Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" Excerpts. On Topic! (Really!)
David E. Powell
including this text from the MSNBC web site at www.msnbc.com
Author Tom Brokaw previews his book "The Greatest Generation" about the WW2
Generation with excerpts pertaining in part to WW2, and operations such as
the Normady invasion in 1944, D-Day. The full text is found at
http://www.msnbc.com/news/220140.asp and I have quoted it ALL here. I
figured it would be worth it for you folks.
Anyway, here goes. The Aktinsons might like this one, BTW, due to an awesome
sapper story included in the War veterans' memories which Brokaw touches
upon.
-- Begin quote of text from free Public Web Site
In his new book, “The Greatest Generation,” NBC Chief Anchor Tom Brokaw
profiles the men and women of the World War II generation — the people who,
in Brokaw’s words, “answered the call to help save the world from two of the
most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled.” In this
excerpt, read his introduction to the book.
The Greatest Generation: profiles, reader mail, buddy finder
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‘This is the greatest generation any society has produced.’
IN THE SPRING of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to
Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversary of
D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the
beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. I was well prepared with
research on the planning for the invasion — the numbers of men, ships,
airplanes, and other weapons involved; the tactical and strategic errors of
the Germans; and the names of the Normandy villages that in the midst of
battle provided critical support to the invaders. What I was not prepared
for was how this experience would affect me emotionally.
Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, published by Random House.
The D-Day fortieth-anniversary project awakened my earliest
memories. Between the ages of three and five I lived on an Army base in
western South Dakota and spent a good deal of my time outdoors in a tiny
helmet, shooting stick guns at imaginary German and Japanese soldiers. My
father, Red Brokaw, then in his early thirties, was an all-purpose Mr.
Fix-It and operator of snowplows and construction machinery, part of a crew
that kept the base functioning. When he was drafted, the base commander
called him back, reasoning he was more valuable in the job he had. When Dad
returned home, it was the first time I saw my mother cry. These are powerful
images for an impressionable youngster.
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The war effort was all around us. Ammunition was tested on the
South Dakota sagebrush prairie before being shipped out to battlefront
positions. I seem to remember that one Fourth of July the base commander
staged a particularly large firing exercise as a wartime substitute for
fireworks. Neighbors always seemed to be going to or coming home from the
war. My grandfather Jim Conley followed the war’s progress in Time magazine
and on his maps. There was even a stockade of Italian prisoners of war on
the edge of the base. They were often free to wander around the base in
their distinctive, baggy POW uniforms, chattering happily in Italian, a
curious Mediterranean presence in that barren corner of the Great Plains.
The Greatest Generation: Read profiles of inspiring WWII veterans, view
reader mail and check out our WWII buddy finder.
At the same time, my future wife, Meredith Auld, was starting life in
Yankton, South Dakota, the Missouri River community that later became the
Brokaw family home as well. She saw her father only once during her first
five years. He was a front-line doctor with the Army’s 34th Regiment and was
in the thick of battle from North Africa all the way through Italy. When he
returned home, he established a thriving medical practice and was a fixture
at our high school sports games. He never spoke to any of us of the horrors
he had seen. When one of his sons wore as a casual jacket one of Doc Auld’s
Army coats with the major’s insignia still attached, I remember thinking,
“God, Doc Auld was a big deal in the war.”
A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE
Yet when I arrived in Normandy, those memories had receded, replaced
by days of innocence in the fifties, my life as a journalist covering the
political turmoil brought on by Vietnam, the social upheaval of the sixties,
and Watergate in the seventies. I was much more concerned about the
prospects of the Cold War than the lessons of the war of my early years.
I was simply looking forward to what I thought would be an
interesting assignment in a part of France celebrated for its hospitality,
its seafood, and its Calvados, the local brandy made from apples.
On NBC's “Today” show, Tom Brokaw talks about “The Greatest Generation.”
