One of the four remaining American World War I vets died Thursday. I don’t know why this strikes me as remarkable, time and humans being what they are. The former moves on inexorably and the latter die as a consequence. Maybe it’s a fact of my own aging. Growing up, World War I seemed like an accessible bit of history to me — like a modern event since plenty of people who participated were still alive in the 70s and 80s. The fact that Civil War veterans were all dead seemed perfectly natural since it was a “historical” event and somehow not as real.
For me the event which once seemed totally alive but is now fading into history is Charles Lindberg’s crossing of the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis. My grandparents and to some extent my father talked about it in a way that left the impression that it was “the happening” of the 20th Century, as big as World War II and the Moon landing rolled up into one. I recall my parents being glued to the television for broadcasts relating to Lindberg’s death in 1974. But when I talk to some of my children’s school classmates and friends I find many have never heard of it, or if they have, have no idea what he did. I suppose as history goes the crossing of the Atlantic by a lone aviator was rather trivial compared to World War I. But given radio and newsreels, which were so new in 1927, everyone alive then seemed to have participated in the event in a way that made a profound impression on them.
History is history,and once something happens we gradually put it into an overall context. Everything is relative,but not necessarily as it happens.I can remember back on Dave Garroways Morning show when we saw both American coasts, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlanta Ocean LIVE at the same time.That’s not the same stature as the individual feat of the first crossing of the Atlantic alone in a small propeller plane,to be sure,but I still remember the feeling of awe,of Science Fiction coming true.
I think memory’s the great journey of life, and as I got older I was surprised to realize how much of my worldview was shaped by my grandparents’ generation, people who were adults when I was a child, the people who had lived through, and often fought in, both World Wars, and for whom Civil War veterans were a very real presence of their own youth. Thurber’s Union-vet grandfather has more to do with my notions of old age than my own agéd parents do.
The saddest thing, really, is how the lessons of The Great War have been lost, subsumed by WWII. A public that understood WWI would be a public far less likely to be led blindly into the Middle East (then again, one which understood the lessons of US military adverturism since the Second World War would’ve, too). Our (real) national interests would be much served by returning Armistice Day to its rightful place in remembering that war’s enormity and senselessness.
I remember having some WWI vets who were older members at our church. Don’t remember talking to them much about the war. I think the harder part for me is having the WWII and Korean vets being the same age as those WWI vets were when I was younger.
People in my family have usually waited until they were older before having kids. Consequently, as a 36 year old, I have a father who remembers his brothers coming home on leave from World War II. Mom and dad still have some of their ration booklets. It made that war more real to me.
One of my grandfathers was being mustered into the service when the first world war ended. He’s been dead over thirty years, though.
T-If I remember the story right, Grandpa B. got off the train in Missouri (Ft. Leonard Wood, maybe) and was found to have flat feet. So he was declared unfit to serve for that medical reason. The war ended a day or so later. He was stuck at the fort for a few weeks because the trains were full with returning soldiers.