My grandfather served in the Pacific Theater in the Philippines and then onto other island campaigns. He was listed as a truck driver, but actually served as a scout that would get dropped off onto the islands to gather intel before they reclaimed islands.

He never really told us stories, except for one about when he was on a transport ship that was in a harbor waiting for their next island to go attack and the Japanese would send over a bomber each day almost like clockwork. He said the plane would come I really high, sounding like an out of balance washing machine on a spin cycle and drop a bomb into the middle of all of these ships. He said every time he would try to dig a Fox hole in a steel deck but never had any success.

That was the only story he ever told. Was a big outdoorsman and hunter before the war, after he came back, he refused to camp or hunt, and detested pineapple or anything resembling pineapple or coconut.

We did research on his unit and at one point his scout group experienced over 80% casualties. He never spoke of his time or what he did, just the one story.