Every now and then, I will go through my blog, occasionally coming across the entry, The Loss of the Buffalo Gal. Each time I look at it and reread the blog, I have to listen to the song by Treehouse Sanctum, “Pilot & Crew.” If you missed that blog, you can click on the title, or click here (https://joeclarksblog.com/?p=5700).
I find myself mesmerized by the images on the screen. Sitting at the computer, I am in awe of the vast amount of knowledge available electronically these days, without the need for the Dewey Decimal Classification or a card catalog. According to the Chicago Tribune, more than 200,000 libraries worldwide still use the Dewey Decimal System. If one is going to use the system, it will require getting ready, driving to the library, and searching through the card catalog. Today, we don’t have to do that; more accurately, we can search for information electronically from home on computers, tablets, and even our phones. How is this possible? It is because of all those young people from 80 years ago who literally saved the world.
Sixteen million Americans fought around the world while wearing the American uniform. Of those, 416,800 died in combat. During the latter part of 1945, eight million soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen came home to America. They were one-half of the combat force who underwent the kind of hardships all of the generations to follow would never know. Indeed, most of the returning servicemen did not speak of what they saw or of what they did in the service of their country. But do not question this: this group of 18 to 24-year-old “kids” grew up very fast, lived hard, played hard, and for those unfortunate to not come home, died hard.
For the lucky ones who did come home, America was a new and exciting place. There were colleges to attend, families to start, subdivisions to create, roads to build, and more. These were the people who created all of the magnificent things we enjoy today.
Not content to sit idly by with their antiquated slide rules, they discovered a way to make computers work, build jet airplanes, construct the tallest buildings in the world, develop new navigational systems, take the phone off the kitchen wall and put it in our pockets; they made new cities and filled in acres of the west, they began trading on Wall Street setting records in the market, and they invented new industries.
As if that were not enough, on September 12, 1962, one of those young men challenged his fellow Americans to do something extraordinary— “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
And damn—they did it!
Yes, the boys and girls of World War II did, in fact, save the world from Nazism, fascism, and communism. Then they went ahead and invented magnificent devices, new medical and surgical procedures, refined electricity, and other sources of power, among other innovations. Those born in the period between 1915 to about 1927 were, in a word, extraordinary.
There is a high probability that the world will never again see the likes of these wonderful men and women. Today they are in their mid-nineties.
What we need to do for them is simple. We need to remember them, we need to recall their stories, and we need to study history. We should never allow evil another chance to overcome and rule the world.
Studying history is such a simple way to avoid repeating mistakes.
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©2025 J. Clark
