The Missiletoe Command Arcade & Slushy Bar

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aliwood

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And Mom said, "Junie, this is Prentiss Rhymer. He was the boy on the train that day."

After all those years, he had just turned up in our church. He had kin in the area, and had retired here to be close to his family.

Aw, isn't that cool!

Himself's mum once told me about when she was out one day during the war. She lived in East London, just East of the East End (trust me, it makes sense with a map). She's minding her own business wandering from shop to shop down a road. She takes a good look in a second hand shop and then crosses over the road to look into somewhere else.

No warning, no noise, nothing, not even the whistle you get in war films. Bomb drops, glass, dust, brick, rubble everywhere. She's covered in everything from head to foot, but she's ok. She turns around and the shop she was just looking in is now a shell. A few bits of wall and a great big crater in the middle, window and all the stuff has just gone.

If she hadn't have crossed the road she would have been dead.
 

jallenecs

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My uncle Arvel (husband of my mother's older sister) was a driver on the Red Ball Express. He said that they would put a can of beans or whatever on the manifold of the truck when they first set out. By lunchtime, the food would be hot, from the heat of the engine, and they would eat it.

One day, he is driving along, and somebody started shooting at him. I don't know all the details, but he ended up stopped, and hiding under the truck until the shooting stopped. Suddenly he hears this big BANG! and his face is covered with hot liquid.

He freaks out, sure he'd been shot. Nope. The can had exploded, and he had beans all over his face.

They had an episode of MASH where almost the exact same thing happened. I can't watch it without thinking of my Uncle Arvel.

I never heard any stories from my Uncle Jim, who was part of the Occupation Forces in Japan. But we always joked about it among ourselves. My Uncle Jim was 6'7" In Japan. We always said he was the inspiration for Godzilla. :D
 

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:Hug2: Junely.

And great stories guys and gals.
 
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My uncle Arvel (husband of my mother's older sister) was a driver on the Red Ball Express. He said that they would put a can of beans or whatever on the manifold of the truck when they first set out. By lunchtime, the food would be hot, from the heat of the engine, and they would eat it.

One day, he is driving along, and somebody started shooting at him. I don't know all the details, but he ended up stopped, and hiding under the truck until the shooting stopped. Suddenly he hears this big BANG! and his face is covered with hot liquid.

He freaks out, sure he'd been shot. Nope. The can had exploded, and he had beans all over his face.

They had an episode of MASH where almost the exact same thing happened. I can't watch it without thinking of my Uncle Arvel.

I never heard any stories from my Uncle Jim, who was part of the Occupation Forces in Japan. But we always joked about it among ourselves. My Uncle Jim was 6'7" In Japan. We always said he was the inspiration for Godzilla. :D


Engine cooking! My great-uncle talked about that a lot when I was younger. Everything from beans to whole meals wrapped in aluminum foil.
 

jallenecs

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but apparently this single soldier asking some random girl to write to him was a pretty common happenstance?

That's my impression. I read this book about the North Platte Cantina, and that sort of thing apparently happened a lot.

If she hadn't have crossed the road she would have been dead.

Wow!

Now, see, I've always thought that the London Blitz was a gold mine of story potential. So many opportunities to introduce SF or F (or horror) elements into such a chaotic and frightening time. Hmmm......
 

aliwood

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He freaks out, sure he'd been shot. Nope. The can had exploded, and he had beans all over his face.

:roll:

I'm trying to remember any others. I remember my grandad - the other one, was captured and not being an officer had to work his imprisonment to get board and ration. He had medical training - basic first aid in the St John's Ambulance. They sent him to some Schloss and he and his fellows had to look after other wounded prisoners. They had very few medical supplies and my mum says that my grandad would literally shudder if you mentioned the word 'gangrene' in his presence.

I remember him saying that they knew that D-Day had happened before any news came around the camp because the night before there had been some pretty serious bombing going on and the camp he was in then, you could see three cities burning in the night sky.

