Both of my grandfathers were in the war on the US side of things.

One (with bad eyesight) went into the Navy, and spent the entire war running the officer's mess in San Diego. His "war" stories were mostly of training accidents or other minutia, such as an aircraft crashing into a group of freshly arrived cadets. No colorful stories about the brass, at least none I remember. On the other hand, my grandmother's stories about going out to visit him (taking eight or nine different trains to get there because the better routes were reserved for soldiers) and being put up in a "converted" cat house during the stay were always colorful. (She even kept the printed menu of "services" said house of ill repute offered....) She was always more "Navy" than he was anyway, and never shied away from salty language.

The other grandfather was a marine and saw the actual horrors of the Pacific, from Midway through Iwo Jima right up to the end at Okinawa. He never talked about any of it except Midway, and I can't really blame him. We didn't even know he'd been at Iwo Jima until one of his platoon mates told us at his funeral. As for Midway, he said he fired more bullets at gooney birds to keep them off the runway than he fired at the enemy. I was never sure if that ammo count included the entire war or just what he shot at the Japanese planes attacking Midway.