I was contemplating today writing a blog about the attrition through age of "the greatest generation", as Tom Brokaw so aptly called the generation that fought WW II, when I read my old friend Grumpy's blog (grumpy-olddog.blogspot.com---well worth reading, as I've said before) about the death of another hero of that war and wisely saying that such a hero is what the Staples Center should be packed for---Amen. Grumpy beat me to it, but I still want to put my two cents in.
One of my pleasures in England is reading the obituaries in "The Daily Telegraph" or "The Times"where crafting these tributes to the dead is a real art form. The "New York Times" sometimes can rival the British papers in this department--but not often. Several times a week, you can be certain, a key obituary in the British papers will concern another war hero who has passed on, and by this time such heroes are becoming fewer and fewer. My older brother's death in late June (see my blog of July 9, 2009) was another example of another loss by that great brotherhood of WW II.
We should stop and remember them, as they become rarer and rarer. We owe them an incalcuable debt, for they paid a great price to guarantee us the liberty we possess today. It is so easy for us to be caught up in the daily problems of life, especially in the economic conditions of today, that we forget to consider how much worse conditions would be if we had lost that war and were yoked in the bondage of Fascism. The same respect should be tendered, it goes without saying, to those who fought in Korea or Nam or in today's storm centers of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Every day, even when the world is too much with you, pause and think of those heroes and what they did---for you and me.
Great minds think alike.
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