A century has passed since the First World War began, and 60 years since the Second World War ended, yet they are still the most important formative events in world history.
None who lived through them were untouched by them. Indeed, they influenced and informed our thinking, even in the most mundane spheres of our existence.
It is sad, for example, that our children and grandchildren idolise mere paper heroes. Small wonder so many young people run off the rails when all they are offered to admire are the tawdry images projected by the public relations machines that manipulate vacuous pop-singers and movie stars.
Once upon a time, children looked up to real flesh-and-blood heroes. They were the soldiers, sailors, and flyers who had put their lives on the line—and all too often lost them—in the service of humanity.
Some of them were household names (like Ike, Bradley, Patton, Monty, and Churchill), but most were just plain folks—mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers, the folks next door.
What made these ordinary people so admirable were the extraordinary things they had done for their fellow men. And, though it might sound naïve in this cynical age of ours, these “ordinary” heroes set the standard by which children judged others … even singers and movie stars.
Audie Murphy
Audie Murphy provided a role model that parents could heartily commend to their children and their kids could accept without feeling that there was something priggish or wimpy about him. He was the type that most young men hoped to emulate and most young women would have been happy to date.
The movie-going public watched with approval as major stars—Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, David Niven, Bob Cummings, to name but four—interrupted their careers to answer their country’s call.
In the immediate post-war period, pop stars who attempted to evade the draft saw their careers go into permanent eclipse.
Back in the ’40s and ’50s, ‘service to the nation’ was understood to be one of the highest possible callings, rather simply an opportunity to reap the highest possible return.
The self-absorbed Sixties, of course, changed all that—by no means entirely for the better. Indeed, society is considerably the poorer because of its loss.
Today it is common to encounter arguments that the Allies often resorted to tactics as evil and unscrupulous as those of the enemy.
A British television drama, for example, portrays the country’s intelligence services sending an innocent man with a German name to the gallows in order to protect a mass-murderer who happens to be a gifted code breaker.
One can never be entirely sure that such shameful events did not occur. But one can say that had they done so in any great number, such is that nature of our free and open society, they would certainly have come to light as some point during the past 70 years.
It is difficult to say what purpose such exercises in moral equivalence are intended to serve.
Could it be that the narcissistic, self-anointed solons of the entertainment world genuinely see a parallel between the governments of the liberty-loving West and the totalitarian dictatorships responsible for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of millions upon millions of people under their sway?
Whatever the motive for such thinking, it is, I guess, the price we pay for free expression—which, paradoxically perhaps, is one of the freedoms those who died in the two World Wars gave their lives to preserve.
Be that as it may, on Veterans Day, society reflects upon the debt it owes to those who answered the country’s call and the enormity of the sacrifice of those who never came back.
But in recalling their names, we might also pause to reflect on just what it was they died for. Keeping their vision fresh in the eyes of future generations is the most sincere tribute we can pay them. GPH✠
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“Today it is common to encounter arguments that the Allies often resorted to tactics as evil and unscrupulous as those of the enemy.”
“Could it be that the narcissistic, self-anointed solons of the entertainment world genuinely see a parallel between the governments of the liberty-loving West and the totalitarian dictatorships responsible for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of millions upon millions of people under their sway?”
I was born a British Subject, realised I was Wessex and learnt I was English. One of the memories of my childhood was the distaste expressed by my Father and others for the treatment of African American soldiers by the “White” American soldiers in the Public Houses of Salisbury in Wiltshire. The United States Services of the time were segregated. Segregation did exist in the British Empire and Colonies at the time, but it did not exist officially in England and was considered very shocking. In fact African Americans had been involved in every Military Conflict of the United States at least from 1812 and the execution of Chrispus Atticus, half African and half Native American. In World War II 125 000 African Americans served in the US Forces overseas and although segregated, were de segregated during the Battle of the Bulge to support and fight with the “White” Military Units.
Native Americans like African Americans had no vote, and were not considered Citizens in the First World War but many volunteered; In the Second World War they continued not to have a vote, but had gained Citizenship, and were drafted. Ira Hayes who raised the Flag at Iwo Jima was one such. In fact a third of all of the age group served in the US Forces 25 000! Notable were the Navaho Talkers who often operated behind enemy lines, and were very important in the Battle of Saipan. 200 received awards.
The treatment of African American Servicemen during my childhood in England was certainly by local standards “evil and unscrupulous”!
The present continuing treatment of African Americans by the authorities in the United States would be considered by us in Europe as “imprisonment, torture and murder.”
Here we have the Convention on Human Rights and it is our most Superior Court, and we have it not because we are righteous, but because of our sins in the past as a continent. It is not easy to keep, but we try. Time the US of A considered having one for their continent.