I was going to do something different this morning- we have spent a fair amount of time lately looking at the vastness of the conflict we call World War II. Many folks have brought up memories of the men who fought at Midway and stormed the beaches in Normandy lately, but I think it is worth remembered everyone who contributed to victory in what (I hope) will be our last experience with total war.

That is the men that fought, of course, but also the legion of women who volunteered for service in the ways that were permitted back then, and those who sustained the farms and families and businesses that were left behind for what was termed “The Duration.”

By that they meant that life might someday return to something like normal, but there was something really important that had to be accomplished without ambiguity, and with immense sacrifice.

Our pal Mac Showers made it to the commemoration 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway. He was tougher than I was- I had my tickets but wound up in the hospital instead. I think he knew it was his last deployment, and there was nothing in this world that was going to stop him from making it.

The same sort of spirit energized some of the men who returned to Normandy this past week. I can’t help but mention two of them in the context of Mac’s commitment to the heroes who had gone before.

(Bernard Jordan, now and then. Image from the UK’s Telegraph).

Bernard Jordan is one of them. Staff at the nursing home where he resides these days- he is 89, after all, discovered to their alarm that he went missing from the facility at bed check last Thursday. He pinned his medals from the war on his jacket and left the home to take a bus to France, where Friday morning he appeared at Gold Beach for the commemoration. He had helped shell the pillboxes that now dot the peaceful slope above the surf. The Staff at The Pines in Hume had tried to get him on an accredited tour organized by the Royal British Legion, but couldn’t make the arrangements. Lieutenant Jordan organized himself, escaped from custody, and made his way there himself.

That is pretty damned impressive.

But I have to say that the one who knocked me out was James H. “Pee Wee” Martin. This tough-as-nails former paratrooper was with the 101st Airborne for that night jump seventy years ago with the 506th Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Company G.

(Pee Wee Martin jumps into Normandy one more time. Photo AFP/Joel Saget).

Once on the ground, Pee Wee fought across the hedgerows for the month it took for Ike’s legions to break out and maneuver east. He jumped into the carnage of Operation MARKET GARDEN in the initial attempt to liberate the Netherlands- the one that was “A Bridge Too Far” for many young men to cross. He held a Thompson submachine gun at besieged Bastogne when the Germans tried their last offensive in the West at the Bulge, the one where the German commander demanded the 101st surrender to prevent their annihilation by heavy artillery.

Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe responded with one word: “Nuts.” The Germans were not familiar with the American idiom, and understandably a little confused. An enlisted Yank who spoke their language helpfully translated for them. “It means ‘Go To Hell,’” he said.

Pee Wee might have said it more bluntly than that. He is a salty old man, based on his interviews. He completed his combat tour by being one of the soldiers who occupied Hitler’s personal retreat at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria.

He was demobilized and went back to Ohio, where he worked hard and tried to do the right thing.

The 70th anniversary is something special, and it will be the last some of the Vets of the invasion will see. Pee Wee believed he had one more jump in him at the ripe old age of 93, and by God he did it.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/05/world/europe/d-day-paratrooper-jumps-again/

I don’t know if Pee Wee’s generation is really the greatest one. Human beings have always had the capacity to rise to whatever occasion they needed to, given the alternatives, though that seems a bit lacking in these late days of the Republic. Pee Wee summed up the approach of his generation this way: “right was right and wrong was wrong, and everyone knew the difference.”

Our fathers knew that. They did what they did because it was the right thing to do, and the alternative was unthinkable. It was worth giving your life for.

We now live in an age of relativism, and some hold that nothing is worth it. But the fact that there are still men alive like Bernard Jordan and Jim Martin gives me reason to hope that maybe things will be OK.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303