"Wargaming leading to request for Historical Research" Topic

Often first time guests to our home see my miniatures collection and ask "Do you know a lot about History? Could you look at some papers I have from my relative who served in WW2, Korea, the Civil War, etc…
I have been able to find enough info to answer some of these questions. Here's what I've been able to tell people so far.

1) "Your uncle, a tailgunner on a B-24, was shot down over Austria while flying his 25th mission."

2) "Your father fought at Imphal."

3)Your Great great grandfather WAS at Gettysburg, but his battery never fired a shot".

4) Your father wasn't at Ponte du Hoc, but did help open up the Vierville draw.

5) Your ex-husband was no where near the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963.

Anyone else have interesting experiences with similar requests?

I Had seven uncles fight in World War 2. Two were killed (italy and Pacific) and 3 were wounded and one of those (lost both legs and an arm died when he got home due to the wounds.

I had Great-great uncles fighting on both sides of the American Civil War.

That is a story worthy of respect Rudy

That's pretty cool though being Danish doesn't lend itself to much war heroics.

"Your grand father was a potato farmer during that time in 1916 when we were concerned the Germans might visit a bit too long" :)

Plenty of people who had family in the resistance in ww2 but that's rarely documented well and otherwise you have to go back to 1864 or 1848

Sad to say-- yes.

The questions I get though are..

"Who won the American Revolution?"

"When was Robert E. Lee the President of the United States?"

"You have degrees in history ! That's great! Can you proofread my manuscript of a romance novel I am writing for accuracy! It's about a woman in England in Victorian times and her lover is Napoleon. It's in the 18th century right… ??"

Like a sap I did. The manuscript was 700+pages. Pretty much pure soft core porn.

You're a lucky man Bad Painter.

A coworker's father was in Company C, 2nd Ranger Battalion on D-Day. She asked me to look up his military records. I tried and couldn't find a thing in the online archives. Could not even find a record of his enlistment. The only thing I can think of is that his records were completely destroyed in the St. Louis records repository fire back in the 1970's.

The first rule of family history research should be: Don't believe anything that you are told until you can verify it.

My late friend's mother decided to research her husband's ancestors. His surname was Penn, which I believe to be a Cornish name. It didn't take much digging to find that his grandfather was a Mr Ah Ping of Canton.