Instead, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the
beaches with the American veterans who had landed there and now returned for
this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their
stories in the cafes and inns, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful
for all they had done. I realized that they had been all around me as I was
growing up and that I had failed to appreciate what they had been through
and what they had accomplished. These men and women came of age in the Great
Depression, when economic despair hovered over the land like a plague. They
had watched their parents lose their businesses, their farms, their jobs,
their hopes. They had learned to accept a future that played out one day at
a time. Then, just as there was a glimmer of economic recovery, war exploded
across Europe and Asia. When Pearl Harbor made it irrefutably clear that
America was not a fortress, this generation was summoned to the parade
ground and told to train for war. They left their ranches in Sully County,
South Dakota, their jobs on the main street of Americus, Georgia, they gave
up their place on the assembly lines in Detroit and in the ranks of Wall
Street, they quit school or went from cap and gown directly into uniform.
Friday at 9:00 p.m. ET, Tom Brokaw presents 'The Greatest Generation,' a
one-hour documentary on the men and women who came of age during the Great
Depression and World War II.
They answered the call to help 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.
Hear Tom Brokaw read a passage from his book that profiles Johnny Holmes.
Holmes fought in Europe with the all-black 761st Tank Battlion. See below
for the video of the NBC Nightly News story about Holmes.
At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have
been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday
world, they were fighting, often hand to hand, in the most primitive
conditions possible, across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium,
Italy, Austria. They fought their way up a necklace of South Pacific islands
few had ever heard of before and made them a fixed part of American
history — islands with names like Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Okinawa. They were
in the air every day, in skies filled with terror, and they went to sea on
hostile waters far removed from the shores of their homeland.
On the NBC "Nightly News," Johnnie Holmes and two war buddies recall
breaking the color barrier in Patton’s army.
New branches of the services were formed to get women into uniform,
working at tasks that would free more men for combat. Other women went to
work in the laboratories and in the factories, developing new medicines,
building ships, planes, and tanks, and raising the families that had been
left behind.
America’s preeminent physicists were engaged in a secret race to
build a new bomb before Germany figured out how to harness the atom as a
weapon. Without their efforts and sacrifices our world would be a far
different place today.
When the war was over, the men and women who had been involved, in
uniform and in civilian capacities, joined in joyous and short-lived
celebrations, then immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and
the world they wanted. They were mature beyond their years, tempered by what
they had been through, disciplined by their military training and
sacrifices. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another
distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values
of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.
REBUILDING THE WORLD
They became part of the greatest investment in higher education that
any society ever made, a generous tribute from a grateful nation. The GI
Bill, providing veterans tuition and spending money for education, was a
brilliant and enduring commitment to the nation’s future. Campus classrooms
and housing were overflowing with young men in their mid-twenties, many of
whom had never expected to get a college education. They left those campuses
with degrees and a determination to make up for lost time. They were a new
kind of army now, moving onto the landscapes of industry, science, art,
public policy, all the fields of American life, bringing to them the same
passions and discipline that had served them so well during the war.
‘They weren’t perfect. They made mistakes. They allowed McCarthyism and
racism to go unchallenged for too long.. .Many of the veterans initially
failed to recognize the differences between their war and the one in
Vietnam.’
They helped convert a wartime economy into the most powerful
peacetime economy in history. They made breakthroughs in medicine and other
sciences. They gave the world new art and literature. They came to
understand the need for federal civil rights legislation. They gave America
Medicare.
They helped rebuild the economies and political institutions of their
former enemies, and they stood fast against the totalitarianism of their
former allies, the Russians. They were rocked by the social and political
upheaval of the sixties. Many of them hated the long hair, the free love,
and, especially, what they saw as the desecration of the flag. But they didn
’t give up on the new generation.
They weren’t perfect. They made mistakes. They allowed McCarthyism
and racism to go unchallenged for too long. Women of the World War II
generation, who had demonstrated so convincingly that they had so much more
to offer beyond their traditional work, were the underpinning for the
liberation of their gender, even as many of their husbands resisted the
idea. When a new war broke out, many of the veterans initially failed to
recognize the differences between their war and the one in Vietnam.
There on the beaches of Normandy, I began to reflect on the wonders
of these ordinary people whose lives are laced with the markings of
greatness. At every stage of their lives they were part of historic
challenges and achievements of a magnitude the world had never before
witnessed.
HEARING THEIR STORIES
Although they were transformed by their experiences and quietly proud
of what they had done, their stories did not come easily. They didn’t
volunteer them. I had to keep asking questions or learn to stay back a step
or two as they walked the beaches themselves, quietly exchanging memories.
