In just a few years, no Americans will remember that day.
I’m over 70, born four years after D-Day. World War II shaped my world. Every man, it seemed, was a war veteran and our family like most families felt the brunt of that war brutality that scarred our fathers, mothers and children.
I knew survivors of Pearl Harbor and now they are gone but not forgetten.
Rest in peace Ray. Your departed friends are waiting for you with open arms as is your Redeemer
When I was a child the old men were in WW1.
My mother has photos of a great-great grandfather or uncle in his uniform form the Spanish American War. One of my aunts has photos of predecessors from the Civil War (Both sides).
Both Grand fathers were too young for WW1 and because they were coal miners were exempt from the draft in WW2.
My father’s older brother was in WW2.
My father was too young for Korea though his next older brother (Joe was there)
My parents younger brothers were in Vietnam. I missed Vietnam by 4 years. Not that they would have taken me due to having a gimpy ankle that I broke as a teenager.
I’ve tried to visit as many of the major battle sites in the Pacific as I can. About the only ones I haven’t made are Iwo Jima, Wake and Midway because you can’t go there.
The point here is that we are now about as far from the first Gulf War as WW2 was from me as a child. We are only 40 years or so from being as far a way from the start of WW1 as the US and UK were from the start of the American Revolution in 1914
Some days I just feel old.
I knew WWI vets when I was a kid.
Never met a Spanish War vet. I know very little about that war—it was just history.
Time goes on and the same mistakes are made because no one remembers.
I’m a couple of years older than you—born and grew up in a Navy town, Long Beach, Cal. Every adult, of course, had gone through the war, either in service or as a civilian. No ex-service man wanted to talk about it at all to my frustration. I was a stupid kid and thought that war was ‘neat’.
Women were all too glad to talk about how they hated rationing, using margarine that you had to dye yellow instead of real butter. That sort of thing. My dad, who was in the Army Air Force but served state-side, was none too fond of the service. From his letters he spent a lot of time doing KP and apparently going AWOL. It just struck me that he could have been the inspiration for Beetle Bailey.
It used to be that when we had family reunions almost every male was a veteran. Uncles, great uncles, cousins, father, grandfathers etc. Now among almost the same number of immediate family members, only 4 of us served.