Dad was in Europe with the 11th Armored Division. His group of engineers came into France late in the war. He said they laid mines, cleared mines, built bridges and blew up bridges. He just turned 83, and we have been going through papers and photos from the war. He has some stories he wrote at the time, and other stories that he has been writing down and/or verbally sharing. One of his papers is the story of a 3-day march. He talks about digging foxholes in frozen ground, and how the mortar fire inspired them to dig fast. At the end he says he had never been so cold or so tired.
Eager to escape a mean stepmom, my mother joined the WACs on her 18th birthday. She was stationed in Manila (Philippines) as a chaplain's assistant. She passed away in 1990, and I don't remember that many of her stories -- except the one about how they figured out that sanitary napkins made good padding for the shoulder straps on their backpacks. ;) But Dad and I have been looking through her scrapbooks from the war, lots of interesting clippings and photographs.