NBC News had brought to Normandy several of those ordinary Americans,
including Gino Merli, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, who landed on D-Day and
later won the Congressional Medal of Honor for holding off an attacking wave
of German soldiers. This quiet man had stayed at his machine gun, blazing
away at the Germans, covering the withdrawal of his fellow Americans, until
his position was overrun. He faked his own death twice as the Germans swept
past, and then he went back to his machine gun to cut them down from behind.
His cunning and courage saved his fellow soldiers, and in a night of battle
he killed more than fifty attacking Germans.
‘I had to keep asking questions or learn to stay back a step or two as they
walked the beaches themselves, quietly exchanging memories.’
We also brought Harry Garton of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who
lost both legs to a land mine later in the war. Merli and Garton had both
been in the Army’s “Big Red One,” the 1st Division. This trip to Normandy
was their first time meeting each other and their first journey back to
those beaches since they’d landed under greatly different circumstances
forty years earlier. Quite coincidentally, they realized they’d been in the
same landing craft, so they had matching memories of the chaos and death all
around them. Garton said, “I remember all the bodies and all the screaming.”
Were they scared?, I asked them. Both men had the same answer: they felt
alternating fear, rage, calm, and, most of all, an overpowering
determination to survive.
As they made their way along Omaha Beach in 1984, they stopped and
pointed to a low-lying bluff leading to higher ground. Merli said, “Remember
that?” They both stared at a steep, sandy slope, an ordinary beach approach
to my eye. “Remember what?” I asked. “Oh,” Merli said, “that hillside was
loaded with mines, and a unit of sappers had gone first, to find where the
mines were. A number of those guys were lying on the hillside, their legs
shattered by the explosions. They’d shot themselves up with morphine and
they were telling where it was now safe to step. They were about twenty-five
yards apart, our guys, calmly telling us how to get up the hill. They were
human markers.” Garton said, “When I got to the top of that hill, I thought
I’d live at least until the next day.”
On NBC's "Today" show, Tom Brokaw and two of the people he profiled in
"The Greatest Generation," Leonard Lomell and Martha Settle Putney, talk to
Katie Couric about the book and their life's experiences.
They described the scene as calmly as if they were remembering an
egg-toss at a Sunday social back home. It was an instructive moment for me,
one of many, and so characteristic. The war stories come reluctantly, and
they almost never reflect directly on the bravery of the storyteller. Almost
always he or she is singling out someone else for praise.
SAM GIBBONS: PARATROOPER, CONGRESSMAN
On that trip to Normandy, I ducked into a small cafe for lunch on a
rainy Sunday. A tall, familiar-looking American approached with a big grin
and introduced himself: “Tom, Congressman Sam Gibbons of Florida.”
I knew of Gibbons, a veteran Democrat from central Florida, a member
of the Ways and Means Committee, but I didn’t know much about him.
“Congressman,” I said, “what are you doing here?” “Oh, I was here
forty years ago,” he said with a laugh, “but it was a little different
then.” With that he clicked a small brass-and-steel cricket he was holding
and laughed again.
I knew of the cricket. The paratroopers of the 101st and 82nd
Airborne divisions were given the crickets to click if they were separated
from their units. As it turned out, most of them were. When I asked Gibbons
what had happened to him that day, he sat down and, staring at a far wall,
told a harrowing tale that went on for half an hour. In the cafe, all of us
listening were hypnotized by this gangly, jug-eared man in his sixties and
the story he was sharing.
Sam Gibbons, Captain, U.S. Army. Gibbons, a paratrooper, landed in a French
farm field during the D-Day invasion and fought all through Europe. He went
on to a distinguished career in politics, serving 17 terms in the U.S. House
of Representatives.
Gibbons, a captain in the 101st, was all alone when he landed in a
French farm field in the predawn darkness. Using his cricket, he clicked
until he got an answer, and then formed a squad of American paratroopers out
of other units. They had no idea where they were, and for a time Gibbons
thought the invasion had failed because there was no sign of American troops
besides his small patched-up patrol.
Gibbons and the other paratroopers with him moved along the country
roads between the hedgerows, getting ambushed and fighting back, moving on
again, trying to figure out just where they were. Gibbons even tried to
converse with the terrified French villagers, using his high school Spanish.
