A Dying Breed

"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.  All these are the begining of sorrows.  Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.
Matthew 24: 6-9 NKJV

They've been called "The Greatest Generation," those who rose up to defend the world prior to and during the Second World War.  I'm thinking that they themselves never thought that what they did was anything special, they just did what they thought was right.  Others might argue that these soldiers, these defenders of freedom, were merely just men sent into difficult circumstances.  Although this might be true, I've spoken with enough of the men who fought in the difficult days of World War Two to understand that what they did was a act of unselfishness.  These young men were not motivated by money, greed or fame but by heeding the call of their nation in it's time of need.  One need only realize the mindset of our nation in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941.
  Up until this point, the United States had been on the sidelines of a world in turmoil.  Hitlers Germany was on the march in Europe, and had been since the mid 1930's.  The world knew not yet of the horrors of Hitlers "Final Solution" of the extermination of the undesirable peoples of Europe.  Instead, our nation was both weary of war and reluctant to get involved in yet another global conflict.  The memory of those lost on the Western Front in the First World War was still fresh in our minds.  That all changed on December 7th, 1941.  In an instant, the war that seemed so distant days before, was now another American war.  Across the country, young men flocked to recruiting stations to enlist.  This was NOT a draft, these were American volunteers bent on defending their nation from attack.  There are more than a few stories out there of men as young as 13 years old signing up to fight for their country.  Far from being imperialism as some have suggested, this was American patriotism at it's finest.  Their nation was in danger, and her sons responded.
Only 19 years old, William Spring enlisted in the United States army in 1943.  Soon, he was thrown into the fields of combat in Europe, serving under the command of General George "Blood and Guts" Patton in the Third Army.  On December 16th, 1944, the German army launched their "Unternehmen Wacht Am Rhein" (Operation Watch On The Rhein), commonly refered to as the "Battle of The Bulge" in the Ardennes forrest of Belgium.  Although initially caught off guard, allied forces eventually drove back the last major German offensive of the war in Europe on January 25th, 1945.  William Spring, although seriously wounded by German shrapnel, survived to return home to Duluth, Minnesota.
I was watching a pre game football show the other night when, during the National Anthem, a small group of men were brought onto the field in memory of the aniversery of that day on December 7th, 1941.  These men had been serving at Pearl Harbor the morning of that Japanese attack so long ago.  These men were a lot like my uncle Bill, who left home to fight the Germans in Europe in 1943.  My uncle Bill passed away in 1999.  History will remember the sacrafices of he and his comrades.

~Scott~