G2G: 12 Months of Photos July 2025 Military, Police, Firefighter

Question

July 2025 12 Months of Photos sharing theme: Military / Police / Firefighter

To participate, simply:

1. Choose a family photo that fits this week's theme.
2. Add it to this month's free-space gallery.
3. Reply with an answer below to let us know which photo you're sharing. If you want to include the photo but don't know how, click here.

The photo you share might be featured on the WikiTree home page and in our social media channels.

It is requested that no "best answer" stars be given to any photo, as they are all great pictures without exception and none should be preferred over the other.

Answer 1

My niece and I at one of our open houses at the firehouse. She was 2 years old in this pic. She just turned 21 in April. Now I need to sit down.  

Comments

Thank you John for sharing this wonderful photo of you and your niece

Answer 2

This is my uncle at Basic Training in Shilo, Manitoba, Canada, before heading off to the Korean War, in 1950.  On the way, they were in a train wreck, with a bunch of casualties.  Here is an article he wrote about the crash.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Canoe+river+train+crash.-a0146175084

 

Comments

A very 'touching' story, Brenda.  After checking the location, I realized that, as a child, I had travelled the same tracks 4 times during 1950 to 1952 and remember looking out the window, at the steam engine pulling us, as we rounded a bend.

---

It's pretty scary.  He had written an earlier article for one of the veteran's papers, but it seems to be lost in space now.  It was actually much more detailed, and horrific, and strictly about the crash.

I think it was something like 56 years later, before he was diagnosed with PTSD, and got some real help for dealing with the trauma.

---

In 1975, I was 20 miles south of that location on a steep mountainside, where the high voltage powerline right of way was being cleared, when I was signaled to climb up to a tree faller and found he had fallen a large tree across his leg, which pinned him and shattered a lower bone.  He calmly instructed how the tree was to be cut, with his powersaw, and then removed.  During emergencies one's mind can work methodically, however, the memories can remain.

---

I am sorry.  That sounds awful.

Answer 3

I recently added my great grandfather's uncle, a civil war vet and a firefighter in Syracuse, NY.  Philip Eckel (1827-1886) https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Eckel-386 .  I found him through this photo in a family collection, with a note on the back: "Phillip Eckel - Uncle of LPJE" 

Answer 4

This is a photo of my husband, Capt. Mike Nelson, who was an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War. In this 1967 photo, he is getting into a T-38. The next year, he was flying supplies mainly into Vietnam in a C-141. Three years later, he was flying a combat rescue helicopter out of Phan Rang, Vietnam. 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nelson-12533

Comments

What a great photo of Mike thank you for sharing this wonderful picture ❤️

---

Susan, thank you for your sweet comment.

Answer 5

 

My father, William Henry Thompson 1899-1983, joined the Royal Navy, as a young officer, when his family returned to England, from the Okanagan, in preparation for WWI.  Near the end of the war, about 20 of his group of officers were stricken with spinal meningitis.......he and another survived, I was told, as they heeded the doctor's advice and took all their prescribed cod liver oil.  Sometime during the 1920's he returned to the Okanagan and during WWII served in the Royal Canadian Navy,

Comments

John, thank you for sharing the fabulous photo of your handsome father. Glad that he survived such a terrible disease; Kathy and all of us on WikiTree would not have gotten to know you.

---

Thankyou Alexis......it can bring tears to my eyes, thinking, in our age of computers, that, if only we could go back to our wonderful ancestors and show how much, of their history, we have discovered and recorded.

---

John, my dear paternal grandmother that saved so many photos for me would be very surprised to know how much I treasure them and wish I had their names to find more about their lives.

---

What a lovely photo of your father John thank you for sharing

Answer 6

My Dad Served in the United States Navy 1942-1945, World War II and he served in the United States Air Force 1946-1955, Korean War. He didn't talk much about is time in service, but when i took typing in school, he would race me doing timed typing tests at home, and once timed a 85 words per minute.