It didn’t help. It was eighteen hours before they hooked up with other
units.
His original objective, holding the bridges over the Douve River at a
village called St. Cme-du-Mont, turned out to have been a far tougher
assignment than the D-Day planners had realized. It took a whole division,
fire support from U.S. cruisers offshore, and tanks to take control of the
river crossings. By the third day, Gibbons was exhausted, he said, and he
was one of only six hundred or so of the two thousand men in his battalion
still on his feet. The others were all dead or wounded.
As he sat there on that rainy afternoon, describing these scenes from
passing images of his memory, Gibbons’s tough-guy demeanor began to change.
He softened and then began to weep. His wife touched his arm and said he
didn’t have to go on. But he did, and those of us in his tiny audience were
enthralled.
‘The new Republican leadership had cut off debate on Medicare reforms
without a hearing. Gibbons stormed from the room, shouting, “You’re a bunch
of dictators, that’s all you are. . . . I had to fight you guys fifty years
ago.”’
Later, Gibbons told me that he fought his way all across Europe and
into Germany without a scratch. His brother, also in the Army, was badly
wounded, and when the war was over they both enrolled at the University of
Florida law school. They didn’t talk much about the war until one Saturday
in the fall term when they decided to try to count up the young Floridians
they had known who hadn’t made it back. Gibbons says, “When we got to a
hundred we stopped counting and said, ‘To hell with this.’ ”
Gibbons went on to his career in politics, first in the Florida
legislature and then seventeen terms in the U.S. House of Representatives,
where he became a champion of free trade as a means of keeping international
tensions under control, a lesson he learned from the politics of World War
II. He was also a solid member of the ruling Democratic majorities. He
initially supported the Vietnam War but says now, “The sorriest vote I ever
cast was for the Tonkin Gulf resolution,” the congressional mandate
engineered by President Johnson so he could step up the American efforts in
Vietnam.
Gibbons’s personal war experience rarely came up publicly again, but
it did one day in the fall of 1995, after the Republican Revolution of the
year before, when a well-organized class of GOP Baby Boomers took control of
the House, determined to deconstruct many of the policies put in place by
Democrats during their long congressional rule.
Gibbons, now in the minority on the Ways and Means Committee, was
furious. The new Republican leadership had cut off debate on Medicare
reforms without a hearing. Gibbons stormed from the room, shouting, “You’re
a bunch of dictators, that’s all you are. . . . I had to fight you guys
fifty years ago.” Gibbons then grabbed the tie of the startled Republican
chairman, demanding, “Tell them what you did in there, tell them what you
did.”
Watching this scene play out on CNN, many of my colleagues were
puzzled by the eruption in the normally calm demeanor of Congressman
Gibbons. I smiled to myself, thinking of that day in Normandy in 1944 when
Gibbons, who was then just twenty-four, learned something about fighting for
what you believe in.
When I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, my
wife, Meredith, joined me. By 1994, I felt a kind of missionary zeal for
the men and women of World War II, spreading the word of their remarkable
lives. I was inspired by them but also by the work of my friend Stephen
Ambrose, the plain-talking historian who had written an account of the
invasion called “D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.”
From him I learned that the men told the stories best themselves. So
I told Meredith, “Whenever one of these guys comes over to say hello, just
ask, ‘Where were you that day?’ You’ll hear some unbelievable stories.” And
so we did, wherever we went. What we did not know at the time was that an
old family friend back in our hometown of Yankton, South Dakota, had played
a critical role in D-Day planning.
HOD NIELSEN: A QUIET, DARING MAN
In fact, we were only vaguely aware that Hod Nielsen had anything to
do with World War II. To us, he was the keeper of the flame of high school
athletics as a sportswriter and radio sportscaster. In his columns and on
the air, he chronicled the individual and team achievements of our local
high school, writing generously of the smallest victories, celebrating the
stars but always finding some admirable trait to highlight in his
descriptions of those of us who were known mostly for just showing up.
Hod Nielsen, England, 1943, returning from a mission. Nielsen returned from
the war to a career in local broadcasting and sportswriting. He's been at it
for 50 years.
