The soul of a historian

With each passing day, another World War II veteran perishes. In a few short years, all of them will cease to exist. Yet their memory shall never perish.

Their memory will never perish so long as we have historians and history buffs–including some men who want to transcend their own mediocre, dull, drab, un-glorified existence by romantically identifying with the historical events of the past.

For some, it could be the lost causes of Corregidor and Bataan in late 1941 and early 1942.

For others it could be Pearl Harbor or even the Battle of the Bulge.

There is often a certain spiritualism, fatalism, or religious experience involved, which may reflect a certain depth of character.

In those men, in those fallen WWII soldiers–in their lives, in everything that they represented, extolled and exemplified, of what was good with America at the time–in their suffering, in their sacrifices, in their patient patriotism, in their certainty and moral rectitude, in the unequivocal moral spirit of the times; in everything that they had to endure–from the Bataan Death March to the stinking, blood curdling hell holes of Japanese ships, to the filthy P.O.W death camps–we find a bizarre form of redemption.
We find an eternal hope, a plea, a sacred experience that moves us, the sensitive, historical types, to tears whenever we hear taps, whenever we see the famous photo of the
flag being hoisted up over Iwo Jima . . . whenever we are poignantly reminded of the past.

For some of us, in the lives of these World War II soldiers, we may seek a vicarious moral justification for the ordeal and tragedy that was the Vietnam conflict–and the cultural, societal and moral decay that followed it.

Never again will we ever experience such a great, grand, magnificent, sweeping, epic, and fully justified war as we had in World War II–the last good war and the greatest human drama in world history.

Why are we strangely drawn to World War II?
Why, on reading the history and seeing the films, do some of us often declare: “My God, I wish I was there. I wish I had lived in those thrilling, god-awful times. I wish I could have been a witness to such an epic
history.”?

To help give us meaning and purpose, and to help us feel more alive, we need dragons to slay. If they didn’t exist, we would have to invent them (Satan and Hell?). Fortunately, the world provided them–Hitler and Tojo–in abundant supply during World War II.

Make no mistake: The true historian is a sports fan with a soul. He cheers on the men who strove and fell. He celebrates them for their gallant and heroic deeds. He guards their cherished memory for eternal posterity.

Semper Fi.