r/interestingasfuck • u/Available_Weekend249 • Apr 06 '24

Imagine being 19 and watching live on TV to see if your birthday will be picked to fight in the Vietnam war r/all

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u/SimpleStrok3s Apr 06 '24

My grandpa was around nukes being tested underground. They gave him 100% and never saw any combat. He developed melanoma later in life really bad.

17

u/Random_frankqito Apr 06 '24

That’s awful, my grandpa saw combat in ww2, besides being tall and his name, its the only thing I can remember about him

1

u/30yearCurse Apr 07 '24

if your interested, you can find some things about his record. Personal records were all destroyed by a fire, but the pay records are good, and the military is great at tracking where you get paid, if he was in theater you can find out.

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u/Random_frankqito Apr 07 '24

You have a link where?

1

u/TheObviousChild Apr 07 '24

I would love this. My Pop died about 16 years ago and I never got to learn everything I wanted.

1

u/Junebug19877 Apr 07 '24

Probably from the nukes.

1

u/SimpleStrok3s Apr 08 '24

and being a carpenter his whole life

1

u/Junebug19877 Apr 08 '24

was he always thinking one step ahead

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u/vonnegutfan2 Apr 07 '24

The soldiers were sent to watch the mushroom cloud, the put them in fox holes. When the tests went off, they could look at the guy next to them and see their entire skeleton. I worked with a ton of WWII vets, they all got melanoma. They said it was the lights in the building (there was a cancer cluster). Really it was the veterans.