For the past year or so, majority of my research has focused around my great-grandfather, S/Sgt Pasquale Cichino, who served as an armorer-gunner with the 373rd Bomb Squadron, 308th Bomb Group in China. What started as an attempt to understand his personal military service has grown into a investigation much larger than I expected involving crew records, mission history, aircraft, decorations, photographs, wartime documents, and firsthand accounts from the families of the men he served with.

I recently discovered WarCommons through a connection with Nick on LinkedIn and decided to join. I’m looking forward to meeting other WWII researchers and historians, sharing what I’ve uncovered, and hopefully learning from everyone here as well.

Looking forward to being part of the community!

— Chris the Historian

Spark to WWII came from seeing Saving Private Ryan as a kid probably 10 or so, watched it in secret after bedtime.  That tiger tank was so cool! Albeit as a kid I always thought it was a Sherman tank but heh, don't think they really told what tank it was in the movie properly.  My family of course got ties to war as we fought Russia in WWII. Winter war and Continuation war and Lapland war. From my dad's side 10 brothers went to war but only 3 came back. Not much really was talked or passed down to my generation, sort of don't speak thing. And now everyone dead. So I don't know details sadly. Someone told me my family may have had 1 of those 10 take part in Waffen-SS (the one finnish send) but no idea if that's true or not. Probably when my parents die I will do family history search. Until then it's just history without details :)

Or share as much about yourself as you like! Welcome to the community. 

- Nick