The Cobra Gets It Right

I moved to Sun City in time for the Memorial Day observance. In honor of the veterans of WWII, a plaza with engraved pavers will be dedicated on May 31, 2004. I bought a brick and due to the space limitations of 3 lines of 16 characters each, I was handcuffed. So, the engraving will read

Robert Sapper

L. A. Chistopher

1942-1945—Thanks

in honor of my father and stepfather who served respectively in the USN/USMC and the USAAF. My father went through boot training in both the USN in San Diego and then was trained to Quantico to go through boot training all over again. Later, the War Department streamlined the training for the Seabees (USN Construction Battalions), but Robert Sapper could wear either uniform and—when he was behaving—was either a Carpenter's Mate Second Class or a Technical Sergeant. In any event, Maureen Dowd gets it right and I wanted to get it right, too. If this is (fair & balanced) gratitude, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
An Ode to Clarity
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

I was one of the snobs who hated the design of the World War II memorial. As a native Washingtonian, I felt sad to see L'Enfant's empty, perfect stretch of mall, elegantly anchored by the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, broken up.

And while heaven knows we could use a triumphalist moment about now, the architecture seemed so ugly for such a beautiful victory, and so 19th-century German for such a 20th-century American ode to heroism.

But when I went Friday and saw all the adorable World War II veterans rolling in wheelchairs, walking slowly with canes or on their own, sitting on the benches that encircle the fountains, taking pictures with children and grandchildren, meeting up with their old buddies, the memorial was suddenly a lovely place to be.

It may not be perfect as a piece of architecture, but it's perfect as a showcase for the ordinary guys who achieved the extraordinary.

Thrilled with their moment in the sun in their usual humble way, inspecting the memorial they earned 60 years after D-Day, they looked in that setting as shining and valuable as jewels in a Tiffany's window.

"We won because we were the smoking and drinking generation," grinned 83-year-old Joseph Patrick Walsh, who was part of the "miserable, cold" Normandy invasion. He spent 32 years in the Navy and fought in Vietnam, and lived for years on Staten Island and the Upper West Side. He showed off the tattoo of a leering Japanese soldier on his arm, and another tattoo with his wife's name and a bar of ink where his wife made him take out "Margie," an earlier girlfriend's name.

World War II had such stark moral clarity in history that it's almost irrelevant in providing lessons about conflict in a grayer time. The Japanese bombed us; they didn't have putatively threatening "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities," as President Bush said of Iraq.

Although conservatives compared Saddam to Hitler, America did not have to be persuaded with "actionable" intelligence before confronting Hitler. That dictator was an individual weapon of mass destruction.

I asked Mr. Walsh how he felt about the Iraq war.

"You gotta back the kids," he said. "And you gotta back the president. But I hate to see it looking like Vietnam night after night on TV, not getting nowhere, taking a town and then having to take it back again. They called us `baby killers' when we got home. This is a politicians' war, not a people's war. You can't win a guerrilla war against religious fanatics. Personally, I don't think we should have went in without U.N. backing. We had nobody — a few Spanish."

Over by the Pacific Arch, George Jonic, 89, was approached by a teenage girl in a T-shirt and toe ring, who was looking at him as if he were Orlando Bloom. "Can I have my picture taken with you?" she asked. Mr. Jonic was an Army combat engineer who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. "My commanding officer and a lot of other people got killed," he said, wiping away a tear. "I was lucky."

Asked about Iraq, Mr. Jonic, who lives in Sandwich, Mass., said he supported the president and his attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East. "We were in the `civilized' war," he said. "But I have to tell you, there's just as much confusion in all wars." He gave me a little salute.

From the standpoint of the soldiers, all wars are hellish, killing and trying not to be killed.

The speeches Saturday stressed how everyone in America had a role in World War II, men and women, young and old, all pulling together. In the Iraq war, there's not much sharing the pain. Most Americans take tax cuts while forcibly re-upped reservists fight without the right armor and face a shortage of bullets.

"Nobody is sacrificing now except the poor guys — men and women — over there," said Bob Dole, who got the memorial built for "the disappearing generation."

"We were all on the same page then, supporting the war. Today, it's more 50-50 about Iraq."

But this weekend, at this memorial, there was a flashback to moral clarity, and a chance to honor our heroes who fought fascism. "Oh, man, it's great," said Don Smith, 78, who enlisted in the Navy when he was 18 and who had arranged to meet two shipmates he hadn't seen since 1945. "I never expected it to be so big. It's too bad that they made it so late. At least it's here and I'm alive to see it."

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times, Inc.