It was all lit up, all around - that's how he put it. They could hear the bombers flying over, wave after wave.

He showed me a few things he brought back. I think my gran has them. Money, playing cards, some cigarettes.
 

aliwood

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Wow!

Now, see, I've always thought that the London Blitz was a gold mine of story potential. So many opportunities to introduce SF or F (or horror) elements into such a chaotic and frightening time. Hmmm......

Well exactly, wow! The thing that got me though was when she told me the story - the look on her face. She was right back there. I think the word is 'incredulous'. I think this particular incident was late on in the war because of the silent bomb.

The saddest story I ever heard, or rather read, was on a plaque at Bethnal Green tube station. They were doing a practise air-raid warning. A woman slipped on the stairs and (according to Wikipedia) 173 people were killed in the crush.
 

jallenecs

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:roll:

I'm trying to remember any others. I remember my grandad - the other one, was captured and not being an officer had to work his imprisonment to get board and ration. He had medical training - basic first aid in the St John's Ambulance. They sent him to some Schloss and he and his fellows had to look after other wounded prisoners. They had very few medical supplies and my mum says that my grandad would literally shudder if you mentioned the word 'gangrene' in his presence.

I remember him saying that they knew that D-Day had happened before any news came around the camp because the night before there had been some pretty serious bombing going on and the camp he was in then, you could see three cities burning in the night sky.

It was all lit up, all around - that's how he put it. They could hear the bombers flying over, wave after wave.

He showed me a few things he brought back. I think my gran has them. Money, playing cards, some cigarettes.

I'm spoiled for choice, myself. My Uncle Arvel (Red Ball Express, Army), my Uncle Jim (Occupation forces, Japan, Army), my Uncle George (SeaBees, Navy, Pacific Theater) and my Uncle Eddie (no idea) were all in the war, and all had stories. My father was only a civilian attache, but tons of his classmates, kin, and friends served in various capacities, and my dad loved and collected all their stories.

The coolest guy I met personally through this was one of my cousins, named John Robinette (I think it was Robinette; I'll have to ask). He was also a civilian, for the same reason as my dad, a birth defect. I don't know what the real name for it is, but around here it's called "sparrow chest," or a deformity of the sternum and chest bones. Anyway, like Dad, he had made up for his physical defect by being a good student (my dad studied chemistry; John studied physics).

HE worked with Oppenheimer in the Manhattan Project. I don't know what he did, and he never told me any stories, beyond the fact that he thought Oppenheimer was a prick of the first water.
 

LadyV

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As someone who grew up in Nebraska, let me tell you there are a lot of truck stops. :D

Good to know. :)


All this talk about WWII and the only thing I can contribute is that my grandfather was a WWII vet. He was also POW and received many honors, including two purple hearts.


ION: I'm slowly getting through my current chapter, but I don't like it. Things just seem silly but I don't know how else to resolve the problem. Hopefully, my betas can help we with that.
 

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Only thing I can add to the WW2 thing in terms of personal stories is that my grandfather on my mother's side worked on a submarine in the British Navy... and all that time, he couldn't swim.

That's it. That's all I got.

In writerly-based news, a lot of things are happening. Or rather, a lot of things want to happen in one story and they can't all co-exist so I need to choose... which is like choosing a favourite child because I like them all so much.
 

FOTSGreg

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Only it doesn't.

And on this side of the war I'm on much firmer footing, because modern Japan is something I studied in much greater detail.

It wasn't just about the Philippines: we were scattered all over the Pacific, including spheres of influence in China. Remember, the Doolittle raids were launched out of China. Japan had aspirations of creating an empire- albeit using what was already an outmoded model, but nonetheless an empire along the lines of what the British had. They needed the resources available throughout the region, and this was in fact the practical reason they were seeking such an empire in the first place. (There were geopolitical considerations as well, but securing resources the islands of Japan did not themselves have was a major point.)

Now while the Japanese didn't want a war with us, they did know they were going to have to deal with us, and our navy, eventually. Japan probably knew this better than anyone else, seeing as it was our navy which showed up in the 1800s and forced them to open up to the West in the first place.

