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Dorothy Copus Brush The Greatest Generation To those of us who make up what Tom Brokaw
generously calls the "greatest generation," all the
adulation after 60-plus years is flattering but also puzzling.
Flattering because most of the tributes are coming from the adult
children of that generation. Both Brokaw's books and Steven Spielberg's
film, Saving Private Ryan, were inspired by their parent's acceptance
of their part in World War II but once they returned to civilian
life their lips were sealed about the sights and sounds they
had endured. Just before Memorial Day this year, another
son's book was released. It is called simply Duty but under that
title are the words "A Father, His Son, and the Man Who
Won the War." It was written by one of the country's best
and most sensitive columnists, Bob Greene. The Chicago Tribune
columnist's syndicated column appears in more than 200 newspapers,
and he has recently added a monthly column for Life magazine. Of that generation of the Depression and World
War II, Greene says, "No generation has ever given its children
a sturdier and more reliable safety net than the one our parents'
generation gave to us. The common experience that wove the net
was their war." Children born to parents of that "greatest
generation" will have a clearer understanding of those years
after reading this book. Many of the emotions we felt then are
still close to the surface and are often triggered at unexpected
moments. Yet all those deep feelings seemed impossible to explain
to our children, so few of us tried. Greene has done the job
well. Greene is a native of Columbus, OH, and during
the last days of his father's life he returned there often to
join his brother and sister as they helped their parents during
this painful period. Greene knew only bits and pieces of his
father's war years, during which he served in the infantry. In
his later years, the father had been persuaded to make audio
tapes of some of his memories. Greene had often heard his father mention
that he had seen Paul Tibbetts in a store. Tibbetts was the pilot
of the Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on that fateful day
in history. The senior Greene never spoke to Tibbetts, but he
always referred to him most respectfully as "the man who
won the war." Tibbetts lived only a few miles from Greene's
home, and the columnist had tried to arrange an interview with
him but he never received a reply to his requests. After he wrote
a column on the small Ohio History of Flight Museum in Columbus
- in which he spoke of those who had fought in World War II,
never bragging about their part in the conflict - he received
a call from a friend of Tibbetts telling him how much Tibbetts
had appreciated the column. That opened the door to over a year
of intensive interviews Greene had with the man who won the war. One thing the two men had in common: Tibbetts
had never been able to discuss his war experience with his two
sons, just as Greene's father had not shared his memories with
his children. Greene was struggling with his father's final days,
and the questions he had never asked his father he asked of Tibbetts.
Many of those questions came to Greene as he listened over and
over to those tapes his father had made. Early in the interviews, Tibbetts answered
the question of how he felt about dropping the bomb. "I
never lost a night's sleep. A million or more lives were saved
by that bomb," he said. Eventually Greene realized that he might never
have been born except for that bomb because on one of the tapes
he learned his father's outfit had orders to head for Japan.
To his question of how Tibbetts and his crew felt after they
saw what the bomb had done, the reply was, "I think we knew
the war was over." Today Paul Tibbetts is 85 years old. Already more and more of that generation have died. Greene said, "As they leave us every day now, we know what they had done." He added, "It is the whisper of a generation and its children bidding each other farewell." |