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...