I was walking down a street in New York City a while ago and saw a man at least twenty years younger than me wearing a prosthetic limb. He was, in fact, ambling along quite well and as such I was impressed with his clear ability to overcome a difficult situation I cannot even fathom.
He also wore a camouflaged fatigue cap and military tan t-shirt with the words “Operation Iraqi Freedom” emblazoned on the chest. And I thought to myself: here is a man who has given so much. Certainly as much as many a veteran of World War II had. Indeed a piece of himself, for a cause that had no victory. No surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. No ticker tape parade.
Just coming home having served his country (better than it served him) and having left a literal piece of himself in the sands of a distant land at the behest of his commander-in-chief. And who knows how many comrades he saw give the ultimate sacrifice during his tour of duty.
Sometimes I wonder: Should we, perhaps, consider retiring the moniker “Greatest Generation” as a descriptor of those—and only those—who fought Germany and Japan between 1941 and 1945? Is that really fair to all those buried in Arlington Cemetery who happened to have fought for this country since the Civil War? Were they not just as “great”? Cannot this wounded warrior lay claim to “greatness” as much as those who just happened to be born into a different time to fight a different enemy?
This is not a call to diminish the sacrifice of the men and women who fought in all of those terrible battles of World War II. As anyone who has read my articles over the years knows, I hold the men and women who fought against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in awe and with the sincerest gratitude.
But theirs is a small section of the story of the American fighting man and woman. To attach to them the superlative “greatest” is to in a way demean those who went before and after them. How are the men of the Union Army who again and again marched towards the impregnable rebel lines at Fredericksburg having just witnessed the rank before them scythed down like wheat, and yet they moved forward anyway, any less deserving of a seal of greatness as those who stormed Omaha Beach?
How are the men of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, surrounded by Germans in sub-freezing weather, greater than the 1st Marines’ who pulled off a masterful “advance in the other direction” to the sea while surrounded and under constant attack by the Chinese in the sub-zero wastes of North Korea? Was a P-47 or Corsair pilot winging in at treetop level to strafe and bomb Nazi and Japanese positions any “greater” than the pilots of Huey helicopters flying their much more vulnerable ships into hostile Vietnam LZs to bring in supplies and evacuate wounded under intense enemy fire?
I think of today’s American fighting man and woman, and something occurs to me. First, ours is an all-volunteer service. Fully two-thirds of the “Greatest Generation” were draftees. And no group of young men and women who have ever volunteered for military service today have done so with eyes more wide open than this one.
What I mean is that in the 1940s there was no internet through which to see the shocking imagery of war at one’s fingertips. Nor were there graphic movies as “Saving Private Ryan” to show a prospective volunteer what war really looks like…blood, gore, agonizing and ghastly wounds, terror, men calling for their mothers with their dying breaths, brutality, and both chronic physical and mental exhaustion. Anyone wearing the uniform today does so despite all they have seen.
By contrast, the average World War II volunteer had almost no idea what he was getting himself into. Most had never seen any proper representation of war, save perhaps the old black-and-white Matthew Brady daguerreotypes of the grisly aftermath of Civil War battles like Antietam. War Department censors were diligently at work trying to hide the true cost of the war from the people back home, including those getting ready to join the fight.
It was not until September, 1943, that Life magazine published the first explicit photo of American dead on the battlefield…three bodies lying on Buna Beach in New Guinea. But these photos, which showed no faces or blood, were mild compared to what was to come.
The first true revelation of the horrors of a modern battlefield was not laid bare before the American people until March, 1944, a full 28 months into the war. This was the documentary “With The Marines At Tarawa”, which was released to public theaters after being approved by FDR himself.
The film followed the 2nd Marines storming a tiny Central Pacific island the size of Central Park called Betio in the Tarawa Atoll. The cost was unbelievable. Over 1,000 dead and twice as many wounded in four days of intense, close-quarters combat which was diligently cataloged by Marine camera crews. For the first time, Americans were treated to the shocking images of bloated Marine corpses, faces blackened and swollen, bobbing grotesquely in the surf or sprawled out over barbed wire. All glory of wartime propaganda stripped away.
For a populace so sheltered as was the USA in 1944, this was almost too much to bear. It should be noted that Marine recruitment plummeted after the airing of this footage! In other words, once they actually saw what it was they’d be signing up for, the bravura enthusiasm seemed to dim, even in this greatest generation. Human nature is what it is. And self-preservation was as much a part of their psyche as any others’.
So, who really is the “greatest generation”? I would argue the title belongs to any group of young men and women who bravely serve our country in its time of need, either in the thick of combat or dutifully walking the wall during times of restive peace, knowing they may be called upon at any moment to give their lives for their fellow Americans.
Memorial Day is a holiday we set aside to remember all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who’ve given their lives across many generations so that our nation might live. I say let’s lose the superlative “greatest” as a descriptor of just one narrow band of so many who have answered the call over the years.
Let us honor them all. And be thankful for their greatness.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, musician, columnist and author whose eclectic body of work has been featured in Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, National Review, The Federalist, Zerohedge and other publications. His best-selling novel “The Extraordinary”, and acclaimed World War II epic “Of Another Time And Place” can be found on Amazon and other popular outlets.