sillystringtheory's Blog

I don't know if any of you have taken the time to watch the PBS series "The War".   I would like to say a few words here about it.

Having come from the generation that had so many of our fathers and family fighting in that war, I can say that I always carried an avid interest in the war. As a child in the 60s you could not turn on the TV or go to a movie that didn't often feature some saga, weather actual or made up having to do with WWII. The baby boom generation could not have had even a tiny understanding of what it was like in those years of war and suffering. Certainly the movies of that time were timid at best about the utter violence which reigned for years. All I and my friends who regularly dressed in army clothes and carried toy Tommy guns cared about was how well we could verbally imitate a tommy gun or German Schmiezer. A form of entertainment in which we died a thousand deaths and got right back up each and every time afterwards.

As I said before, one could not watch TV at that time and miss such classics as Combat, Rat Patrol, and many other war related programs. Leave it to Hollywood to even make light of the war with Hogan’s Heros. Friendly Nazis. Imagine that.

That was what that war was to us. We had no idea…

 After all, we lived in a world that had been freed from all that tyranny. The "cold war" was too complicated for us to understand and too boring to probably care about at that time. Unknown to us at the time, our country was slowly but surely slipping again into the apathy it is mired in today. Certainly such a thing could never happen again. The world thought the very same thing after WWI.

 All this past week "The War" has been playing on PBS. I have a little TV in my basement to keep me company while I work at night on my hobbies and projects. I got very little done between 8:00 and 10:00 this past week. I was literally glued to this show. I have to tell you that I was moved in a way that I have never been moved before while watching that show and I will admit that I openly wept twice coming close to it many more times.

 "The Humanity" is a phrase that is used often to describe tragic events in our lives and it is the phrase that kept coming back up in my throat like a sour vomit while watching many of the more horrific scenes of The War. The documentary is a wake-up slap across the face to anyone such as myself who is a history buff, who thought they knew everything there was to know about the war. Ken Burns has showed us that you can never really know the true horrors of a war such as this unless you were there or could talk in depth to the brave souls who were there.

 My father was "there". All I really know for sure about him back then was that he enlisted into the Navy in 1942 and because of his knowledge of diesel engines became an engineer on an LST (Landing Ship Tank). I know he was at the Normandy Invasion on D-Day.  He was re-assigned in early 1945 to Michigan City, Indiana to a navy diesel training school as a teacher until the war ended later that year. My father talked somewhat casually about his experiences in the war but never anything specific and definitely never anything hard core. I also know from my mother that he felt that he missed out because he wanted to be assigned to the Submarine service but never was. I never knew much about my father’s real experience in WWII until an incident when I was in the 4th grade.

 One day in the fourth grade I was sitting in class. The particular desk I was sitting in had recently had several german swastikas carved into it and to make a long story short, I got the blame for it as I was the kid who was constantly doodling tanks and planes and ships. Therefore in my teachers infinite wisdom, it had to be me. A note relaying the alleged vandalism was sent home to my parents. My dad, who traveled a lot in his business, and normally was away from home 75% of the time happened to be in town that day. I had never been beaten as a kid by my parents. Ever. Until that day…

When my dad read the note from the teacher and what it all was about with the swastikas there was no convincing him that I was innocent. Off came the belt and with every painful swipe in an almost trance-like mannor which I will never forget, he uttered such phrases as, “Do you know how many people died because of that bastard Hitler?” . Do you know what that swastika means?”. He clearly implied to me without really saying it that he had had been forced to kill people because of that bastard Hitler and the mess he created.

Afterward, I never looked at my father the same way again. Not because he had taken the belt to me, but because I saw a man that I had lived with for 10 years that I thought I knew intimately, who I did not. Time quickly healed our relationship. He never raised a hand in anger to me ever again just as had been the case before the “swastika incident”.  The whole thing never came up again in my family until years later after my father died.

My father passed away in 1981 and it was only after that that my mother filled me in on some of the stress my dad had endured after the war was over. It was all quite amazing to me. I still had no idea of the horrors he truly must have experienced, but was beginning to slowly realize that there was something there, some terrible knowledge that was privy to a select few. Something I would probably never fully understand.

 Ken Burns has helped me to understand this thing from my past that I thought would have died with my parents long ago. His documentary clearly shows what it was like to not only have fought in that war but how it was like for the families and civilians over here. The experience has enlightened me into some stark realizations.

History and human nature have shown us time and again that there will always be some person or group who thinks they can rule the world. It is inevitable. It makes me wonder how we today can sit back and ignore or dismiss tyrants such as bin-Laden, Jung-Ill and Amadinijad after history has clearly taught us that despite our best efforts, we cannot all just get along. To further believe that if America laid her guns down that all would be right with the world is to have one’s head up their proverbial arse.

Ken Burn’s “The War” should be made mandatory viewing for everyone in this country between the ages of 12 and 40 to enlighten us to what apathy can do. To help us to never forget what can happen when you ignore or dismiss the warning signs. As many as a thousand WWII veterans are dying off each day. With each day they die off the apathy in this country grows.

Thank you Ken Burns for showing us how it really was. God forbid we ever forget what happened those horrible years and God forbid we ever forget the generation that sacrificed themselves so that we would go on as a free country.

We truly are NOT worthy.