My sincerest respect to all those who have served.
I recently had the opportunity to talk to my grandpa who is now 94 about his WW2 service. He doesn't talk about it. But on this day, for whatever reason, he and I were alone and he opened up.
Turns out he was in the 36th Texas assigned to the attached howitzer division; they drove the Germans to the North up and out of Italy. He was at the battle of the Rapido River (ala Monte Cassino), regarded as one of the worst military blunders in history, and fortunately was at the back. I think over 1,500 US infantry were lost in like 2 days, he choked about that big time. "Those poor guys just got slaughtered."
Since he was of Austria-Hungaria descent, he spoke fluent German and so was a forward observer with a radio for his first two weeks in Italy prior to be reassigned. At one point, he was a Captain's guard and rode in the Jeep. They gave him a rifle with only 3 bullets. "They wouldn't gimme the whole magazine." He asked what the deal was with the 3 bullets and was told "if the Germans get to this Jeep- first you shoot the driver, then you shoot me (the captain), then shoot yourself."
At some point they captured an "Anzio Annie". The Krupp K5 was a German mounted railway gun with a 283mm barrel (11.1") measuring over 70 ft long. He said "the damned ground shook from a long way off" when the Germans fired it...
My mother and her sisters don't even know this stuff.