Which was why the attack on Pearl Harbor was supposed to cripple our fleet (only the carriers weren't at Pearl). They weren't naive enough to believe we wouldn't retaliate, but the goal was to knock us back far enough that by the time we recovered sufficiently, Japan's conquest of the South Pacific would be a fait accompli.

And there really wasn't anything else for the Japanese to worry about. The Chinese were not a sufficient threat, being essentially in the middle of a civil war in the middle of the world war, and the Australians weren't numerous enough to pose a major threat.

And politically, achieving that empire was seen as crucial for Japan's future. They were operating on the model that all great powers were empires, and Japan saw itself as such.

Point of order - the Doolittle Raid was launched from US aircraft carriers across Japan and into China due to fuel considerations and the vulnerability of the carriers to potential discovery by the Japanese fleet. Hence, the carriers moved to just within range, launched the raiders, and boogied leaving the bombers to overfly hostile territory and (hopefully) make it mainland China and (reasonably) friendly territory.

Point of order - The Imperial Japanese Army essentially had more political clout than the IJN. The IJA *did* want war and essentially forced Adm. Yamamoto to commit the IJN to war. Yamamoto's famous quote "I will run wild for 6 months" was accurate almost to the day. In addition, Yamamoto vehemently argued against any proposed invasion of the US mainland. His response, having gone to college in the US, was "there will be a gun behind every blade of grass".

Point of order - Both the IJN and the USN originally anticipated a decisive deep-water/blue sea naval battle between their combined fleets and the enemy's. Even after Pearl Harbor there is evidence that Yamamoto wanted a decisive surface engagement between the fleets where his carriers would have delivered a decisive advantage *if* the USN's carriers had been knocked out of the war. It could be said that this was part of the Midway Plan by the IJN - to force the USN into a decisive surface engagement with the IJN's surface elements plus their carrier force. Fortunately for history there were a number of factors than forced major surface elements of the IJN to turn back.
 

amergina

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ION, the company I work for is being bought.

I live in interesting times.

(I think it's actually going to be a decent thing. Eventually.)
 

jallenecs

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I'm back at the hospital now. Nothing's wrong, just my turn to take the night shift. Mother hasn't been alone, even for a moment, the entire time she's been here; we sisters have been taking turns staying with her.

She's sleeping, so I'm thinking that I might be able to get a little writing done.
 

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Is it possible to overdose on throat lozenges? Because I've eaten about 8 of them in kind of short time frame and now my head feels funny.
 

_Sian_

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It's probably a statement on how casually bizarre my life is that I'm not at all surprised or put off by a young child randomly running into my room, jumping on my bed, then promptly leaving again.

It's just... what it's like around here.


I distinctly remember you saying something very similar s while back. The phrasing was word for word, but it was a table the child was jumping on, and it was either around your last birthday, or Christmas, I can't remember the details.

But yeah, serious case of dejavu
That reminds me.



..."All the Same" by Sick Puppies is an awesome song. =^_^=

Aussie band :D

Back from the hospital. Mother tolerated the procedure well. They found significant blockages around her heart, but she's a terrible candidate for bypass surgery, so they're going to try and treat it with medications.

She's very confused, and she's still pretty miserable. But she's alive another day, so I count this morning a win.

:Hug2: sometimes, with things you can't change, it's better to see the good in them, because seeing the bad won't help anything. I hope she recovers well.

*storms into the room*

HUUUUURRRAAAAAARRRGGGGGHHHH!

*pulls out large blunt object, begins breaking things*

*stops only when she breaks something electrical and gets zapped/thrown across the room/spontaneously given a different accent than before*

*pulls self off the floor visibly electrified and foaming at the mouth, storms off to go box with Cthulu*

It's been that kind of day.

*hands raven a lightsaber*

And if you had to pick an accent, it should totally be British :D or Scottish. Would that actually work, given you live up Nova Scotia way? *ponders*

:Hug2: Junely.

