“Yesterday I visited the battlefield
of last year. The place was scarcely recognizable. Instead of a wilderness of
ground torn up by shell, the ground was a garden of wild flowers and tall
grasses. Most remarkable of all was the appearance of many thousands of white
butterflies which fluttered around. It was as if the souls of the dead soldiers
had come to haunt the spot where so many fell. It was eerie to see them. And
the silence! It was so still that I could almost hear the beat of the butterflies’
wings.” British officer, 1919, 30 years
before an even costlier war erupted
Seventy-five years
ago, Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces, marking the end of
World War II in Europe. Crowds gathered
to celebrate in America and Great Britain, and President Harry S Truman, who
turned 61 that day, declared that its was his happiest birthday ever. He dedicated the victory to Franklin D.
Roosevelt, who had died a month earlier, and wished his predecessor were alive
to savor the moment. Truman was made
clear, however, that the war was only half over and that the next task was to
defeat Japan.
Historian Ray
Boomhower reprinted part of a column Ernie Pyle drafted shortly before his
death on Ie Shima on April 18, 1945:
Last summer I wrote that I hoped the end of
the war could be a gigantic relief, but not an elation. In the joyousness of
high spirits it is so easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would
not wish themselves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks.
But there are so many of the living who
have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural
sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along
the high rows of hedge throughout the world.
Dead men by mass production-in one country after another-month after
month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.
Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that
they become monotonous.
Dead men in such monstrous infinity that
you come almost to hate them.
Those are the things that you at home need
not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he
is a near one who went way and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying
so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.
We saw him, saw him by the multiple
thousands. That’s the difference.
Of the 16 million American G.I.s who served in World War II
there are fewer than 400,000 still alive.
Heralded as the “Greatest Generation,” those on the Western front fought
to defeat Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and save Europe from falling under totalitarian
control. Those in the Pacific expected
the ordeal would last many more months, not realizing that atomic bombs would
bring a sudden, terrifying end to the conflict.
One of these was Whiting, Indiana, native Walter S. Smolar, who recently
died at age 99. The Slovak-American
graduate of Hammond Clark High School served with the 313th air
force bombing wing mission on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas. His obit mentioned that Smolar was a great
storyteller who, in addition to recounting war stories recalled seeing Horace
Mann star Tom Harmon play football against the Whiting Oilers, and attending a
Chicago Bears scrimmage and a basketball exhibition starring Wilt Chamberlain
in East Chicago. The author of the obit added: “Walt held on until the Cubs won the World Series, and his goal was to
live to 100. We’ll round it up and call
it 100.”
The Trump administration has invited seven of these old soldiers
to a White House ceremony, and the President will no doubt be there without a
mask, hogging the limelight and mingling with this at-risk group despite having
been informed that a valet who has served him meals recently tested positive
for Covid-19. Some have suggested that veterans refuse to attend the White
House photo op, given that Trump has ignored the lessons of World War II
concerning the importance of alliances such as NATO and international
organizations such as the U.N. and the World Health Organization. Safety concerns aside, if honored by an
invitation to the White House, I believe I’d go, no matter who the president
was, if only to express my disapproval of the leader’s actions. I recalled antiwar activists at the
University of Maryland urging distinguished African-American historian John
Hope Franklin to boycott a 1970 commencement ceremony at which a received my
doctorate and he received an honorary degree.
At the time the campus was under martial law in the wake of Nixon’s
invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State and Jackson State. Franklin told those who questioned his
decision that he had earned the honor and his appearance in no way was an
endorsement of the war.
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