[righttackle44]

"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.

[what's up]

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.

In the context of history, there have been other generations that were just as great.

[Swiss]

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