Posted on 05/13/2005 10:00:25 AM PDT by CHARLITE
Something I do while perusing the morning Internet is read the military obituaries in the British press, mainly The Daily Telegraph. Invariably, these write-ups mark the passing of a veteran of World War II in the kind of scope and detail, as critic James Bowman has noted, rarely found in an American paper. Sometimes, I feel compelled to save them in a file. Last summer, there was Wing Commander David Penman, 85, the pilot of one of five (out of twelve) Lancaster bombers to return in 1942 from a daring, low-flying, daylight raid on a German engine plant; the year before that, there was Captain Philip "Pip" Gardner, the Victoria-Cross-winning tank commander captured at the fall of Tobruk. His death at age 88 left only 15 (now 14) surviving VC-holders. Just this week, there was 84-year-old Petty Officer Norman Walton, who, after the cruiser Neptune was sunk in a minefield off Libya in 1941, endured three days in the water and two on a raft to become the sole survivor out of 765 crew members. A boxer of some success after the war, Petty Officer Walton thwarted two muggers with a left hook and a head-butt at age 82.
Only I can see it now: Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show," ripping this beau geste into ironic little bits.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Too great a taste for irony marks the absence of sincerity and dedication. But read the details of what our people are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere today -- fully the equivalent of WW II even if not on as large a scale.
Whenever I hear the term "greatest generation", I always feel appreciation for what they did during the war, but then I wonder how many of that generation then let their children grow up to be anti-American hippie socialists.
Exactly right. I find that description of any American generation to be completely distasteful. Heck, if you want to go there, then the Patriots who fought in the Revolutionary war were the greatest generation. They fail and America doesn't exist. Stupid Peter Jennings...
"...Heck, if you want to go there, then the Patriots who fought in the Revolutionary war were the greatest generation. They fail and America doesn't exist. ..."
While they were great, they did not save the whole world. The Allied WWII vets did.
"Exactly right. I find that description of any American generation to be completely distasteful."
People with your attitude--minimizing the contribution of those who lived during and fought in WWII--always amaze me.
The people of that generation were my parents, my teachers, my coaches, my Sunday School teachers, the parents of my friends, my pastors, my camp counselors.
Do you know how many of them came back from the battlefields with health so ruined after being POW's that they never recovered so they could really enjoy life? My childhood memories of going to the post office or the grocery store with my parents and seeing many men in wheelchairs, missing limbs, on crutches, trying to exist on prothetic limbs, missing eyes or parts of their faces is still very vivid.
I had teachers and camp counselors who were shot down over Europe, yet struggled their way back to England so they could report the intel they had observed. I had teachers who went into the murderous gunfire of Pacific islands as medics and corpsmen. I knew people who volunteers right after Pearl Harbor and didn't come home for five-plus years.
Why did they do all of this?
Because America was fighting for our life. They answered a call just as the folks fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam and Korea did.
But guys like you who denigrate the great sacrifices of that great group of people really test my patience.
In the context of history, there have been other generations that were just as great.
"With all due respect, I believe the poster was not saying that the WWII generation wasn't great, just that they were not necessarily the greatest."
I appreciate your respect, but I don't read his response that way.
That was exactly my point. Whenever one answers the call of duty to our country, they are elevated into that rarified air. Can anyone say that anybody in the Armed Forces right now would not perform exactly the same way? Not one of you bashing me on here will step up and say that.
Your example of the Revolutionary War generation is very good also.
In the Greatest Generation, it was not only those who were called to fight the war who stepped up for America.
It was the people. The women on the homefront. Schools. Entertainers. The press. Especially the press. What a difference that would make.
Literally, the whole generation stood up. The naysayers did not sway them. They knew what they were fighting for.
This generation - would NOT. Has NOT.
Perhaps because, after decades of miseducation, they really do NOT know what they are fighting for...
Stretch Here: The Old Geezer... You got a wrong idea of the guys who fought in WW2. We were the products of the greatest depression in history.... wages from 5 cents to 15 cents an hour.... if you could find a job. small farmers so poor that they couldn't feed their horses enough food to give them the strength to pull a plow; or a cow so starved that she couldn't give but a cup of milk a day. kids wearing the same clothes to work the fields, clean the horse -s8672, wear to school or church... Soldiers and sailors entering the war for a salary of only7 $21.00 per month. When theyy came home we gave them the GI bill to allow some, who had the education, to go to college fsree... to allow them to buy a home at a reduced interest rate, if one could afford to make the payments. Most of these guys are now in our 80's.... many never having made a salary of over 6 or 7 dollars an hour for all the years they worked. Wages were still low in the 70's. I know, that in my trade the union wage reached $5.00 an hour in 70.
YOU ARE critizing the wrong generation, buddy...Many, many vy age with a family never retired with anything more than a cheap house and a used car to show for their lifetime of work. Small town America held many back.... no opportunities.... Why did some make it big and others never getting ahead?? lack of a decent education; poor schooling in their early years; quitting school in their early teens to help on the farm..... many, many things
Well spoken! I was there. The country was united. Now, its lost its moorings.
Tom Brokaw, actually, but I get the point. The older I get and the more that I learn of American history, the more appreciative that I am of what past generations have accomplished. But if the WW II generation was the "greatest ever," then why did they saddle us with high taxes, an unsustainable welfare state, and spawn the vain, self-absorbed Baby Boomers?
The greatest generation was in my opinion the Silent Generation.
They came to age on the battlefields of World War I, came home to create the Jazz Age then suffered through the Great Depression then served again as the Sgt's and Captains and Generals of World War II. They was the ones who lead and made the decisions that won the war.
The WWII generation was the Privates and 2nd Lt's of the War, the grunts who took the orders. They was heros but the silent generation was too.
The Silent Generation was the ones who lead America after WWII with Presidents Truman and Ike and their ilk in the business and cultural worlds.
Your Greatest Generation took over and became the college presidents and generals and entertainment heads in the early to mid 60's
Basically, the "greatest generation" is part of the most massive wealth transfer in the history of the world - from the working young to the retired old. But seniors vote and politicians wanr to buy your votes. Doesn't quit live up to the "milking cows for the pay of the milk" image...
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