Tom Brokaw (41 page)

1. Every U.S. citizen is grateful for the job the soldiers are doing.
   
2. The soldiers' job is important because they're preventing war.
   
3. As Colonel Nett often speaks at religious programs of all denominations, he
   knows
   that the soldiers are in the prayers of all the faithful.
   
4. Yes, the soldiers' job can be lonely and frustrating, but it's a lot better than fighting and, after all, they are helping people to establish a democratic way of life.
   

Nett is deeply impressed by the quality of today's all-volunteer military. As he says, “They're here because they want to be. When we had the Selective Service—the draft—I sometimes had to adapt my leadership to people who were angry and disgruntled. Now the officer candidates are college-educated, and by the time they get to training school they're considered the best.”

Nett does, however, have some concerns about the expanding population of women in the armed services. “Even though the policy is not to have women fight,” he says, “women have to be ready to fight in emergency situations. We can't have this policy of filling our military vacancies with females, but only males can fight.”

Nevertheless, Nett is still gung ho on the quality of the military and the role it plays in American life. Almost sixty years after he first enlisted, he still hears the call to service. After all he's been through and all he's done for the military, you might think he would expect something in return. The colonel has another point of view. As he says, “I will go anywhere in the world to support the troops; after all, I feel so indebted to the Army for what it has done for me.”

There it is again, the selfless response so characteristic of members of this generation, now coming into their twilight years. To be sure, they have gotten used to the better life, including the so-called entitlements such as Medicare, Social Security cost-of-living increases, and senior-citizen discounts—but they retain at the core of their being a strong sense of self-reliance and gratitude.

There is a common theme of pride in all that they've accomplished for themselves, their families, and their country, and so little clamor for attention, given all they've done. The women and members of ethnic groups who were the objects of acute discrimination even as they served their country remember the hurt, but they have not allowed it to cripple them, nor have they invoked it as a claim for special treatment now. They're much more likely to talk about the gains that have been achieved rather than the pain they suffered.

They have given the succeeding generations the opportunity to accumulate great economic wealth, political muscle, and the freedom from foreign oppression to make whatever choices they like. For those generations, the challenges are much different, but equally important.

There is no world war to fight today nor any prospect of one anytime soon, but racial discrimination remains an American cancer. There is no Great Depression, but economic opportunity is an unending challenge, especially in a high-tech world where education is more important than ever. Most of all, there is the need to reinstate the concept of common welfare in America, so that the nation doesn't squander the legacy of this remarkable generation by becoming a collection of well-defined, narrowly cast special-interest fiefdoms, each concerned only with its own place in the mosaic. World War II and what came after was the result of a nation united, not a nation divided.

As for me, I will always keep in my mind's eye a cool, cloudy Memorial Day on the northern plains of South Dakota. I was visiting my father's surviving brother, John, who after serving in the Navy during World War II returned to the small town of Bristol, the family seat. He stayed a bachelor all those years, working at the bank and in the municipal liquor store. He lived with two of his sisters, neither of whom, like John, ever married.

He was a small, quiet man, and on that Memorial Day he asked me to accompany him to the Bristol cemetery south of town, overlooking the broad reach of prairie. He explained that just the year before he had given up the job of placing small flags on the graves of veterans. He was worried that his successor, a veteran of the Korean War, might not know the location of all the graves that deserved to be honored.

So as I stood on a small rise, watching, these two veterans, each clutching a fistful of small American flags, made their way through the cemetery. It came to me then that this was, in many ways, the essence of the American experience. These two men had gone off to war in distant places and then returned to the familiar surroundings of their youth, the small town and farmland where life—as a result of droughts, blizzards, tornadoes, and wages that reflected the uncertainty of agriculture markets—was often difficult.

They came home to resume lives enriched by the values they had defended.

I have been witness to historic events at the U.S. Capitol and on the south lawn of the White House, at Arlington National Cemetery and the Statue of Liberty. None moved me more than the sight of my uncle and his friend, a local farmer, walking among the headstones, framed by the wide steel-gray sky and the great curve of a prairie horizon, decorating the graves of the hometown veterans on that Memorial Day.

I thought of the farmers, the merchants, the railroad men, and all their families who had gone through so much to tame the prairie and start communities, build schools and churches, and look after one another. They had gone off to war, or sent their husbands, sons, and boyfriends, and they now lay side by side beneath the sod, mute testimony to sacrifice and service. Those whose graves were decorated with the small flags were carrying the colors for all the others.

It was a ceremony of honor, remembrance, and renewal played out in countless other cemeteries across the land by members of a generation that gave so much and asked so little in return.

After talking to so many of them and reflecting on what they have meant in my own life, I now know that it is in those small ceremonies and quiet moments that this generation is appropriately honored. No fanfare is required. They've had their parades. They've heard the speeches. They know what they have accomplished, and they are proud. They will have their World War II memorial and their place in the ledgers of history, but no block of marble or elaborate edifice can equal their lives of sacrifice and achievement, duty and honor, as monuments to their time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
OM
B
ROKAW
, a native of South Dakota, graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in political science. He began his journalism career in Omaha and Atlanta before joining NBC News in 1966. Brokaw was the White House correspondent for NBC News during Watergate, and from 1976 to 1981 he anchored
Today
on NBC. He has been the sole anchor and managing editor of
NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
since 1983. Brokaw has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including two Duponts, a Peabody Award, and several Emmys. He lives in New York and Montana.

Copyright © 1998 by Tom Brokaw

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Brokaw, Tom.
The greatest generation / Tom Brokaw.
p.     cm.
1. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, American. I. Title.
D811.A2B746   1998
940.54'8173—dc21     98-44267

Random House website address:
www.atrandom.com

FIRST EDITION

Title page photo: UPI/Corbis-Bettmann

eISBN: 978-0-375-50462-4

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