Three of my four grandparents served during the war, but none were in combat units.
My father's father was from Quebec and dropped out of university to sign up with the RCAF. He volunteered for aircrew duty but failed the eye exam, so he was instead trained as a meteorologist. He served at a
Commonwealth Air Training Plan facility where he became close friends with several of the pilot instructors. They would often take him for rides in Harvards and Tiger Moths.
My mother's father was a British citizen. He volunteered with the RAF, but he had a master's degree from Cambridge, so the brass didn't want to waste his education. He was therefore not assigned to aircrew duty but was instead trained as an intelligence analyst. He served in London during the Blitz where he often had to ride his bicycle to his HQ during Luftwaffe air raid; on one occasion he became the luckiest survivor of the war when a stick of bombs fell with one just ahead of him and one just behind. He was later deployed to the Mediterranean Theatre where he was stationed in North Africa and Italy.
My mother's mother (also a British citizen) joined the
WAAF and served as a wireless operator at an RAF Bomber Command airfield. Her saddest story from the war was telling us how her fellow Waafs would always count the number of bombers returning from a raid early in the morning, and it rarely matched the number that had departed the night before.
My great uncle enlisted with the Canadian army and was trained as an anti-tank infantryman. His unit was one of the first to hit the shore at Juno Beach on D-Day. He made it home alive an uninjured, but he
NEVER spoke about his experiences in combat for the rest of his life. If anyone asked him questions about the war, he would only talk about the fun he had with his buddies in England before being sent to France.