Doolittle_Raid

Hello RallyPoint, hope you guys are doing well. A little deviation from my usual Q&A posts here this time. Although I am using the link to the topic very loosely, it does pertain to what I am about to share with you today.

A long while back after all four of my grandparents passed (may they rest in peace), I was rummaging through some old trinkets of mine when I found my grandpas' (both of their's) memorabilia. A bit on my family is that they were from the ROC (Republic of China)(Pre-1949 China/Post-1949 Taiwan). As with any male that reaches the age of 18, they were drafted into the military. Granted, both of my grandpas got lucky and were commissioned as officers, and at the peak of their careers (spanning from the early 1930's all the way to the mid 1950's) my maternal grandpa was a...'shaoxiao' I believe they call it (equivalent to a major, I believe) and was a pilot for the ROC Air Force, and my paternal grandpa was a 'shangxiao' (a full-bird colonel) and was the commanding officer for an infantry regiment in the ROC Army. Regardless, there was something that I found quite peculiar in their memorabilia.

When I was looking at their memorabilia and I noticed a really old (and crumbling) photo along with their memorabilia. In the photo was my paternal grandpa with his unit, marching (I guess nowadays, called rucking). The issue that I had was that I noticed one of the guys in the background was a little different looking than the rest of the people there. When I asked my old man (who himself was also an infantry vet) about it, he surprised me with the news that my grandpa was an officer in one of the few "official" Army/militia units that went to go pick up and escort the surviving crew members of the Doolittle Raid back to friendly lines. This did surprise me, I knew that both my grandpas took part during the Second World War, but it really did shock me to know that my paternal grandpa was there in that piece of history. My old man finished telling me about my grandpa's time in the ROC Army during WW2 with how when news got out that not all of the Doolittle Raid crewmen got out and that at least 3 were executed, it weighed heavily on my grandpa's conscience as he saw that it was an incomplete/failed mission.

Couldn't help but post this on here and share that little tidbit as I remembered that day. Hope you guys are all well.