What I did not know — nor did any of my high school
contemporaries — was that Hod Nielsen, who spent so many of the postwar
years making sure our little triumphs received notice, had been a daring
photo reconnaissance pilot during World War II. He was in the unit that flew
lightly armored P-38s over Normandy just before the invasion, photographing
the beaches and fields for the military planners. As soon as they returned
from that mission, they were hustled back to Washington to report directly
to the legendary commander of the Army Air Corps, General Henry “Hap”
Arnold. It’s also likely they were spirited out of England quickly to
diminish the chances that the identity of their reconnaissance targets would
somehow leak.
Hod was one of many in our midst who kept his war years to himself,
preferring to concentrate on the generations that followed. He is so
characteristic of that time and place in American life. One of four sons of
hardworking Scandinavian immigrants, whom he remembers for their loving and
frugal ways, Hod doesn’t recall a missed meal or a complaint about hard
times during the height of the Great Depression.
All four boys in his family were in the service. One brother was
killed in action when his bomber was shot down over Europe. The war had been
a family trial but also an adventure. Hod had a lot of fun as a freewheeling
young officer during pilot training. He managed to avoid getting shot down
during numerous reconnaissance missions. He saw a lot of the United States
and the world, but when the war was over Hod wanted to return to the
familiar life he had known in South Dakota. He says now, “I thought then, If
this is the fast track, I don’t want any part of it.”
‘Hod was one of many in our midst who kept his war years to himself,
preferring to concentrate on the generations that followed.’
Instead, he returned to a career in broadcasting and sportswriting.
He’s been at it for more than half a century, and he can still get excited
about the local high school team’s coming football season. He can tell you
the whereabouts and the personal and professional fortunes of the athletes
long gone from that small city along the Missouri River.
To get a favorable mention in a Hod Nielsen column requires more than
a winning touchdown or all-state recognition. He is as likely to write about
an athlete’s musical ability or scholastic standing or family. As a result,
it’s always been a little special to read your name beneath his byline. Now
that my contemporaries and those who followed us onto the playing fields of
Yankton know more about his early life, I am confident they’ll feel even
greater pride in recognition from this modest and decent man.
During NBC’s coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, I was
asked by Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” my thoughts on what we were
witnessing. As I looked over the assembled crowd of veterans, which included
everyone from Cabinet officers and captains of industry to retired
schoolteachers and machinists, I said, “I think this is the greatest
generation any society has ever produced.” I know that this was a bold
statement and a sweeping judgment, but since then I have restated it on many
occasions. While I am periodically challenged on this premise, I believe I
have the facts on my side.
This book, I hope, will in some small way pay tribute to those men
and women who have given us the lives we have today. It is not the defining
history of their generation. Instead, I think of this as like a family
portrait. Some of the names and faces you’ll recognize immediately. Others
are more like your neighbors, the older couple who always fly the flag on
the Fourth of July and Veterans Day and spend their vacation with friends
they’ve had for fifty years at a reunion of his military outfit. They seem
to have everything they need, but they still count their pennies as if the
bottom may drop out tomorrow. Most of all, they love each other, love life
and love their country, and they are not ashamed to say just that.
The sad reality is that they are dying at an ever faster pace. They’
re in the mortality years now, in their seventies and eighties, and the
Department of Veterans’ Affairs estimates that about thirty-two hundred
World War II vets die every month. Not all of them were on the front lines,
of course, or even in a critical rear-echelon position, but they were fused
by a common mission and a common ethos.
I am in awe of them, and I feel privileged to have been a witness to
their lives and their sacrifices. There were so many other people whose
stories could have been in this book, who embodied the standards of
greatness in the everyday that the people in this book represent, and that
give this generation its special quality and distinction. As I came to know
many of them, and their stories, I became more convinced of my judgment on
that day marking the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. This is the greatest
generation any society has produced.
Editor’s note: The above is an excerpt from Tom Brokaw’s book, “The
Greatest Generation,” published by Random House.
--End quoted text from free website
David Powell
--
"Weep for the chickens, Bok. Weep for us all"
"Bok!"
G'Kar and Bok, in the Animaniacs Episode
"Chickens can't be Narns."
"Insanity is part of the times." - Londo Mollari, "Knives." Babylon 5,
Season 2.
gws
read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking heads
so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the ABC
guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The stuff
David posted does make the Brokaw book look intriguing, though.
That is why I would like to know what real live readers think of
it.