And great stories guys and gals.


Amazing stories. There's not family history on either side of the family being directly involved in the fighting part of the world war, but I know that my great grandmother, who died before I was born, was part of the information corps - it's where she met her husband. She'd run away to the army because she hated her stepmother so much as was tired of the beatings (in those days a man couldn't look after kids on his own, so her dad had married for the convenience of being able to bring his kids home from the orphanage after the death of his first wife. It didn't go all that well, apparently )
 

lilyWhite

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That moment when you're reading a thread and think "Yesterday? But I thought those posts went up just no...oh, it's past midnight, of course."

I'm off to bed. Night, all!
 

maxmordon

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June, I'm glad for the good news. :)

No interesting WWII stories here (Venezuela remained mostly neutral during both world wars) but grandpa joined the navy when he was a teenager and worked as a telegraphist.

Also, I'm reading a book on real life cases by psychologist Oliver Saks and one of the cases is of a WWII veteran who was assured it was 1945 and the war hasn't ended, mostly because that was the last time he felt useful, having becoming an inconsistent alcoholic afterwards.

There's a poetic sadness in it. War, how many died wishing to leave and how many lived, wishing to stay.
 

bettielee

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I am sure there would have been all kinds of stories, if my family had been a talkin' family. both my uncles were in wwII - the only thing I know for sure is that my grandmother was a Rosie the Riverter at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma - building planes. Oh yeah.

Grandma was a badass.
 

aliwood

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Morning :Sun:

So I've remembered a couple more things.

First, package holidays to Spain were really cheap and really popular during the 1970's. A friend of mine once related that when his parents were discussing the possibilities for their summer holiday, his mother said,

Why don't we go abroad this year?

To which his dad replied,

I went abroad during the war. I got shot at.

End of discussion!

Second, himself's brother-in-law. His father was Ukranian. During the war he fought on the Ukranian side against the Russians. For some reason I don't recall now, he ended up shooting a Russian soldier. I think the soldier may have come up to the farm to ask for food.

So, he's standing there with a dead Russian soldier in front of him and realises that he's got a bit of a problem and he can either get caught by the Russians or run away and get taken prisoner by the Germans.

He decides on the latter and eventually the prison camp he's in gets liberated by the British. He's given the choice of fighting plus British citizenship or spending the war in a UK prison camp and then getting sent back to Russia. He figured he'd take his chances with fighting as he knew it would be a lot worse to get sent back.

And morning :Sun:

It is snowing.

Boo!
 

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I distinctly remember you saying something very similar s while back. The phrasing was word for word, but it was a table the child was jumping on, and it was either around your last birthday, or Christmas, I can't remember the details.

But yeah, serious case of dejavu
It's very likely that I did. This kind of thing happens in my house. Not often enough to set your clock by, but often enough that when it does happen I'm just kind of used to it now.
 

Fenika

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Can we roast some smibbles on that stick?

I managed to not post in PCE. +100exp.

Ion, my Buffy marathon continues (slowly) and Faith is not being a team player. Xander egged her on, the bad boy.
 

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*pokes Cantina with sharpened stick*

Oy.

Ouch!

Fine, if you keep poking, I'll write. Damn it.

I'm trying to hit word count goal in the next hour, because I signed up for this special Muay Thai sparring seminar this afternoon. (Also known as four hours of "don't hurt your partner for real" fighting. I'm going to be sooooo exhausted.)
 

10trackers

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Ouch!

Fine, if you keep poking, I'll write. Damn it.

I'm trying to hit word count goal in the next hour, because I signed up for this special Muay Thai sparring seminar this afternoon. (Also known as four hours of "don't hurt your partner for real" fighting. I'm going to be sooooo exhausted.)

:hooray:

I'm editing. Well, I should be editing. I intended to be editing. I feel like editing. You know.

I looked into Muay Thai classes near here, but the closest is over an hour from where I live. This saddens me. It looks ossum.
 
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