My Dad was in the Air Corps. Wanted to be a pilot but washed out of flight school. He became, among other things, a tail gunner on a B-25. Only overseas duty was in Panama, unless you found Mississippi/ Louisiana as "foreign". Only combat was when they started a strafing run on a submarine. No US subs were supposed to be there so they attacked. Sub hadn't read the memo, but the pilot figured out that it wasn't German.

Had one uncle on the Burma Road (Army) and one on Guadalcanal (Marines). Both survived.

My Mom was engaged to a guy whose destroyed was blown up and sunk with almost no survivors near Anzio. It was a year before they were declared dead, but never recovered. She always wore that ring....

My father-in-law drove a landing craft at Iwo. Unfortunately, none of the them were every really forthcoming about what happened "over there".