My father didn't join the RAF until after WW2; he had been in a neutral Air Force during the latter half of the War. His brother was, however, lost on the Burmah Railroad but unfortunately the family has split up over the years and we have no details of him.
My father in law was in the Black Watch and was wounded at Dunkirk. A shrapnel wound in the scrotum he said. Later in the was he was posted to Iceland and basically sat out the war there. At least that's his story.
More interesting are two other characters I knew quite well and met during an exchange tour with the Italian Air Force.
The first was a young lieutenant in the Alpini (the Italian Mountain Division). He fought with the Germans on the Eastern Front against the Russians. We would often sit over a meal and he would tell the the harrowing stories of what went on. Eventually his unit was left to cover a German retreat and he was captured.
He spent 5 years in camps in Siberia before making his way home to N Italy. He even bought some of his men back with him. His family thought he had been killed until he knocked on the door of his house.
He was awarded the Silver Star for the work he did helping his remaining men survive in captivity. A remarkable gentlemen!
I attended his funeral and met his son, a lawyer, a discovered he knew nothing about the detail of his father's adventures. I thought the son deserved to know a bit more and filled in some of the gaps at least as related by his father. I hope this did not betray any confidences.
The other aquaintance, alas I could not call him a friend, was in the Italian Air Force as a pilot and retired as a Colonel. He was from a semi-aristocatic background and flew throughout WW2 and after the Italian surrender.
Strangely enough he also flew one of the captured Spitfires in either Germany or France.
He took great pleasure in showing me his logbooks that recorded, as I recall, a total of 11 Allied aircraft destroyed mostly with a Macchi 205 although there was one in a C200 while in Sicily.
After the Italian surrender he continued to fly mostly from Italy to Yugoslavia.
His recollections given to me in his study surrounded by souvenirs of his service were lucid, laced with fascist propoganda ("our pilots were more skilled, you just had more aircraft") and backed up with documentation. I wonder what happened to it all.
Lastly, from an earlier conflict, my grandfather was an engineering officer in the RNVR and survived both the Battle of the Falkland Islands and the Battle of Jutland. Alas, he died when I was 9 but he was a keen photographer (unusual for the day) and his albums have been giver to museums. The few photos left show flashes on the horizon, charts and survivors being picked up.