubles were at their worst.

Being the sad bugger that I am, I kept diaries on both tours, held on to intelligence reports, newspaper cutting into the incidents I was involved in, kept back 'wanted' lists and photo's, obtained IRA propoganda and took many photo's. I kept my '13 TROOP' T-shirt and still have my beret which I wore on my very last 'op' in NI - a Templar (car checks) outside North Queen Street RUC Station on the 11th October 1974.

I had hoped that one day I would have a son to pass them down to, but both my children are girls - and my only grandchild (for now) is also a girl! Lets hope she grows up to be interested in militaria. I did at one stage put the material to good use, and wrote the diaries up as a book. But unfortunately (so far) no publisher has shown much interest. I am usually told that... 'No-one is interested in Northern Ireland.'

Harry.

[JimboCymru]

G'day All,
I've actually seen a number of German helmets converted into coal scoops before, in exactly the same manner as discussed. Perfect shape for it, i guess and what else would villagers do with them? I've never seen a paratrooper helmet used in this fashion though....enough to make ya cry!

Cheers
Jimbo

[rickyodicky]

Among the loot my grandfather brought home was one of those sets of knife/fork/spoon/canopeners nicely marked gag42 on all pieces. He ate with it everynight, according to my mom. When he and my grandmother divorced, my dear old granny stole it from him, and tucked it away in a drawer. I think it became her "loot". She eventually passed it on to me, and I ate with it every night until I saw my wife serving the Christmas potatoes to my relatives with the large spoon! It's now tucked away. I'll post a pic of it if interested. rick

[Walkwolf]

A friend of a friends dad brought back a WWII German helmet that they
used to goof around with as kids. My buddy, an avid collector, always
wondered if they still had it, but never bothered to call and ask.

When the price of original unmessed-with helmets got high enough
30 years later, he decided to call on his friends mother who
still lived in the same house. He asked if she remembered
him and how they used to play with the helmet,
and old mum said:




Oh, that, I took it to the Goodwill last month.......








Regards, Steve........ .

[Brian T]

Every time I think about this I cry...
My grandfather passed away in 1984 and grandma wanted to clean out the house. She new he had a "gun" in the attic and wanted it out of the house.
Unbeknownst to me, several months after his passing, my mother took that "gun" down to the local police department and turned it in.
One of our local police officers got the gift of a German luger from our family and I powerless to stop it from happening (of course I was only 9 too)!!!!
It still hurts and my therapist is helping me get over it....

[davejb]

My dad used to wear a genuine german naval pea jacket to work for many years after the war, minus the insignia, which he threw away, also a thick white roll neck jumper, that had a kreigsmarine eagle patch across the front, again he threw that away, he was given a nice luger with holster and fully loaded with spare magazine, he gave that to a friend of his, and also a huge pair of Zeiss binoculars that my uncle gave him that came off the Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser, noone knows what happened to them, the only thing that i ended up with was the 2nd type kreigsmarine naval dagger from the same ship, minus the hanger straps and the officers naval belt which went missing many moons ago among the family