WASHINGTON — Dear Dad,
A decade after you died, the nation just finished a belated memorial to you — and the other 16 million U.S. soldiers who served in World War II. Only 4 million WWII vets are still alive, and they are dying at a rate of 1,100 a day. I wish you had lived to see the new memorial.
It is in direct line-of-sight between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. So as visitors move from the monument honoring the 18th century father of our nation to another for its great 19th century preserver, they now honor you 20th century Americans who sacrificed to protect American freedom.
My visit there brought tears that I did not know I still had for you.
It was not because of any grand, sweeping design of the memorial itself. In fact, it seems rather simple and understated, as were you and most World War II veterans I ever knew. It is even designed mostly not to interfere with views of the other big memorials — unintentionally fitting for a generation who sacrificed anonymously for others.
My tears welled up because its quotes and battle names made me remember you more vividly — and other WWII vets — and the stories you told.
A panel depicting soldiers in a Jeep made me remember the story of how you and a friend single-handedly "captured" a Nazi regiment at the end of the war.
You were assigned to drive ahead of your artillery unit to radio coordinates for shelling. You arrived in a German village that seemed deserted. When the mayor came out and saw you were Americans, he shouted — and Nazi troops emerged from every home and building.
After initial panic, you realized they were looking to surrender to Americans — any Americans — instead of Russians, who had a brutal reputation. They piled their weapons neatly, and you marched them back to astonished superiors. Even your enemies eventually sought the protection of American ideals.
When I saw an inscription about battles in the Rhineland, I remembered your crossing of the Rhine. Your boat hit a mine. I remember you smiling and saying, "The next thing I knew I was 50 feet in the air. I decided to do a graceful swan dive, Army boots and all."
So you swam into Germany. Unfortunately, most Allied troops that night turned back to Belgium amid heavy fighting. So a relative handful of you fought to survive for a long day before a second crossing brought reinforcements.
Some monument panels honor efforts by Americans at home. Part of a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt on one said, "They have given their sons to the military service." That made me think about your mother, and a box of her documents that I inherited.
I found among them one day three unopened envelopes stashed carefully where no one could have found them easily. They were government-provided life insurance policies on the three sons she had in the Army.
She must have quickly put them out of sight, hoping never to need to open them. Luckily, she didn't — but mothers of 405,973 U.S. soldiers did.
While the nearby Vietnam memorial lists individual names of all troops killed in that war, the World War II Memorial does not. It couldn't. Too many died. So it has a wall of 4,000 gold stars representing 100 soldiers each, and says, "Here we mark the price of freedom."
That made me remember the one time, when I was older, when you did talk about the horrors of war — seeing friends killed and, worse, killing an enemy who didn't look much different from you. You talked about the lifelong nightmares that followed.
You never had a welcome home parade. They happened when you were still in Europe. When you returned, people were not happy to see yet another vet competing for scarce jobs. It frustrated you that even banks refused to cash your last Army check — except for one in Murray where you kept an account the rest of your life in gratitude.
The nation finally honors you now. I will take my kids there to tell them more about you. I hope we will always remember, as one inscription says, "Americans came to liberate, not to conquer, to restore freedom, and to end tyranny." We're still trying that today. May we do as well as you.
Deseret Morning News Washington correspondent Lee Davidson can be reached by e-mail at lee@desnews.com