I don't mean to sound cynical about the possibility that one or
both of these books might be good. I am not. I remember too
well David McCullough's great biography "Truman," which won a
Pulitzer prize for biography to dismiss the Brokaw book
out-of-hand. I had never heard of anything McCullough had done
before "Truman" was published except introduce PBS TV shows.
Nevertheless he wrote one of the finest biographies I have read.
Grey Satterfield
David E. Powell wrote in message ...
gws
posted the following. A million pardons to those of you who pay
by the minute for net usage. My bad!
Grey Satterfield
gws wrote in message ...
>I would be interested to hear the impressions of any of you who
>read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
>scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking
heads
>so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the ABC
>guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The stuff
>David posted does make the Brokaw book look intriguing, though.
>That is why I would like to know what real live readers think of
>it.
>
>I don't mean to sound cynical about the possibility that one or
>both of these books might be good. I am not. I remember too
>well David McCullough's great biography "Truman," which won a
>Pulitzer prize for biography to dismiss the Brokaw book
>out-of-hand. I had never heard of anything McCullough had done
>before "Truman" was published except introduce PBS TV shows.
>Nevertheless he wrote one of the finest biographies I have read.
>
>Grey Satterfield
>
>David E. Powell wrote in message ...
>>I figured that this was OT enough for these two groups, and
. . .
Stephen Cosby
>I would be interested to hear the impressions of any of you who
>read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
>scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking heads
>so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the ABC
>guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The stuff
>David posted does make the Brokaw book look intriguing, though.
>That is why I would like to know what real live readers think of
>it.
When Brokaw has been on Letterman, he has actually presented a rather high
level intelligence. Letterman usually asks him something like "Why can't
Bubba keep his damn pants zipped?" or "How can I meet a girl like Monica?".
Anyway, Brokaw's answers are not standard read it from a cue card drivel.
IOW, I may actually buy the book.
Steve Cosby
Tom Clancy FAQ Maintainer
sco...@cosbyassoc.com
http://www.cosbyassoc.com/clancyfaq/
loki
> When Brokaw has been on Letterman, he has actually presented a rather
high
> level intelligence. Letterman usually asks him something like "Why can't
> Bubba keep his damn pants zipped?" or "How can I meet a girl like
Monica?".
> Anyway, Brokaw's answers are not standard read it from a cue card drivel.
>
> IOW, I may actually buy the book.
Yeah, I may buy it too. My aunt told me about it a long time ago and
honestly, I didn't realize it was just now being published.
I think the fact that the stories are those of real people, told very much
as they tell the stories themselves is probably what saves this book.
I've been watching Brokaw's news program this past week and he has had some
of the people from the book on it. (I am appalled at the gross
commercialism of it, but then again, some of the stories are amazing).
The one that really surprised me was a woman who had been a pilot before
the war. She said she "got a letter" and just 'went". Sounds awfully
close to drafting women to me. She also said that something like 38 of the
women pilots were killed.
I think there are some stories in there worth finding.
Loki
John Martin, Jr.
pages, I have one word to say: Wow! This book is written very well IMHO,
and it covers things in a unique way. Brokaw talks about what the people
did during WWII, then he follows what happened to them after the war. Very
interesting, and almost reads like fiction.
John
gws wrote in message ...
Ogden Johnson III
: I would be interested to hear the impressions of any of you who
: read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
: scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking heads
: so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the ABC
: guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The stuff
You have managed to antagonize the entire a.b.t-c Canadian contingent.
Peter Jennings is the one that got away.
Also, look at the previous examples they had to live up to, David
Brinkley's 'Washington Goes to War' and his subsequent autobiography,
which has possibly the longest secondary title seen since the 18th or 19th
century, 'David Brinkly - 11 Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political Conventions,
1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks of News and Other Stuff on
Television and 18 Years of Growing Up in North Carolina'.
OJ III
[Geez, that was a huge chunk that that twit posted. I can't believe how
long it took to delete [the block delete feature of tin doesn't work when
you have telnetted in I have found, had to do it with a line by line
delete]. I suspect on the next time around he'll go ahead and post the
whole book he's 'alerting' us to. If I had any doubts about killfiling
him, they're gone now.]
gws
If the interest generated in it among the patrons of my public
library is any guide it will be a runaway best seller. Nearly
200 patrons have reserved the book at my library. Unless they
order more copies, only 12 are currently on order, at number 198
on the list I will get to read the book about next Xmas.
