I am writing this blog in defense of a man I never met———my father.
He left for the front in World War II before I was born, and never came home again. He was captain of a B-29 bomber, the largest plane the United States put into service during that war. He had a crew of ten, some of whom were older than he was at 22. He was a graduate of West Point, finishing third in his class. He was fluent in two languages, and wanted to be assigned to a wind tunnel somewhere in the United States when the war was over in order to study avionics.
He was stationed on the desert in India where his squadron participated in the bombing of Japanese held parts of China. For this they had to leave the hot, dry desert in which their base was located, and fly over the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas, in an unheated and unpressurized cockpit, to land and refuel in southern China. From there they would take off to bomb Japanese held Manchuria. It was over those skies, in 1944, just short of his 23rd birthday, that my father’s plane was shot down, and all but one crew member were lost.
And my father was not the only one in my family to serve his country in the military. There was:
1. My father’s father who died flying a plane what was later scrapped as not viable. A street at Langley Air Force base is named after him.
2. My mother’s father who made three landings in the Pacific in World War II and then went on to lead the First Marine Division in the Korean War during the Inchon landing and the breakout from the Chosen Reservoir.
3. My husband who was a career Marine and served in Vietnam.
4. My father-in-law who made three landings in the Pacific and fought in the Korean War.
I always thought of these men as special for their service to their nation, but now I understand that I am to consider myself to have been surrounded all my life by losers and suckers. I look at the picture at the top of this page, a young man leaning out of the cockpit his airplane, preparing to take off into what will be the eternal blue. And then I know, in spite of what anyone may say, that their sacrifice stands as an unblemished fact. It turns out they do not, after all, need my defense in the least.