USA TODAY International Edition
TWILIGHT GENERATION OF VETERANS
Millions of Americans served in WWII. My dad, who died a few weeks ago, was one.
“T hey answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. … As they now reach the twilight of their adventurous and productive lives, they remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. … In a deep sense they didn’t think that what they were doing was that special, because everyone else was doing it too.”
— Tom Brokaw
The Greatest Generation
My dad died a few weeks ago. He was 89 and part of the Greatest Generation. He was, as the obituaries say, an Army veteran of World War II.
It’s a rapidly dwindling generation. Of the 16.1 million World War II veterans, fewer than 1.7 million are still alive. They are dying at a rate of more than 600 a day.
On Sept. 22, Lawrence Aaron Sternberg was one of them.
Dad grew up in Brooklyn, N. Y., a child of Eastern European immigrants and the Great Depression. Once, he recalled, soup greens were selling for 4 cents at the nearest grocery and 3 cents at a store several blocks away. His mother sent him to the 3- cent store.
Dad’s military service was remarkable mainly because it was so commonplace. He enlisted in the Army 71 years ago today — Veterans Day — at the age of 18. When he was sent to Camp Crowder, Mo., for basic training, it was the first time he’d been west of New Jersey or seen a cow.
17 MONTHS ...
He shipped out on the Mauretania in early 1944 and spent the next 17 months in England, France, Belgium and Germany. He arrived at Omaha Beach in Normandy a few weeks after D- Day, was at the Battle of the Bulge and was deep into the Rhineland when the war in Europe ended.
Dad didn’t talk much about the war and didn’t think he’d done anything special. According to his discharge papers, his military occupation was radio operator and his qualification was carbine sharpshooter. Mostly, he sent and received coded messages as part of the 813th Signal Service Company. He wasn’t fond of the cold, the mud, the pup tents or the K rations.
His favorite war story had nothing to do with battles, bombs and bullets. Like my father, it was funny and self- deprecating.
Arriving at a village outside Paris with his unit, he attempted to draw upon his high school French to ask a woman to clean their dirt- caked uniforms. The woman had no idea what he was talking about. This went on for a couple of minutes. Finally, one of Dad’s Army buddies looked at the villager and said: “Washa da clothes?” And she replied, “Oui! Oui! Yes! Yes! I washa da clothes!”
... FOR SEVEN DECADES
After the war, Dad went to the University of Wisconsin on the GI Bill, sometimes hitchhiking between Brooklyn and Madison. He married my mom in 1952, got a law degree, took a civil service job with the New York state government in Albany, and later taught economics at local community colleges. His students loved him.
As his world narrowed in recent years, Dad spent more time watching television. ( Buying a new TV was, for a Depression- era consumer, a yearlong proposition of research, comparison shopping and negotiating the biggest senior- citizen discount. That was followed by a year of buyer’s remorse as screens kept getting larger and prices lower.) He enjoyed ballgames, the stock ticker on CNBC, the judge shows and, most of all, Jeopar
dy. He’d jot down the answers and quiz me at our Saturday lunches.
We watched Jeopardy together for the last time in the hospital on a Friday evening. The Final Jeopardy category that day was “French Geography.” The answer had to do with the eight countries that border modern- day France, but all I could think of was how different the geography would be if not for the veterans who saved the world from fascism.
Dad lived another two days after that Final Jeopardy. Losing him was painful. But I’m sure if you had told him when he landed in France in 1944 that he’d get out of the war alive, have another 69 good years and six really bad weeks at the end, he’d have taken that deal in a New York minute.