Hello and welcome to Family Stories, the podcast written by you, our listeners.

This week's Family Stories take us around the globe from bloody battles in the war's

final days to an Irishman in the British Army, a Scottish family serving King and Country,

and trying to live with what one Kiwi experienced in the Solomon Islands.

We begin this week with this from Jay Holbert, the son of a GI.

My father passed away a number of years ago.

Recently my mother moved into assisted living, and so me and my brothers got together to

clear out their home.

In one box we found the letters that Dad had written home to his parents as a machine gunner

in Patent's Third Army.

Growing up Dad never talked about the war very much.

After my own service in the US Marines he shared a few stories, but we could always tell

he was leaving a lot out.

Most of that he took to the grave with him, just like so many other vets.

Dad's World War II career was both unusual and completely normal.

He was drafted into the Army in 1942.

After basic he applied for and was accepted to the Army Specialised Training Program.

This was a program set up to meet the Army's needs for specialists in engineering, medicine,

veterinary medicine and dentistry by providing accelerated training at US universities, mainly

land grant schools.

Dad found himself peeling potatoes on a train from California to New York, where he was enrolled

in engineering courses.

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