November 13, 2007: Good news! We won World War II!
Sorry for the spoiler.
To celebrate yesterday's Veterans Day, I finally finished watching the Ken Burns documentary The War. Told with all the plodding majesty of many PBS productions, the fourteen hours of the show made you feel almost exactly like you had also endured the war.
Then you feel guilty about thinking that given all of the sacrifices made by that generation, both the survivors and the dead, to free the world from the scourge of tyranny--sacrifices far worse than those required of my generation, to be sure.
It is hard to watch the men and women in that show, badasses every one of them, and not think that our country's verve and badassery is draining away with every successive generation. I know for a fact that quiet, friendly, introspective Quentin Aanenson could easily best any person I've ever met in almost any arena, all while being haunted that he had to do it.
I snickered when Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation came out, thinking that those crotchety old coots who harried my father in his Florida bookstore seemed great only at finding cheap buffets. Now that I've seen them at their best, though, I have to say that every World War II veteran license plate I see these days inspires me with a little pride.
For spending eight days in a shit-filled foxhole on Iwo Jima, you're more than welcome to weave across all the lanes you'd like, sir.
Other random observations from watching the show:
- How could there be so few psychologically scarred veterans? The atrocities of that war, from death camps to severed genitals to screaming suicidal pilots, all but unhinged me for simply watching it.
- To call the current generation of half-wit whining criminals "terrorists" only dignifies their ineptitude in the context of real terror.
- No wonder my poor, gentle, fastidious Norwegian great uncle returned from the war with his hair white.
- Anyone who denies the Holocaust or says the atomic bombings were unnecessary now gets officially decked by yours truly.
The only flaw to the series was the more modern disease of political correctness: the hastily tacked-on segments at the end of the episodes highlighting Hispanic and Native Americans. Completely out of sequence, these segments seem to say, "Oh, wait: these people did some stuff, too."
It's gotten out of hand. Yes, we know everybody stepped up to the plate at one time or another. We don't need episodes dedicated to every combination of persona-adjectives. Worse yet, we don't need them stapled to the end as if to patronize them, too.
Still, a worthy thing to watch on Veterans Day.
Comments
My readings suggest that there were plenty of WW2 vets who suffered from PTSD, but PTSD didn't exist as an official diagnosis then (except for "shell shocked"), and there was plenty of cultural inhibition to admitting the need for help.
Posted by: Matthew Warner | November 13, 2007 12:04 PM
I think Matt's right. There was a lot of it, but it was a silent disease. I picture an old man standing sentry in a fallow field in Indiana in the middle of the night. He's staring at the horizon because some part of him is still convinced that the Germans are coming.
Posted by: Aimee | November 13, 2007 4:28 PM
I had some of the same thoughts on watching Burns' series, although I would attribute the lack of obvious and widespread psychological scarring in the WWII generation (or lack of attention paid to it)to the generally more stoic, tough-mindedness of older generations. (I guess that's partly what you are referring to when you mention the general decline of badassery today.) And though I can see that such stoicism is not always healthy, I've also got to admire it. Especially in an age of such introspective, narcissistic navel-gazing, there's something that seems noble about coming back from that war, putting on your work boots, and getting on with life. If you have some nightmares and black moods, you've got your wife and a couple of war buddies and maybe your priest to talk to once in a while.
I thought it was fascinating how often family members told Burns and the filmmakers that "dad never mentioned any of this before." And dad wasn't a twitchy, violent, drug-addicted Oliver Stone-esque "troubled vet" -- he was just a dentist or a farmer and a husband and a dad. Think about that -- for 60 years these guys have had these dark stories inside, and they didn't make them the focus of their lives. They didn't even share them or burden their family with them. And though Burns' subjects aren't a scientific sample, I'm struck by how these guys have done just fine, and have lived functional and apparently psychologically healthy lives.
On the decline of badassery in our society, I wonder if we might not be in a good position to judge that, though. We're in cushy jobs in the civilian world, completely isolated from the badasses that have volunteered to kill terrorists and drain the Middle East swamp for us. I've tried to watch and read about our military's activities in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the stuff the MSM does their best to either lie about or ignore -- and I'm struck by how Iwo-Jima-esque many of our soldiers' behavior has been.
One example is the guy who was posthumously presented with a Medal of Honor last month. His squad was pinned down by some black-hearted jihadis in the mountains of Afghanistan, and was getting torn up. He went out into a clearing so he could get a satellite phone signal to call in help, knowing that he was most likely going to get killed. It worked and his squad was rescued, but he died. If this had happened in WWII, the media would have given him front page treatment, the whole country would know his name, there would be middle schools named after him. Today? Not so much.
One last thought, about calling today's islamocrazies "terrorists,"especially as compared to the WWII baddies. On the one hand, in term of technological sophistication, you're obviously right. Japan made amazing technological progress (it was only around 80 years between Meiji and Midway!), and Germany came up with rockets, panzers and blitzkrieg -- the Muslim crazies can't build a freaking sewage system!
But in another way, I think the terrorists have earned that label right alongside the Japanese and Nazis: vicious suicide tactics? Check. Widespread torture and mutiliation of enemy soldiers and civilians? Check. Systematic rape and murder campaigns? Check. Genocidal intent, fanatical ideology, mass killings? Check, check and check.
And the prospect of some of these countries getting nukes (Pakistan already, Iran in the near future, if the EUnichs and domestic Dems get their way)diminishes the importance of their technological backwardness.
In terms of pure evil, they are every bit as bad as the Nazis or Japanese. In terms of destructive capability? I hope you're right about that.
Posted by: Mart | November 14, 2007 3:23 PM
Yeah, Matt and Aimee--I have no doubt that there are lots of emotionally-scarred World War II vets out there. Like Marty, though, I'm intrigued to see them getting along pretty well even WITH all a load of emotional baggage that all but cripples people today.
Posted by: Will | November 14, 2007 3:49 PM