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Jewish World Review June 3, 2004 / 14 Sivan, 5764 Pause and Remember By Jonathan Tobin The just dedicated WW II memorial in Washington An often forgetful America honors a dwindling band of WWII veterans http://www.jewishworldreview.com | My father, of blessed memory, spent the better part of three years serving with the 8th Air Force in England during World War II, and later in Germany during the occupation. My mother spent this same period working in New York City's Department of Health. Yet the stories that she told of life during World War II were far more vivid than those of my father. Among the best was the tale of how she had traveled across the country via train — no mean feat during wartime — to meet my dad for a brief visit in Indianapolis before he was shipped overseas. Even better was the dramatic recollection of how she had wept uncontrollably as she saw the pictures of the first troops hitting the beaches of France on the cover of the daily papers after D-Day. The recollection of pain and grief of watching from afar as the fate of a loved one — and so many other Americans — remained unknown can still bring tears to her eyes. The story, which was often told and retold in our home, spoke of my mother's near hysteria and how her normally stern boss had reacted with sympathy, comforting her the promise that she would be granted a vacation the moment my father came home. That memory was inevitably followed by another retelling of the happy day when he did return and surprised her by showing up at my grandparents' apartment sooner than expected after their long separation. DOING THEIR JOB When asked what he had done that day, my father had no colorful tales. For him and for most veterans, there was no Shakespearean flourish about a "Band of Brothers" or those abed in America envying their part in the great crusade for freedom. He would merely say that he and his fellow crewmen spent that time working virtually nonstop for more than a week as they strove to keep the planes in their P-51 fighter-bomber squadron aloft as they supported the landing and battered the counterattacking Nazis. As an afterthought, he would sometimes add that he fell ill as a result of exhaustion and spent weeks in the hospital recovering from pneumonia — and that some SOB in the Army Air Corps hospital stole his wedding ring while he was being treated. He had done a job and gotten sick. He then went back to work doing his job. Eventually, he got to go home. End of story. Like most of what we now call "The Greatest Generation," Dad took the experience in stride. It had been, for him and most of the millions like him, the great adventure of his life. But he didn't think of it as heroic. And like a lot of veterans I've met, he had little nostalgia for the war, and even less patience for those who reveled in their memories. He had been a small part of something monumental and was proud, but primarily, it had been an interruption of his life. As far as he was concerned, the big story was more personal: how a boy like him, who had been raised in an orphanage, could grow up to lead a productive life, marry the woman he loved, own a home, and see his children go off to college and on to professional careers. In what was perhaps his only flight into rhetorical fancy, he would sometimes say, in his later years, that he had lived the "American dream." And that, for those seeking to understand the dwindling band of veterans that America is honoring on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, is what that generation was all about. The opening of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., has set off a sea of bubbling rhetoric of praise for the veterans. But the gap between the heroism of the veterans — and the culture of the baby-boomers who followed — isn't often articulated, but has to be on the tip of everyone's tongue. I can't help but wonder what kids today will make of all this fuss since for most of them, D-Day is as remote as Gettysburg. Surveys of students have shown that most have trouble identifying who America's allies and foes were, and have little notion of the events, let alone the chronology, of the war. Unlike the popular culture of today, which regards anything that happened the day before yesterday as ancient history, the America that I grew up in during the early 1960s was pretty much obsessed with World War II. Those few television shows that weren't about cowboys in the Old West were about soldiers, sailors or airmen — not just the dramas like "Combat" but also comedies such as "McHale's Navy." As the times changed, heroes turned to anti-heroes, and the spirit of patriotism and glorification of the American military altered radically. The politics and the foreign policy of the 1950s and '60s was about trying to avoid a repetition of the appeasement of totalitarian governments that had led to World War II, while a subsequent generation worried a lot more about not getting into another Vietnam. As the reaction to the ups and downs of the American campaign in Iraq has shown, it isn't clear whether the pendulum has swung back. STICK TO THE POINT But as much as some pundits would love to tie up the nostalgia for the 1940s with a prowar stance or to contrast the generally united American people of that time with our current political divisions, it would be a mistake to get too caught up in this rhetorical box. Every generation has its own tests. If our lot is easier than that of our fathers, it's not because we are weak. It is precisely because my father's generation was strong enough to do what had to be done that the world they created was passed down to us. And let's not forget that despite the relative ease and comfort of contemporary lives in this country, the America of 2004 has new tests to pass. After all, despite all the blackouts of the 1940s, the New York my mother lived in during the war was never attacked by the enemies of freedom. Those who live there now cannot say the same. With each advancing anniversary associated with the war, the number of veterans around to tell us to stop making speeches and stick to the business of making a better America and ensuring its safety is getting fewer and fewer. Too many of them, like my father, are gone now, like the hundreds of thousands who fell on the battlefield and did not get to experience the American dream they sacrificed to preserve. May all of their memories be for a blessing. And may we and those who follow us be worthy of their legacy. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. Let him know what you think by clicking here. Jonathan Tobin Archives © 2004, Jonathan Tobin