The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Praise Our Heroes

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This editorial today of ours at the Washington Times was one of the most personally moving I have worked on in a long time (moving to me to research and do the interview, that is). What thousands of Americans went through in Bataan in 1942 should bring tears to any eye. Even more remarkable is the lack of apparent bitterness that people like Ben Steele (featured in the editorial) give evidence of. Interviewed by phone at age 91, Steele is engaging, sharp, and extremely forthcoming. I am in awe at his service, and deeply appreciative of all who serve in our nation's uniform. Tomorrow we remember those who "gave the last full measure of devotion" -- those in all our wars who, unlike Steele, did not return alive. Bless them all. And thank their families.

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Oldefarte| 5.24.09 @ 2:46PM

During a summer of my college years in New Orleans, a friend and myself were enjoying a beer [or two] with his cousin, who was a returning marine from the Vietnam War. This marine slowely began describing the Viet Cong's TERROR TACTICS that they employed after killing one of our GI's or marines. It involved cutting off a certain part of our soldier's male anotomy and placing same into the soldier's mouth, in order to terrorize our troops who eventually discovered their bodies. This was in the 1960's folks, and it wasn't WATERBOARDING that was being described to me, okay? To say the least, I became instantly sober and horrified. This marine's factual description was brief and instantaneous, and somehow the three of us moved on to other [less gruesome] subjects, thank God. The point is that any war veteran is reluctant to take about his wartime experience, which is in totality a human TORTURE. My lifetime gratitude goes out to all who have served this country for their patriotic sacrifices that have allowed me to stay alive for 63 years!!!!!

Mary| 5.24.09 @ 4:55PM

Brokaw was right to name these men The Greatest Generation.

You know what else was part of this generation that I think doesn't exist anymore? An understanding of what it means to be civilized.

I got on bus a few weeks ago and there were these 15 year old kids dropping F-bombs loud and clear and repetively while elderly ladies sat just in front of them.

And for whatever reason it made me recall Theodore Dalrymple's essay What We Have To Lose:

"I was settling down to write a book review: not of a great work, but of a competent, conscientious, slightly dull biography of a minor historical figure. Could any activity have been less important when set beside the horrible fate of thousands of people trapped in the then flaming—and soon collapsing—buildings? A book review, compared to the deaths of over 300 firemen killed in the course of their duty, to say nothing of the thousands of others?...As for my writing, it is hardly dust in the balance: my work amuses a few, enrages some, and is unknown to the vast majority of people in my immediate vicinity, let alone to wider circles. Impotence and futility are the two words that spring to mind.

Yet even as I think such self-regarding thoughts, an image recurs in my mind: that of the pianist Myra Hess playing Mozart in London's National Gallery even as the bombs were falling during the Second World War. I was born after the war ended, but the quiet heroism of those concerts and recitals, broadcast to the nation, was still a potent symbol during my childhood. It was all the more potent, of course, because Myra Hess was Jewish, and the enemy's anti-Semitism was central to its depraved view of the world; and because the music she played, one of the highest peaks of human achievement, emanated from the very same land as the enemy's leader, who represented the depths of barbarism.

No one asked, "What are these concerts for?" or "What is the point of playing Mozart when the world is ablaze?" No one thought, "How many divisions has Myra Hess?" or "What is the firepower of a Mozart rondo?" Everyone understood that these concerts, of no account in the material or military sense, were a defiant gesture of humanity and culture in the face of unprecedented brutality. They were what the war was about. They were a statement of the belief that nothing could or ever can vitiate the value of civilization; and no historical revisionism, however cynical, will ever subvert this noble message."