A letter to veterans

Note: This letter to honor America’s veterans was written by Lieutenant Colonel Stephen C. Stewart, USAR, who died in June 2008. It first appeared in the Pasadena Star-News on Veterans Day 1998.

This is a love letter, a love letter to a generation. The generation that came to adulthood in the 1930s and 1940s. The generation that suffered as youngsters through the Great Depression, won World War II and built modern America. Your deeds are epic. You should be remembered this Veterans Day.

In the air, at sea and on uncounted thousands of battlefields, you fought and defeated three of the century's great tyrannies and consigned them to history's hazardous waste site. The price your generation paid was horrific.

Never think that it wasn't worth it. The enemies that you confronted and clobbered killed tens of millions of innocents and, if victorious, would have killed or enslaved hundreds of millions more. Think of all the people alive today who would never have even been born without your victory. The murder machine of our enemies had to be destroyed. You, as well as those lost in the effort, were the ones chosen by history to do it. All subsequent generations are in your debt.

At home, you so out-produced America's enemies that, by the middle of World War II, they could never equal us in the sheer quantities of airplanes, ships, field artillery or any other item needed for a successful armed force. This victory of production never could have succeeded without the wholehearted effort of the women of America. Soldiers, the scale of what you did is breathtaking. Jungle islands were transformed into airfields in hours – sometimes under enemy fire. Thousands of victory ships were built, crewed and sailed so successfully that, by the middle of the war, American forces rarely lacked for any of the tools of war even though we were fighting thousands of miles from home.

In the history of humanity, most eras and generations are lost to time and dust. Yours won't be. Have you noticed that very few incidents of history continue to fascinate and inspire hundreds or even thousands of years after their passing? What you did and how you did it will, in the fullness of time, be in the same category as the epic of Troy and the Civil War.

I have my own special heroes from the World War II generation: a man who was decorated for his courage and skill when he led his soldiers in capturing a small and well-defended German town, and his new wife, who went about her life every second fearing the fatal telegram from the War Department "regretting to inform" her of his death.

He lived, and together they built a life that contributed, in its own way, to all the good things that happened after the war. He went to medical school under the GI Bill, and has fought death and suffering ever since. She had two sons and was and remains today the essential core of the family.

In a multitude of ways this couple is typical of their generation. It is my proud honor to offer my personal thanks to the representatives of the World War II generation who I've selected.

Thank you, Mom and Dad.