I'd like to share some of my grandfather's stories from Korea. He just recently stared sharing, and apparently has only told me. He told me his doctors said it would help him to tell someone after all these years.

Anyway, feel free to contribute your own/ your relative's stories if you would like. The ones are not about the glory of war so if you are expecting "Killed fiddy men!" story you'll be disappointed.

>pic related
>1951
>Grandpa is 19
>Gets drafted for Korea
>Be 1/4 Cherokee, so looks Korean
>Apparently can't be assigned a combat role because of this
>Still issued an M1 though
>Kinda funny he ditched it as soon as he got to Korea and picked up a grease gun
>Assigned to a unit that picks up bodies after conflicts
>Sometimes months after conflicts, sometimes several days.
>He says he can still smell it.
>No equipment, no gloves, no aprons... just 4'x4x1'' pine boxes to put the bodies into.
>Yes 4'x4'. They had to break the legs of the intact bodies to fit them in.
>The boxes were apparently re purposed shipping containers.
>The policy back then was 4 "long bones" made a "body" to send back to the states....many times there wasn't enough left to send back.
>Tells me he'll never forget what it's like to pick a boy up by the forearms, only to have the flesh slide off into you hands.
>I don't know how long he was there...maybe a year.
>Gets back to states
>Wash hands 8 times a day for years
>fast forward 60 years
>still have nightmares
>Walk into his kitchen and see a pile of bodies on his kitchen table.
>blink
>The're gone
>Still wakes up screaming sometimes

He told me never to join the army.

He also told me he was sorry to share, sorry that I now had to know what he did.
I have more specific stories that involve the enemy as well...