Grey Satterfield
John Martin, Jr. wrote in message ...
>My mom got it for me, started reading it, and after the first
one hundred
>pages, I have one word to say: Wow! This book is written very
well IMHO,
>and it covers things in a unique way. Brokaw talks about what
the people
>did during WWII, then he follows what happened to them after the
war. Very
>interesting, and almost reads like fiction.
>
>John
>
>gws wrote in message ...
gws
out as a newspaperman so he was always a writer first and a
"personality" second. I have not read his other book.
Peter Jennings, of course! Has anybody heard anything about his
book?
Grey Satterfield
Ogden Johnson III wrote in message ...
>gws (g...@oscn.net) wrote:
>
>: I would be interested to hear the impressions of any of you
who
>: read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
>: scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking
heads
>: so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the
ABC
>: guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The stuff
>
>You have managed to antagonize the entire a.b.t-c Canadian
contingent.
>Peter Jennings is the one that got away.
>
>Also, look at the previous examples they had to live up to,
David
>Brinkley's 'Washington Goes to War' and his subsequent
autobiography,
>which has possibly the longest secondary title seen since the
18th or 19th
>century, 'David Brinkly - 11 Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political
Conventions,
>1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks of News and Other
Stuff on
>Television and 18 Years of Growing Up in North Carolina'.
>
>OJ III
. . .
Nixon
read it, never will. However, in browsing through a book store
the other evening, I did pick up Jenning's book "The 20th Century"
(or similar title). In this dopey book this clown described the
years 1946 through 1952 as being those of "An Uneasy Peace".
Not a single mention, that I could find, of the Korean War or the
52,000 U.S. men/women who died in that war. This Jennings
fellow ought to be sent back to the 5th Grade.
Dave
--
/s/David Nixon
n...@worldnet.att.net or n...@m-y.net
Optimism; the only attitude that makes any sense in this world.
George F. Hardy
spent everything their forefathers had saved, everything they
earned and everything they were able to borrow against their
children's earnings. Look at the deficit.
GFH
John Martin, Jr.
They had a war to fight. How do you expect them to do combat, with rowboats
and knives?
John
tit...@usaor.net
"He who will not risk cannot win."
---John Paul Jones
David E. Powell
>George F. Hardy wrote in message <36a34...@news.rlc.net>...
>>As I repeatedly told my father: "The Greedy Generation". They
>>spent everything their forefathers had saved, everything they
>>earned and everything they were able to borrow against their
>>children's earnings. Look at the deficit.
>
>They had a war to fight. How do you expect them to do combat, with
rowboats
>and knives?
I think he is referring to the Baby Boomers. After all, President Eisenhower
was the last Pres. for a very long time to submit a balanced budget. After
that, the "Guns and Butter" approach, which matured under Johnson with a
huge war in Vietnam and the "Great Society" programs at home, took over, and
Reagan's policy to end the Cold War became to spend the Russians under the
table....
Steve Bartman
>John Martin, Jr. wrote in message <5dKo2.540$o4.1...@news.sgi.net>...
>>George F. Hardy wrote in message <36a34...@news.rlc.net>...
>>>As I repeatedly told my father: "The Greedy Generation". They
>>>spent everything their forefathers had saved, everything they
>>>earned and everything they were able to borrow against their
>>>children's earnings. Look at the deficit.
>>
>>They had a war to fight. How do you expect them to do combat, with
>rowboats
>>and knives?
>
>
>I think he is referring to the Baby Boomers.
How? Clinton is the first president born after 1945. Congress is increasingly
filled with us, but during the heavy deficit decades of the 70s and 80s Congress
was still largely made up of previous generations.
One can also look at the payout of today's SS recipient versus pay-ins--a huge
windfall. My father-in-law uses his to pay greens fees. My wife and I sure could
use the bucks for our 401(k).
After all, President Eisenhower
>was the last Pres. for a very long time to submit a balanced budget.
Check this. I think one was done in 1969.
