Subject: If yiu didn't fight in WW II.....
From: (ANDREW ROBERT BREEN)
Date: 2/27/04 1:53 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
If you didn't fight in WW II do you feel as though your had missed
something?
Do you feel that given your druthers you'd rather have been there than not?
Any
regrets at having missed it? Anyone?

Having heard the descriptions of that war from my father (coast defence
during summer 1940, including Cromwell, Atlantic escorts 1940-1943,
channel 1943-44, south atlantic escorts 1944-45) and some of his
contemporaries (whose service included variously intruder missions over
France in Beaufighters, tanks in France in 1940, the desert and Italy,
motor gunboats in the channel and the Adriatic, minesweepers in the
channel and flying fulmars over the western desert, then Corsairs in
the far east) I'm *profoundly* glad I missed it. I can see the scars it
left on people. I'm very glad that my generation didn't have to go through
that (and I think my parents generation are mainly glad that they saved
their children and grandchildren from having to do it).
That said, my parents' generation were faced with either doing something
about a truely horrible threat (though without knowing - then - quite
how horrible it was) or having to live under it. If I'd been faced with
the same situation I can only hope I might have done as well. I'm not
sure I would, but then maybe neither were they. I'm very glad to have been
spared that.
The tragedy - in this country at least (.uk) - is the way part of that
generation's legacy - the country they built *after* they came home -
has been squandered by my generation.

--
Andy Breen ~

Very thoughtful post Andy. Many I have heard from over the last 60 years
expressed pretty much what you did. It often just starts with they wished they
had been there with us. It was a war worth fighting and their lives would have
been a bit more worthwhile had they fought that good fight. Then many question
if they could have done as well as we did if they were there with us. I always
assure them that they would have done exactly as we did had they been there
alongside us, And I believe that...
But I think that the sense of ultimate adventure and achievement has a lot to
do with it. The war was the ultimate event in the 20th cenntury, Many are sorry
they missed it,


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer