Veteran's Day

Thinking about tomorrow - Veteran’s Day - I started remembering the July 4th and Veteran's Day parades of my childhood.

When I was a very little girl, perhaps 4 years old, there were plenty of World War I veterans. By and large, they were men in the late prime of their lives – a few years older than my grandfather, who came of age just as the war ended. Men who had fought and returned and worked through the Great Depression. Of course, to a child, they were elderly, but now I realize they were just men in their 60s, by and large. They were sturdy men, most of them, having survived the rigors of war and then the Depression.

I think I even remember having a few superannuated veterans of the Spanish-American War pointed out to me.

The ranks of the WWII veterans were immense – these were men and women just a few years older than my parents.

By the time I was a teenager, the Spanish-American War veterans were gone and the WWI veterans were showing their age – by 1970, most of them were in their mid 70s or older, but they’d still straighten their uniform caps with age-gnarled hands and
march. In turn, the WWII veterans were starting to grizzle – lines and gray making their presence known. And a new bunch of veterans – the Korean War vintage – had joined the parade.

By my 20s and 30s, it became rarer and rarer to see the occasional WWI veteran – by now, they were withered men, propped up in wheelchairs or tucked into a convertible, waving feebly or simply staring basilisk through thick glasses. Now, out of the millions who served in the military during WWI, there is only one former Doughboy left in the US and no actual combat veterans. In Britain, there’s not a Tommy left from WWI, but one sole naval veteran, now living in Australia, survives. He would, therefore, be the last combat veteran alive from that war.

Now it is the turn of the WWII veterans – their ranks thinning by the day. My high school principal was a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge and dozens of the officers just a bit older than my father had fought across Europe and the Pacific. Grey Wyman, who flew bombing raids across eastern Europe, night after night. His brother, Austin, a pilot lost on a mission he never came home from. Oscar “Ozzie” Duttweiler, fought his way up the spine of Italy with the 10th Mountain Division and
later married Valeria Fulvio. They were heroes, but everyday heroes. One of the unique aspects of growing up as a military brat is that you grow up surrounded by quiet, everyday heroes. Our WWII vets are in their 80s and 90s. Many, like Grey and
Ozzie, have died and left memories in their place.

Honor them tomorrow and remember that in a very few years, they too will have shuffled off this mortal coil. And pray for us that we have other generations as brave and disciplined as they to follow.