Well, WWII is remembered primarily because that generation fathered and also taught the next generation which was a baby boom. It's just numbers of us who were brought up on the deeds of our fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, and others. While my father was denied military sevice due to his broken legs and crushed ankle, his brother served in the Pacific, as did two of my mother's brothers and several of my aunt's husbands. My step-father stepped into France from a landing craft at Normandy. WWII just has it in numbers over WWI.
But today is Veteran's Day and in smaller towns like that I grew up in head-stones of all are decorated with the American Flag. Veterans of WWII, the Korean War, Viet Nam (Police Action), Iraq I & II will march and remember their progenitors of other conflicts, WWI, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War, the Mexican War, the War of 1812, the Revolutionary War, and other smaller conficts and duties in which soldiers and sailors have lost their lives.
One cannot remember it all, it takes the entire community. It is up to us to also create that extrasomatic knowledge and preserve it, that future generations will have those memories intact. A while back we in our genealogy group were doing just that, interviewing the stories of veterans of WWI and WWII. It is interesting that such personal stories often do not come out until the end of that person's life. It seemed to be not the pain off remembering, but that the memory is so personal and so deeply felt. But they have much to tell us of war, its horrors and joy, pain and pleasures, of loss and sometimes the remorse at having yet lived while others so close have died. It all seems to come out at some time, it did for my father-in-law when he saw his own end.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2005-11-11 10:04 pm (UTC)But today is Veteran's Day and in smaller towns like that I grew up in head-stones of all are decorated with the American Flag. Veterans of WWII, the Korean War, Viet Nam (Police Action), Iraq I & II will march and remember their progenitors of other conflicts, WWI, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War, the Mexican War, the War of 1812, the Revolutionary War, and other smaller conficts and duties in which soldiers and sailors have lost their lives.
One cannot remember it all, it takes the entire community. It is up to us to also create that extrasomatic knowledge and preserve it, that future generations will have those memories intact. A while back we in our genealogy group were doing just that, interviewing the stories of veterans of WWI and WWII. It is interesting that such personal stories often do not come out until the end of that person's life. It seemed to be not the pain off remembering, but that the memory is so personal and so deeply felt. But they have much to tell us of war, its horrors and joy, pain and pleasures, of loss and sometimes the remorse at having yet lived while others so close have died. It all seems to come out at some time, it did for my father-in-law when he saw his own end.