The War

Today I want to talk about the war. Now, first let me say I am referring to The War. The Second World War. Folks of a certain age know what I’m talking about, and it’s not about Iraq. Not exactly.

For those of us who remember it, The War will always be World War II. But now there are too many who, through no fault of their own, missed out on a really important chunk of American history.

All these thoughts came to mind thanks to Ken Burns’s incredible documentary just recently shown on PBS.

I was riveted. And felt oddly proud of the way ordinary people mustered every ounce of support for the war effort, many of the familiar details recalling my own childhood experiences.

There were the songs, of course: “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor” and the song of the Army Air Corps; I remember a song about “Collecting Tin to Win the War,” though I’ve never met anyone else who does, and I still remember the tunes if not the words to “This is the Army, Mr. Jones,” “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer,” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

The boys at school made drawings of fighter planes all during class, the favorite being Flying Tigers, and there were school yard arguments, naturally: “Who’s the best, the Army, Navy or Marines?”

We had a victory garden and raised chickens, sat in front of the radio to listen intently to news I didn’t completely understand, and Mom and group of her friends met at our house to roll bandages.

We lived just outside Washington, D.C. which may be why there were frequent air raid drills in school (I honestly thought that “they” covered our school in plain brown paper to hide it, though I couldn’t figure out how) and blackouts at night; neighbors in Civilian Defense helmets patrolled the darkened streets and scared a little girl just about to death with a flashlight beam in the face as she peeked out the window.

Oh, yes, the war was very much with us.

There were ration stamps to preserve supplies of sugar, grains, coffee, meat and butter, so as to be able to feed our troops, not to mention gasoline, tires, and shoes (the family Packard went up on blocks in the garage pretty much for the duration as the rubber went to war).

Each Saturday morning meant a trip to the post office to pick up the mail and buy a war stamp for 10 cents; if you filled up a book with $18 or so worth of stamps you could trade it in for a $25 war bond, but just buying that stamp felt important. War Bonds, or Victory Bonds, were everywhere because everyone promoted them, from the local newspapers and movie theaters to politicians and movie stars.

Everyone bought into the war effort, everyone had a stake in it, everyone’s life was affected by the war, and most of all the homes with service flags in the window.

There was a draft, too, and the irony was that a young man who was not in the service often became somewhat of a social outcast, even if he had volunteered and was turned down. Almost every able-bodied young man was called up. Uniformed young men were everywhere, including in our home when uncles came to visit.

I knew what the draft meant and remember each Saturday examining the family mail in dread, lest one envelope might contain a draft notice. (It turned out that the letters from the State Department were not to worry about, since my father worked for them, and anyway he was too old to be called up.)

My childish understanding of what was going on was limited, but I knew there were bad guys and bombs and dogfights in the air, and people dying in places I’d never heard of. Every show at the movie theater was preceded by a newsreel and it was pretty much all about the war.

There was a POW camp somewhere nearby, apparently, because from time to time a contingent of POWs would be seen in our small town, working on some kind of construction project. We pointed and stared, but didn’t really understand what we were seeing.

It was all war, all the time, everywhere; it limited us and it defined us, individually and as a community.

These memories came back as I watched The War last week. Well, they didn’t really come back because they are always present or just about so; these experiences were formative, I guess you could say, at least for me. I’d be interested to hear from others on that.

But some parts of the documentary were new to me, even after years of learning more about it; they were stories that hadn’t been told before, that have been learned only recently, as aging veterans have finally, according to Ken Burns, begun to talk about what they’d been through.

And there are many, many lessons for today.

I am really sorry that inevitably some folks didn’t see the series, especially from the beginning. The good news is that some installments are still scheduled to be repeated, beginning this Wednesday evening on KERA, and that there’s a web site that provides a decent glimpse.

One way or the other, sooner rather than later, The War should be seen by every American who worries and waits as our amazing and dedicated troops struggle to sort out the mess in Afghanistan and Iraq, for there are lessons in it.

It should be mandatory viewing for those Americans still out at the shopping mall.