Veterans' Day

Today is Veterans' Day. A day we honor and think about those who have served and are serving to protect and ensure that we, as individuals and a nation, can enjoy the liberties we so often take for granted. I had the opportunity to arrange the program for Sacrament Meeting. The assigned speakers spoke on free agency and freedom. At the end of the meeting, the concluding speaker, a VietNam Veteran, arranged for all of the veterans in our ward to sing America the Beautiful. The entire program was a moving experience indeed.

As I was thinking, in the few moments that I had to myself today, I recalled an item that I wrote after Memorial Day in 2003 from Gilbert, Arizona. Forgive me for recycling it, but it seemed appropriate....

We had a very nice Memorial Day. I was going to get up early and trim some hedges and shrubs, but decided not to do so at the last minute. Instead, we all went to the Commemorative Air Force Museum (formerly the Confederate Air Force). We did this in the morning since the majority of the museum is two large hangars. When it is 108 degrees outside an un-air-conditioned hangar is no place to be.

It was nice to be there. I thought about Grandpa Fred since he was part of that organization. They even had a Stearman there (Sam knows it as the "Yellow airp'ane"). The Stearman is one of the planes the SLC CAF wing had and I remember him telling me about. It was also the airplane that he learned to fly in. Incidentally, Grandpa did his P-38 flight training about an hour west of where I now live, at Luke Field.

There was also a P-51D Mustang fly-by. We didn't see much of it since we were inside; only caught a fleeting glimpse as we dashed out the front doors. Nonetheless it was very, very cool. (Sam appreciated the Mustang about as much as his father.) With airplanes like that, it is certainly easy to see how they contributed to victory in Europe. I remember Grandpa telling me he liked to fly the P-51.

They also had a B-25 Mitchell in the hangar. The CAF is working on its restoration, so they have it all taken apart--including the engines. This reminded me of Granddad; since this was the type of plane he worked on when he was in South Carolina. The lack of engines reminded me of the incident when an engine hoist broke his jaw. It also reminded me of the stories he told me about refitting a bunch of B-25s. He said they were told to do this in secret and the things they did to them made absolutely no sense. It was a few months later that he found out those B-25s flew off of the aircraft carrier Hornet. They were part of the Doolittle Raiders and the first US bomber strike on Tokyo.

Out on the tarmac, there was an old DC-3, better known as the C-47 Dakota in World War II. This airplane served as a troop and materials transport during the war. It also was the same kind of plane Grandpa LeeMaster jumped from as a paratrooper into Holland during Operation Market Garden. This airplane reminded me of the stories he related to me about his military service.

So, if you think that you don't know any heroes, you need to know that you do. Grandpa Fred's squadron was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for action against German and Italian aircraft. They provided fighter escort for a flight of (ironically) B-25s aginst Foggia, Italy. Put into context of the European Theater of Operations, Foggia was later used as an airbase in support of campaigns into northern Italy resulting in the Fall of Rome on June 6, 1944 and the defeat of fascist Italy. Grandpa Fred himself was, if memory serves me well, given an award for his actions against Foggia during these missions, including shooting down three enemy fighters.

Granddad, although not in the air, contributed to one of the pivotal points in the Pacific Theater of Operations. The Doolittle Raid demonstrated to the Japanese that we could directly bomb their home country. This was just the first of thousands of sorties against Japan that would end by ushering the world into the atomic era. It was a crippling blow to Japanese morale. No one had ever flown a twin-engined light bomber off of an aircraft carrier before General Doolittle, let alone two dozen or more. To do this, the aircraft needed to be specially modified and lightened considerably so they wouldn't just fall into the ocean when flight deck ran out. Granddad helped maintain Doolittle's planes as they trained in South Carolina, and made it possible for them to fly off of the Hornet.

Grandpa Lee fought a different kind of war; a ground war. He was present at Bastogne and was part of the army units that caught the brunt of Hitler's last ditch offensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. I recall him telling me of how he and his friends suffered during the siege of Bastogne. He was also present when American regular army units discovered what the Nazi's thought of as a 'final solution' to the fanatical and fanciful problem of Europe's Jewish population. I remember him telling me that when he saw his first death camp, he knew why he was fighting.

Tom Brokaw calls my grandparents' generation the "Greatest Generation." I have mixed feelings about this title. That generation, both genders, certainly rose to the challenge of defeating the Axis powers; a hardship and war of magnitude history has never seen. If you talk to veterans of Brokaw's Greatest Generation (and believe me, I have talked to a few) they will tell you they were just doing what they had to do, to get a job done, and to go home and resume a 'normal' life. I think recent history has proven that one particular generation does not have a monopoly on bravery, courage, and sacrifice. Certainly not an American generation. Perhaps that would be more a more fitting title for Brokaw's generation--an American Generation.