And the oft-repeated tales are trotted out, now often dressed in the hyperbole of repetitious storytelling, as creative as advancing years allow.
And as happens with living history, it is beginning to tail off into legend and finally into school textbooks as those who lived those days — now known unwillingly and mostly embarrassed as the Greatest Generation — leave the scene.
There was nothing unusual about my story, but the commonality of it was its unique feature.
With the possible exception of the Civil War, never had a citizen army been created so quickly or universally, nor had a society produced a potent war machine so effectively as the U.S. in World War II — all the more remarkable since we were ill prepared from years of isolationism to fight a war. Any war, let alone a global conflict.
I was a junior at the University of Missouri when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I was in the midst of lunch at the boarding table where I took my meals when a member of our group left early, then came bursting back to shout from the doorway, “Get in here quick.”
He was standing over a blaring radio where an announcer, his voice breaking, was describing an air attack on our Pacific fleet, anchored in Pearl Harbor. The carnage was dreadful, and members of Congress were being rounded up to declare war on Japan and Germany.
We were told that President Franklin Roosevelt would address the nation soon with what turned out to be his “day of infamy” speech.
And so it began.
We were two weeks short of Christmas vacation, and classes suddenly became redundant as we milled about the campus in small, passionate clusters.
The boys mostly talked about what branch of military service we would join. And the girls — many of whom would help build the materiel of war — listened and wondered what their roles would be.
