The Greatest Generation(s)

 

The veteran newsman Tom Brokaw recently announced his retirement which set me to thinking about some of the stories he’s reported. A big one I remember was that night in 1989 when he stood at the Berlin Wall and brought the news of its fall to television viewers. It so happened he had the “scoop” on that event because he was the only newsman present. His competitors had turned in for the night.  He worked at reporting for 55 years and was a familiar face on NBC news programs.

     What he might be most remembered for are his books, especially the one titled “The Greatest Generation.” It’s familiar to many people since it has sold almost four and a half million copies. He received inspiration for writing it after visiting the site of D-Day on its 40th anniversary and walking the beaches with veterans. He said at that time he “underwent a life-changing experience,” that he’d come to understand what this generation of Americans had meant to history. He came to call them the greatest generation any society has ever produced.

     Brokaw took some inspiration from the work of Stephen Ambrose, a historian who wrote several books dealing with the experiences of military people in World War Two. His story “Band of Brothers” earned a lot of attention with big sales and went on to be developed into a popular HBO video series by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Maybe the argument can be made they became interested because of the potential for making money. That aside, it did bring some of the war to us who had never participated in one. 

     A statement Ambrose made and thought so apt that he quoted it in three different books went like this about the veterans, “They wanted to throw baseballs, not grenades, shoot a .22 rifle, not an M-1.” He is credited with the founding of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans which I’ve visited briefly, but our time schedule didn’t permit a lingering view.

     Ambrose wrote several based on World War II including “The Wild Blue” about the men who flew the B-24s over Germany. It featured a one-time senator of South Dakota George McGovern who piloted a bomber on 35 missions. He spoke in Bismarck one evening, we went, and afterward I was able to ask him how he coped during those missions? He answered very simply, “I was scared all the time.”

     Since Band of Brothers, other books about Company E, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne have appeared. Mike Ranney, a man from Sheldon was a member of that company. He is mentioned in most of the books about Company E.

     I have several books on my shelf that talk about other wars and other veterans, too. David Halberstan’s “The Coldest Winter” offers a picture of fighting men in the Korean War and doesn’t forget to discuss the politics surrounding it along with the complications of China sending soldiers.

     The Vietnam War spawned many books and movies. Since I’ve known several people who served then, I wanted to get close to its history. Tim O’Brien’s personal story titled “The Things They Carried” interested me enough to reread it several times. So has “We Were Soldiers Once…and Young” by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway. They were both present at the particular Battle of Ia Drang in Vietnam, one as the commander and the other as a journalist.

     Another Vietnam story, “A Rumor of War” by Philip Caputo, can send chills down your spine when reading it. The mood of the book can best be described with something he stated in his prologue, “I have made a great effort to resist the veteran’s inclination to remember things the way he would like them to have been rather than the way they were.”

     There have been more wars and military engagements since Vietnam and they’ve inspired more literature. But this will end the big circle taken since we first talked about Tom Brokaw’s retirement. Even though he will no longer will appear before a camera, he promises to keep writing. I would imagine he will not forget the people who do the heavy lifting in this country. As a final note, the letter “s” has been added to the title making it a plural speaking of more than one generation.