Posted on 05/24/2015 2:30:39 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Seventy years ago, we celebrated the end of World War II in Europe. That celebration is not the first memory of my childhood but it is one of the clearest.
I was a 5-year-old boy in Cape Town, South Africa, proudly displaying a paper Union Jack, the familiar British flag, and watching the victory parade. I often wonder where the flags came from — before offset printing and photocopying — in time for the parade. Someone knew victory was at hand.
There was a palpable, universal happiness — though more subdued, I am told, than the outbursts that greeted the end of World War I. For me, that was the best parade ever. It was wonderful to see people grabbing each other, doing little impulsive jigs in the street.
Marching in the parade was the handsomest man I had ever seen or have seen since — my father in his best Royal South African Navy uniform of a chief petty officer, engine room. My father was a wonderful man in many ways. He was not lettered but extremely kind and dutiful and loved for those things — not for being handsome. But I tell you, that day he was handsome.
It was not until 1998 that Tom Brokaw called them “The Greatest Generation” in a book of that name. Maybe all who go to war are the greatest generation. Maybe every father who survives is unbearably handsome to someone.
Memorial Day is upon us and our veterans — maybe veterans everywhere — will be briefly remembered. The Greatest Generation was, perhaps, the last time a generation was defined by its sense of duty. That was true of the men and women who peopled my young life.
My father sold our home and few possessions, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, to serve. He was turned down for the British army in Rhodesia because an arm he had once broken had not mended properly. He had heard that the Royal South African Navy would be more tolerant. His acceptance by the navy was not a certainty and we had no money.
But we made the long, hot, six-day journey to South Africa by train to no known future; my father, mother, brother and I, all going off to war because that is what was done. That is what the men of the Greatest Generation did because it was your duty to serve.
My father was not alone. I grew up hearing other stories of how people had gone to great lengths to serve and, having gotten into the armed services, how they did everything they could to get into the fight, not to serve at a distance in a British dominion, as South Africa then was. That is how South African pilots came to serve in the Battle of Britain.
In those days, patriotism was organic here in the United States and around the globe. Not every last man of military age was a patriot but most were. It was the deep-seated culture.
When it was over, those who survived World War II were welcomed home with celebrations, appreciation and reverence. Alas, the warriors from more recent wars — Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and lesser conflicts — have come home to cold comfort. No parades, no 5-year-olds with flags — and little place in the tapestry of the national memory. No recognition of their inalienable right to honor.
War is not everyone's business anymore. Vietnam was the first war where patriotism was not part of the equation. Today, with a professional military, it is not the business of the armchair patriots with their slogans, urging others to take up arms.
When the World War II Memorial opened on the Mall in Washington in April 2004, I went there. I did not like it, architecturally; I was disappointed. But then men with canes and in wheelchairs began arriving, smiling and shedding occasional tears. It was important and moving to them, those handsome men. My father would have loved it; now, I like it well.
Memorial Day weekend is at hand.
I use this concept SO often ...
(especially apropos for Memorial Day)
Do you remember sitting on your father's shoulder at a Memorial Day parade?
Holding a little paper American flag?
Watching the elderly American Legion color guard pass by ...?
And men all around you took off their hats and some placed their hands over their hearts ?
And little kids and moms did the same ... placed their hands over their hearts ?
Remember ?
Obama doesn't
There is NO American thread in his fabric
Unfortunately, I suspect a more than small representation in Congress are the same.
Thanks for posting that touching article. My
dad served with the 11th Airborne Division and
fought in the Philippines in WWII. The division
was nicknamed ‘the Angels’. There is a line in the
11th AB song that goes “ ‘till we join the stick of
Angels killed on Leyte and Luzon....”. Last week we
buried my 90 year old dad. He finally joined his
buddies killed on Leyte and Luzon and all those who
have passed since WWII. God Bless all of them.
Yes. God bless them all. Thank you for telling us about your dad and the Angels (very fitting).
One Memorial Day we went with the parade to the town library where the war memorial was. When I was that age I used to wear a ball cap wherever I went. I forgot to take it off as they sounded Taps and my Dad gently took it off my head and placed it over my heart. I turned to ask him why and he put his finger to his lips to quietly silence my protest. That was all it took.
One can’t help wondering what the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy would have been thinking if they had know how their children and grandchildren would squander the priceless inheritance for which they were about to die.
Academia has been/is doing their best to squeeze this out of us as a nation.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3292984/posts#12
SIERRA VISTA — There will be two events Monday to remember America’s fallen military members who have served defending the nation.
The first event will take place at the Old Post Cemetery on Fort Huachuca, starting at 11:30 a.m.
Post Public Affairs Officer Angela Camera said people who want to attend the event should arrive earlier than the start time.
There will be designated parking areas, where buses will depart from to transport people to the cemetery grounds, she said.
The speaker will be Maj. Gen. Robert Ashley, commander of the Army’s Intelligence Center of Excellence and the fort.
The annual event will include the reading of the Grand Army of the Republic General Order 11, issued by Gen. Joshua Logan shortly after the end of America’s Civil War, calling for May 30 to be a day to honor the war’s dead.
Wreaths will be placed by the general, the Widowed Support Center, Gold Star Wives and the Society of Military Wives.
Patriotic music will be provided by the fort’s Military Intelligence Corps Band. Other military involvement during the event will include the firing of a 21-rifle salute by members of the post’s Select Honor Guard and the playing of “Taps.”
The ceremony will conclude at noon as members of the honor guard will fire cannons as part of the National Salute from Reservoir Hill.
At 6 p.m., a ceremony will be held at the state-operated Southern Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery, which is located along Buffalo Solider Trail in Sierra Vista.
The event is hosted by the Fort Huachuca Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America and will include the presentation of flags representing local veterans’ organizations.
The speaker is Republican U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, whose second Congressional District includes all of Cochise County and other parts of southern Arizona.
As part of the event, members of the Cochise County Marines of VFW Post 9972 will dedicate a monument to three dozen from Southeastern Arizona who have fallen during the Global War on Terror since 2003. The monument has been placed near the cemetery chapel.
BTTT
BUMP!
A generation defined by duty?
That would be those born in the late 1890s.
When I was a child I knew several who fought in the great war, got out of the military only to have the great depression hit about the time they started having children, raised families in the depression, then went back into the military for the second world war.
That was truly the greatest generation.
Many of those who survived WWII got to see the WASP legacy of this country thrown out in the 1960s; the “greatest generation” rolled over for the “worst generation”.
Yes. The counter-culture revolution of the 60s was the eruption of American Decadence into the open. The press, academia, Hollywood, and the Democrat Party embraced it all. Today the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll if-it-feels-good-do-it hippies are running the country, and the decadence may be irreversible.
It is irreversible in the dwindling number of European-Americans as a whole, though traditional pockets will remain. On a related note, the 60s never happened for many of the Third Worlders we’re importing; the liberal agenda means little to people who still have arranged marriages, multiple wives, etc...
Thanks America!
Yes, and the decadents are in for an ugly surprise when they realize that the rest of the world finds their delusions disgusting.
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