US World War II Era: Nearly Forgotten

    Last night I had the opportunity to listen to my father-in-law recall memories from his childhood. My son sat with me as we listened, and a window was opened for us into a world that now exists only in the hearts and memories of a dwindling number of elderly but fiercely proud Americans.

     Even as the post-modern academics and philosophers of the time were counting true value all but dead and buried, a nation awoke to a driving conviction that right makes might.  The fear of an evil force brutalizing innocent European villages, subjugating hapless nations, and bent on world domination, electrified the American people into a single minded, unified, brotherhood of righteous indignation and monolithic resolve.  The images of a cruel and immoral Nazi regime plundering Europe nettled the Christian conscience and provoked the American sense of fair play, even though this nation was still struggling in the quagmire of economic hardship.

     As evening gathers in the corners of my living room and the light in the windows fades toward purple, my father-in-law pauses, gazing up into a Kodachrome past only he can see, calming his emotions so he can continue.
     "I recall the day my older brother had to leave for basic training.  We'd eaten dinner together, Mom, Dad, Don and I.  At the time, I had a paper route, and do you know, we had to collect once a week! My, that made it hard on us paper boys.  The newspaper didn't take kindly to excuses, but people were never home, and often had excuses of their own."
     He pauses again, then continues, looking down into his cupped hands.
     "I didn't want to go to the bus station to say good bye, so I said I had to do some collecting.  I didn't want my brother to see me blubbering like a baby when he was going off to fight like a man and maybe lose his own life.  To me, a fifteen year old younger brother, Don was some kind of hero. We had dreaded the day he would be drafted, but when he was, there was no complaining. We knew it had to be done.  Everyone had to do their part for the war effort.
     Dad took on a second job.  Mom was a wonderful seamstress and made all our clothes.  We didn't have a rototiller, but Dad turned most of our double size lot over with a spading fork by hand and planted a Victory Garden, so we could feed ourselves as much as possible.  The farmers all over the country had to produce food for the soldiers, so the rest of us, who couldn't go to the trenches to fight, well, we had to grow our own food.  And we did.  No one complained. No, you didn't complain.
     Don didn't have to fight in the trenches, but served in a military hospital.  Of course there was always the possibility that his orders would change and he'd have to take his turn.  Anything could happen.
     During the summer, I was sent to my uncle's farm to work.  The farmers didn't have to fight either, but they were just as much a part of the war effort.  We all knew it.  I worked hard for my room and board and a salary of thirty five dollars for the whole summer's work.
     I remember the day we heard the news.  I was driving a tractor pulling an implement that turned the windrows of hay over to dry."
     His eyes fill with tears as he once again looks up into the beatific scene.  And now his voice comes rough with emotion and barely audible among the struggling breaths.
     "The war was over!  Even though it was a miserable hot day out in that field, I suddenly felt a joy that turned that dusty old field into a golden heaven.  Don would come home - alive!"

     I've often heard people talk about how war is used by governments to improve their economies. I find that hard to believe in most cases.  Think of the war ravaged third world of today.  Is it helping?
     While war may have been the trigger, it wasn't war that pulled the American economy out of the Great Depression. It was grit.  It was a people who believed in God, and who believed in the moral imperative of their fight.  It was the reality of a hammer in the hand, not an avatar on a screen. It was a people who knew that each shovel driven into the garden, each rivet welded onto the boat frame, each sweater completed in the knitting mills, was putting a bullet in Hitler's forces as much as the boys with their guns dying on foreign beaches.  And all that effort, all that labor, all those 'second jobs', walked America right out of the end of the Great Depression, and right into one of the most powerful economies the world has ever known.
     There are still many who remember that time.  But they are now the ones in the nursing homes and retirement centers.  They won't last much longer.  Don't wait.  Before they are all gone, go to them and ask them to tell you about the wonder of the Greatest Generation.