The Greatest Generation

Arriving early for a breakfast appointment, I was sitting outside a restaurant recently reading a newspaper as I waited for my friend. A white-haired gentleman approached me and said, “I know you. You’re the fellow that writes the columns in the newspaper.”

I admitted that I was and we began to talk. During the conversation, he noted that he had read that I had been in the Marine Corps. He shared that he had served in the United States Navy during World War II and I said that my father had done the same. After a few more moments, he went on his way and I resumed reading my newspaper.

I regret that I did not say something to him that I should have said. Had it not been for men like him and my father and all the millions more who served, fought, and died in that great conflict, life for my grandchildren, my sons, and me would be so radically different.

I wish I had said, “Thank you,” for his patriotism, his courage, and his service to this country and to the generations yet unborn that owe a debt of gratitude.

It is not difficult to imagine what life would be like if the Nazi regime had prevailed. Terror would have been unleashed on a global scale. Minorities, the retarded, the sick, the old, the infirm, and, of course, the Jewish people would have been murdered on a scale that would have made the Holocaust a mere down payment of what was to come.

Had it not been for men like this Navy veteran, the Japanese Empire would have caused the sun to set on populations throughout Asia and the Pacific. The brutality and horrors inflicted on Bataan and in China would have spread throughout that part of the world and certainly would have landed in Hawaii and on the West Coast.

Freedoms that we now take for granted would have ceased to exist for most, if not all, of the world, had it not been for this “World War II Generation.” Had Hitler not had to fight on two fronts, the Axis might have defeated the Soviet Union and, without the Russian military being able to attack Berlin from the East, Nazi Germany would rule the world today.

My father never talked much about his service or about the war. Like millions of others, he left after the conflict to return home, get married, and raise a family. He died in 1996. My mother followed him three years ago.

I was going through his chest of drawers a few weeks after my mother passed away and, carefully placed in one corner of the middle drawer, I discovered his medals, several photos of him in his Navy uniform, his Honorable Discharge certificate, and a lapel pin that said, “U. S. Navy.” For over 50 years, they had been hidden away, modest testimony to his service.

I read the other day that World War II veterans are dying at the rate of 2,000 a day. Well, before another day goes by, on behalf of my children, my daughters-in-law, and my nine grandchildren (one of whom will not be born for three more weeks), I want to say, “Thank you,” to those who served so that my family and I might grow up and live under the stars and stripes and not the swastika or the “rising sun.”

The debt that we owe to you can never be repaid. The best we can do is to learn from your example, your sacrifice, and your courage and, when the time comes, take our stand and preserve our freedoms and our way of life for another generation.

A couple of years ago, I traveled to the Philippines and, while there, visited the American cemetery in Manila. There, as far as the eye could see, were the white crosses and Stars of David that marked the graves of tens of thousands of American young men who had fought, died, and were buried so very far from home. Most of them, perhaps, died unmarried and without children or heirs. Or so it would seem.

The truth is that we are the children of the World War II Generation. We inherited freedom, opportunity, and the sense of hope and optimism that comes to those who live in liberty. We are the sons and daughters of both those who returned and of those who lie with their comrades in some far away ground.

To my new friend who chatted with me on that sunny morning, “Thank you.” To my father who lived his life in such quiet dignity and unrecognized heroism, “Thank you.” To all of those who fought and defeated the dark forces of tyranny in Europe and in the Pacific so that we might not ever know the horrors of those despots, “Thank you.” May we, in our time and in our generation, not let you down.