Inevitable last battles
The military ceremony was complete, the flags fluttered and Carl Dean Beck, D-Day paratrooper, was lowered into the ground under a magnolia tree.
Beck had three careers—soldier, traffic engineer, college security guard—and was an engaged, community-minded citizen. But what he was called to do as a teenager more than 70 years ago still defined him, and in his later years he became an evangelist to keep alive the memory of World War II.
A few dozen mourners milled in the warm breeze to reminisce on the genial man’s life and another tick of the passing of a generation. Of the 16 million who served in the war, just 855,000 remain, according to the National World War II Museum. Nearly 500 pass each day. A week ago Sunday was Beck’s time. He died from complications from a fall. Sadly, it occurred June 6—the 71st anniversary of D-Day. He had also jumped on that day in France in 1994 and 2004.
Michael O’Steen, a Gulf War vet and state chairman of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, drove from south Georgia to pay respect to Beck, a man whose back story seems created from a novel. Beck spent time living in a railroad boxcar during the Depression before signing up with Uncle Sam at age 17.
“Going in the service was a way of survival for some of these guys who grew up on farms; it got them out from behind mules,” said O’Steen. “Country boys made great soldiers.”
They did. Beck was in the 101st Airborne, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, H Company, just a few alphabet letters from his comrades in E Company, later made famous as the “Band of Brothers.”
On June 6, 1944, Beck parachuted pre-dawn behind German lines and was immediately lost from his troop. He hooked up with another lost soul and the two kept themselves alive in a hostile environment until they could meet up days later with other Americans so they could wage war on Germans.
In recent years, his stories of survival, laced with horror and measured with humor, were told to anyone who’d listen—school kids, history roundtables, media crews. He said he just didn’t want the long-ago achievements to vanish.
As the VFW guy spoke, I glanced across the cemetery to see a small solitary figure in a blue windbreaker and ball cap walking away slowly. I trotted after him and waved him down as he pulled away in a massive white Ford Expedition.
George Wilkerson, 91, knew Beck from the Atlanta World War II Roundtable. The two were Missouri farm boys who eventually moved to Atlanta. Wilkerson was a sergeant in charge of an artillery crew and ended the war fighting in Germany. He was part of the force that liberated Dachau, the infamous death camp.
“It was all bodies, lying everywhere,” he said in a clipped, understated you-had-to-be-there-to-understand fashion.
Once his division finished its work in Germany, they were sent home to await orders for the invasion of Japan. Wilkerson is like many of that generation who believe the atomic bomb allowed him to keep living. Soon he left the Army, took the GI Bill, worked for Ford Motor Co. for 37 years, raised three kids and loved, married and buried two women.
“My life has been good,” he said. “I didn’t talk about all this until a few years ago. No one wanted to hear about it.”
Beck, he said, always had better stories and could weave the drama better. Paratroopers, it seems, have better tales than artillery soldiers. Beck’s are of escaping the enemy in the dark, accidentally bumping into Germans, getting caught in a firestorm while helplessly gliding to earth. Beck even had a nickname for his machine gun—Jivin’ Joan.
Artillery units rolled along and blew stuff up.
The march to history has been steady. In 1984 when Ronald Reagan visited Normandy there there 10.7 million World War II vets alive. In 2005 there were nearly 3.5 million. Last year at D-Day’s 70th anniversary, the
Washington Post wrote a story headlined “The looming approach of a world without World War II veterans.” It said actuarial tables and history say the last vet would pass on in 2038.
Tom Beaty, a tech entrepreneur who started interviewing vets as a hobby and created the Witness to War Foundation, met Beck years ago at the Atlanta roundtable. The retired sergeant was one of his first subjects. Since then, his foundation has interviewed more than 1,100 World War II vets.
Beaty said he is shocked by how the past couple years has dwindled the rolls of such vets. The youngest are now pushing 90.
“It was something we expected for a while but it seemed to have hit all at once,” he said. “They say old soldiers fade away. They say there are 800,000 left, but a lot of them are bedridden or their minds aren’t the same. It’s just life.”
It’s a daunting thought. To many of us baby boomers, the World War II generation remains in our visions as busy middle-age guys in checkered slacks telling the family to pile into the station wagon.
George Wilkerson agrees. “We’re getting pretty thin,” he said. He pointed off in the distance. “I’m going to be buried over there on that hill,” he said. “Although I’m not looking forward to it.”
The nonagenarian smiled. He said he owns the massive SUV because he pulls a camper. He’s driven it to all 48 contiguous states, he said with a betcha-can’t-believe-that smile. He heads to the North Georgia mountains soon.
This old soldier isn’t ready yet to fade away.