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Lamia020281 said:
Sorry to hear that. PTSD and other mental health disorders caused by the war were actually a taboo here until very recently. I believe both of my grandfathers had depression of some sort, and they never really were the same they had been before the war, wounded both physically and mentally. But I'm happy they both were able to raise their families successfully, making my appearance to this world possible. :)As I have so much of my genes from my grandfathers, I sometimes think which part of my personality comes from them.
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My great-grandfather was a medic during the winter war. He never spoke of it. His sister in law's husband was more talkative in the matter. I remember him being questioned at a birthday party of mine 15 or so years ago about his experiences and he talked specifically about how they took a machine gun sentry, or something like that, and he seemed to enjoy talking about it at 80 something years old.
 
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My dad is pretty firm that he never saw anything insane, with, 36 years in the military, he considers himself lucky. My high school girlfriend's grandfather landed on Juno Beach though. he told a couple of stories.
 
Lamia020281 said:
I believe people felt such urgency after the war to rebuild and have families, and there was a general feeling of going forward, so many men just tried to forget what had happened during the war. And men weren't encouraged to show their emotions in those days anyway, so many of them who might have wanted to talk, didn't think they could do it.
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It was obviously a bit different in Germany. Both my grandfathers never told much more than the broad outlines of their war experiences, not necessarily accurate either. On my mother's side, he was a radio operator in the Battle of Britain and became a POW after being shot down over London. In his stories, he would be a Messerschmitt pilot in Legion Condor. My mum did some research long after he died and came to the conclusion that the few stories he told were quite embellished. She did not do any further research on her uncles when she learned they were in the SS though.
On my dad's side, he never said more than that he fought in Russia and lost his legs there. He died before I was mature enough to have a proper conversation with him about it, but as mentioned earlier, I recently got some war-time letters and his war diary. I found that he lost his legs in a grenade attack at the tail end of the Battle of Kursk, but it's really more what he didn't write that gave me the chills. There is some Wehrmacht shorthand in there that looks harmless, but only if you haven't studied the war and don't know what certain words were euphemisms for.
There is a lot in there that he must have struggled to reconcile in his mind for the rest of his life, and I remember a few times he let some of it slip. But more importantly, the parts of his diary that deal with the time after his leg got amputated and he was in the field hospital are the ones that show me how he became the man I knew as one of the most generous, tolerant and educated people I ever knew and who has been a source of inspiration for all my life.
 
I'm happy that's what your grandfather became eventually. :)

My grandfather got injured because of a hand granade, and other grandfather got a serious long-term illness in those cold wartime camps.

A couple of years back I found out my grandmother had had a suitor, but he apparently died in the war. And my grandfather had a lady friend in the war hospital, when he was being treated there for his injury, and that lady had asked him to stay with her. My grandfather didn't, and then met my grandmother. But had either of them had a different fate, I wouldn't be here writing this post. :)
 
Night Prowler said:
I found a photo of him:

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Let off some steam, @Night Prowler . And don’t disturb my friend, he’s dead tired.
 
I listened to them a lot back in the 2008/09 era, and I think I saw them live at that time. But I pretty much forgot about them, put on an album yesterday for curiosity's sake and found that they are much better than I remembered them to be.
 
Speaking of Faroese, I just read that 80% of all males on the Faroers have Norse genes and 90% of all females have Celtic genes. Also, the word for "fear" in Faroese is a borrowing from Celtic.
 
Perun said:
Speaking of Faroese, I just read that 80% of all males on the Faroers have Norse genes and 90% of all females have Celtic genes. Also, the word for "fear" in Faroese is a borrowing from Celtic.
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So Vikings kidnapped women from Ireland and Scotland and settled with them on Faroe Islands ...
 
European male pools are pretty cohesive, female are more diverse. Faroese genes are probably the product of intermix of settlers that hasn't changed much because they were isolated.
 
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