Comments

Episode-2120- Andy Fancher on WWII Heroes and their Stories — 14 Comments

  1. Jack,
    One of my favorite episodes ever. Your guest and his mission, your business advice for him and Crazy Train to top it off. Off the rails man.

    You just seemed to be in a really good mood too. Cheers man!

    John

  2. Hey Jack,

    Hot D@mm, what a great show!

    Nice tips for business for him as well.

    Nice to see there is hope and what a great way to inspire others on Getting S’ done.

    Thanks for all you do, and keep on.

    Regards,

  3. Episodes still not updating on stitcher. Last episode available on stitcher is the thanksgiving special.

    • My hands are tied on this, there is no way for me to do anything about it, all other services are updating fine. It isn’t anything on my end.

      Have you tried our android or iphone apps?

      • That’s odd.  Are they trying to exploit content creators to promote their stitcher premium Service?  Your podcast seems to be the only one that isn’t updating (out of 20 or so i listen regularly).

        I’ll check it out. Thanks.

  4. Great interview! Very sharp young man.

    This entire episode made me think of my father and the 34 missions he flew over Germany in a B-17. His generation of men and women (don’t forget the what the people at home gave up to support the war effort) made many sacrifices.

    About 4 years ago my Father ask me if I would go on a Honor Flight (https://www.honorflight.org/) with him. It was an outstanding experience for both him and me. He talked with me more about what his experiences in WW II than he ever had before.

    I believe that the discussion about why WW II vets did not seem to suffer the same PTSD impacts as in subsequent wars is spot on. In my fathers case, he was in England when the war ended. I believe that he said that his squadron had to wait 6 to 8 weeks before they departed on a ship from England to the US mainland. The trip across the ocean took about 2 weeks. He was then given a train ticket to get from the east coast back to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I ask him about ticker tape parades and honor parades. He said that participation in ticker take parades was actually limited to a very small group compared to the number of people that served. He also said that the only thing he really wanted to do when he got back, “was to get home”. His B17 flight crew continued to have reunions and keep in touch with each other up until just recently when there were not enough of them left to have a reunion.

    I wish that Andy Fancher or someone like him would have been around to record some of my fathers experiences before it was too late. While it is to late to record my fathers experiences, it is not too late for the remaining vets that served in WW II. But the clock is ticking WW II vets are passing on at an average rate of 362 per day (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistics). It would be really great if the TSP community would get behind Andy and support his efforts to record these vet stories.

  5. I remember as a kid asking my dad questions about his time in Vietnam, but he was usually brief and did not say much about it. Came to find out much later he saw some extremely horrendous things, stuff he is still dealing with now. My grandfather didn’t talk much about his time in WWII either. I think in some ways it is/was harder for them to talk about those things with family, especially their children or grandchildren, than it is with someone who’s a relative stranger and doesn’t already have a relationship with said veteran. I’m glad Andy is doing this, both for the sake of history and for any catharsis that the interviews might give the veterans.

  6. Wonderful episode, and for me especially timely. I’m helping to coordinate a community show of WWII memories at our little local museum: the whole gamut, not only overseas service and home life but also Civil Defense, German POWs who worked on local farms, civilian war workers, etc. It is amazing what is coming out of attics and the stories that go with these treasures.

    I think it is correct that the time it took to return played a role in readjustment. The outstanding movie of 1946 “The Best Years of Our Lives” is about that readjustment. It is fantastic; very, very moving, at times funny, sometimes heart-wrenching, a terrific movie.

  7. One of the best episodes ever.  Andy should look to local or the state war memorials to see if there can be some collaborative promotion.  A friend did “Virginians at War” series of interviews with WWII vets for the Va. War Memorial about 10 years ago.  It is still used in the state public school curriculum.

    Regarding PTSD from WWII – I think part of the reason it wasn’t a “thing” is that when they got home, there were so many of them that they just HAD to go to work and get on with living.  If they hadn’t, the nation would have collapsed back into a depression.  I don’t know if people today realize just how many served in WWII.  Many of the WWII vets I knew or in my family never spoke of the war.  But they were functional alcoholics.  They came home from work every night and drank 3,4, 6… beers, scotches, or a bottle of wine.  Anything to let them sleep I believe.

  8. Andy keeps referring to himself as a kid, sounds like a man to me.  Nice work Andy, I’m looking forward to watching through all your interviews.  The oldest WWII vet (Richard Overton) is down here in Austin, let me know if you come down to interview him, I’ll show you around town if you’re up to it.

     

    Did we break the  http://www.andyfancher.com website?  I keep getting a ” connection attempt was refused” error.

    Also, if you’re asking for your audience’s input on what you could work on next, I would love to hear stories from the Korean war. This is one that I don’t know much about but would love to hear more from those that fought.

  9. …one more note, if you make it down to Austin I’m happy to take you to the range to shoot a Garand and/or M1 Carbine if you’d like.

  10. Incredible young man. As soon as I got out of the car after listening to this interview I shared his Facebook page on my FB page. FB loves sharing from other FB pages so it should get out to a good number of my friends sites.

    I also challenged any young Canadians to take on a similar task. I suggested one YouTube channel for their stories and asked for volunteers from numerous communities to consider aggregating their videos on the one channel.

    Of course, a single individual doesn’t benefit as much if they are strictly a contributor to a single channel. We’ll see what happens.

  11. Very good interview. It reminds me of a book I read called Last of the Doughboys. A guy interviews WW1 vets who are like a hundred at the time. A good supplement to this interview. Also very informative about that time in history.