It's Veterans Day - My

My ex-father-in-law, a Navy vet from WWII and survivor of many wartime scrapes aboard his ship, passed away last January. And with that, yet another link to the Greatest Generation (and the Greatest War) passes too.

That generation has been written about pretty exhaustively lately - and deservedly so. They were, for the most part, people who went and did their jobs - as harrowing and gruesome as they were - and then went back to their civilian lives (for the most part) and, largely, didn't go on about it all that much. In a way, it's a sign of the character of the american male of the day - stoic, not very demonstrative, prone to keeping the bad in with the good. In another way, it's a very bad thing - God only knows how many stories are lost forever. They're stories we need, these days.

In my hometown - Jamestown, ND - the wartime generation was still in their forties and fifties when I was a kid. I was fascinated with military history, and knew that it was all around me - the local National Guard unit, H Company of the 164th Infantry Regiment - had been to hell and back. The 164th - which, along with an artillery regiment was most of the ND National Guard at the time - was the first Army unit to follow the Marines onto Guadalcanal in 1942. They spearheaded MacArthur's "island-hopping" campaign through the Southwest Pacific - New Guinea, the Philippines - and ended up on occupation duty in Japan. About 200 of those men came from Jamestown - and most of them were still alive when I was growing up. It didn't take much reading to know that these were the same guys that threw back the infamous Banzai charge on Bloody Nose Ridge, that liberated Manila...but you'd never know it from talking to them. One of my great unrealized ambitions was to write their history, and those of the 188th Field Artillery Group, which fought in Europe, and the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which fought throughout North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Life got in the way - and, as these men pass, the opportunity grows dimmer and dimmer.

One who is still alive is Bill Devitt. His book (whose first draft I edited ten years ago) is a hilarious yet harrowing look at the life of a very typical lieutenant in the bloodiest battle in American history. If you're looking for some great Vet's Day reading, this is a good start. (I have absolutely no fiscal interest in this book, BTW - I'm plugging it because, well, it's a good book).

At any rate - thank a veteran today. And if you are a veteran - well, good job.