WWII Selective Service

[jcole]

You mean you didn't get to sit on the Group W bench?

[Jimaz]

You mean you didn't get to sit on the Group W bench?

LOL. No. I think this was just some kind of preliminary registration. No other inductees were present. Memory fails. I don't even know what happened to my draft card.

It just seemed surreal that everyone took this draft ordeal so seriously and then all of a sudden, without any official public announcement, everyone just ignored it. It was every bit as bizarre as Alice's Restaurant depicts. Strange times.

[gnome]

In the spring of 1936 my dad and his buddy, lied about their ages, and signed up for the Michigan National Guard. They spent that summer at Ft Custer learning the art of being yelled at.

After training they returned home to Pontiac to play football and smoosh on cuties at Pontiac High.

Then the Sit-down strikes start at GM in December of ‘36. A lot of rough stuff by law enforcement and GM private security against the workers. Organizers returned the favor and knocked some heads as well.

Michigan elected a new Governor that fall and shortly after he took office, Governor Fitzgerald, called out the Guard. He sent the Pontiac Guard to Flint so they wouldn’t have to fire on their fathers, brothers and uncles.

That how my Dad spent the winter, manning a Browning M1917 water cooled machine gun.

He was 17.

When WWII came around Dad was the driver for Harry Kelly, then the Governor of Michigan. Mr. Kelly had lost a leg in The Ardenne in 1918 and driving a manual transmission was difficult. So Dad chauffeured Governor Kelly and all his kids around.

Although considered “essential” which kept him out of the draft he enlisted in the summer of 42. Processed in Lansing, shipped the Ft Custer but eventually ended up at Camp McCain [[named after Sen. John McCain’s grandfather) down in Mississippi.

shipped to England in December of 43, landed at Utah Beach on June 7th or 8th. 3 Purple Hearts during the next 11 months. Part of Patton’s 3rd. 2 Bronze Stars and 1 Silver Star.

Died at age 76 with a Nazi bullet still in his leg.

[gnome]

Corrections.

-Harry Kelly was Secretary of State when my dad was his driver. Mr. Kelly didn’t become Governor until 1943.

- Two Bronze Stars, not 3

[slick]

I turned 18 in 1973 and my random sequence number was 35. But I was classified 1H as draft was suspended at that point in time.[/QUOTE]

The only Lottery I ever won. #11 in the first lottery, 1969? Won a trip to Fort Knox, reception center and basic. Assigned for two years at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville AL.

My Fathers Army records were destroyed in a fire at the records center in St Louis. I know he was in Europe in WWII, Artillery company.

[shovelhead]

Went to my local draft board to file an address change. Recruiter was having a slow day, his office was next door and he was standing outside.

We were talking and he was selling. I wasn’t interested as I was pretty well set in working and in my personal life. He got around to the question of what my lottery number was using that as a bargaining chip so he thought.

When I told him [[waaay high, close to,the end of the 300’s) he looked at me with a slight dejected look and said “Women, children and small animals are gonna get called before you do!”

Hey, we both did have a laugh over that at least.

[oladub]

In June 1940, the [[Canadian) government adopted conscription for home service in The National Resources Mobilization Act, which allowed the government to register men AND WOMEN and move them into jobs considered necessary for wartime production. The act also allowed for conscription for the defence of Canada, but did not allow conscripts to be deployed for overseas service.

In WWl, French Canadians did not want to serve because they considered the war as being too English. So in WWll Canadian conscription was limited to war related military or production jobs in Canada. Some French Canadians however participated in the European theater in mostly French Canadian units in WWll
'
My father and one of his brothers were working in the Falkonbridge Ontario nickel mine after WWll began. Their rural northern ON community was made up of Swedish and Norwegian families who leaned toward sitting out the war like so many French Canadians until Germany invaded Norway. My father and three of his siblings joined the RCAF and one sibling joined the Army. My father was rated as an air frame mechanic and carpenter in Newfoundland. The brother who joined the army was KIA near Marseilles. His unit was the 1st [[Canadian) Special Service Force that wore US uniforms. During the war the 1800 man unit accounted for some 12,000 German casualties, captured some 7000 German prisoners and sustained an attrition rate of over 600%. Bravery, of course, is not inherited by nephews. One other brother who had medical problems worked as a longshoreman in Windsor.

One thing I learned in reading through a couple of Wikipedia articles is that French territory St. Pierre and Miquelon is about 14 miles from Newfoundland/Canada was part of the French Vichy government during WWll.

[lpg]

My dad just turned 33 when was drafted in WW2. He served with the 5th AAF. New Guinea, Luzon, Okinawa and with the Army of Occupation in Japan. He was discharged in December 1945.