Cub Driver wrote:

This is pretty ironic, if true.

Why is it ironic? Thousands--probably hundreds of thousands--of
Americans have fought against their own or their parents' homelands.
They included William Patrick Hitler, who served in the U.S. Navy in
WWII.

Reminds me of an incident described in Hub(ert) Zemke's (auto) biography
"Zemke's Wolfpack." The 56th was moving into a new base (I can't
remember if it was Horsham St. Faith, Halesworth, or Boxted), and taking
it over from the RAF. 5 or 6 56th pilots including Zemke had flown in,
and Zemke introduced them to the RAF officer waiting to turn the base
over. Along with Zemke, Schilling and Goodfleisch the others were also
of German ancestry, and the RAF officer joked that he felt like he was
turning the base over to the Luftwaffe ;-).

ISTR reading in one of Roger Freeman's books on the 8th AF that Zemke
had an uncle killed in the German military in World War 1, and a couple
of cousins in the Wehrmacht were killed on the Eastern Front in World
War 2 while he was flying in the ETO.

Guy