Steve
loki
> I think he is referring to the Baby Boomers. After all, President
Eisenhower
> was the last Pres. for a very long time to submit a balanced budget.
After
> that, the "Guns and Butter" approach, which matured under Johnson with a
> huge war in Vietnam and the "Great Society" programs at home, took over,
and
> Reagan's policy to end the Cold War became to spend the Russians under
the
> table....
Uh, Nixon, Johnson, Reagan - none of those guys were Baby Boomers.
Good grief.
Loki
George F. Hardy
>One can also look at the payout of today's SS recipient versus
>pay-ins--a huge windfall.
Yes, but not as good as those who paid for a few years in the late
1930s and collected for decades.
>My father-in-law uses his to pay greens fees. My wife and I sure could
>use the bucks for our 401(k).
But you have to pay the greedy! The greedy generation was born from about
1910 through 1930 -- WWII service age. They dominated the presidency from
Ike though Bush. Get them out and the budget is balanced within a few
years. Everything their forefathers left; everything they earned;
everything they could borrow against the future earnings of their children.
They spent it all, and demand more.
GFH
Charles Prael
Ogden Johnson III wrote:
>
> gws (g...@oscn.net) wrote:
>
> : I would be interested to hear the impressions of any of you who
> : read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
> : scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking heads
> : so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the ABC
> : guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The stuff
>
> You have managed to antagonize the entire a.b.t-c Canadian contingent.
> Peter Jennings is the one that got away.
And how. He's also a Stanford grad, and did it the hard way (all merit,
no connections).
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
gws
all I know about Mr. Jennings' is that he has regular features, a
mellifluous voice, and reads well, which doesn't tell me much
about his ability to write history.
Grey Satterfield
Charles Prael wrote in message <36A6335A...@lts.com>...
>
>
>Ogden Johnson III wrote:
>>
>> gws (g...@oscn.net) wrote:
>>
>> : I would be interested to hear the impressions of any of you
who
>> : read the book. I do not hold in especially high regard the
>> : scholarship, writing ability, or intelligence of TV talking
heads
>> : so I am skeptical about the quality of both Brokaw's and the
ABC
>> : guy's (whose name escapes me for the moment) books. The
stuff
>>
JerryLee
:Despite Mr. Prael's report concerning his first-class education,
:all I know about Mr. Jennings' is that he has regular features, a
:mellifluous voice, and reads well, which doesn't tell me much
:about his ability to write history.
:
:Grey Satterfield
:
The expat Canadian is an unknown (as far as I'm concerned) as to his
scholarship and authorship/readability. He at least would be capable
of hiring first class help :)..
This thread fits amazingly with my absence from this ng.. The last of
those born in the neighborhood of 1920 passed on to her reward
recently. Last of her generation in our family. She had spent her last
years in my home, finally confined to bed, before her final illness.
I began participating in newsgroups for something to keep busy in the
wee hours.. (She needed someone near, if at all possible, all hours.
My turn came at night)..
Reflecting on that generation's turn at the helm, the course they
held, and the voyages completed is an awesome undertaking.
She waited for her man through times there was a real possibility she
had seen the last of him. She followed him to the ends of the earth,
raised a family in lands alien to her. Japan, under the occupation
forces, was a far cry from today's cosmopolitan country. The
Philipines, a few years later, not much better.
Her husband, who we buried nearly ten years ago, was an ordinary man,
with no education to speak of. Without the world turmoil, he would
have lived out his life in a small Massachusetts town, probably as a
police officer. His (and his brothers) inbred prejudices and attitudes
were not really pretty. He _did_ serve through WWII, Korea, and had a
hand in mining Hai Phong harbor. He was also on the relief force that
evac'd the Congo when the Belge forces pulled out.. Two brothers were
at Pearl on Dec 7th, 41. A brother in law spent 1942 to 1945 on
various carriers in the Pacific. Four other brothers served as either
sailors or soldiers, all in combat zones.
These were 'ordinary' people, considered themselves nothing special.
Indeed, held themselves as barely middle class. Yet the unwritten
between those lines above would fill an enormous number of pages..
Hope Brokaw's book works, he'll sell me one anyway..
rgds j.
AGCS Ret
The Ice,-NHK,NUQ,BIKF,PMDY,-"O"boat,-Big"E"
Doug Holthaus
DDH