World World II....one of a kind courage?
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
-Prime Minister Winston Churchill
With the advent of the new World World II Memorial being dedicated this weekend, and my playing of a great WWII game called Call of Duty for PC, I’ve been reflecting a lot on war’s America has fought and specifically WWII. I guess this is all appropriate considering it is Memorial Day Weekend and that, though we’re not involved in an official war anymore, are still involved in a major international conflict in the Middle East.
I guess the question I’m posing is did the soldiers of World War II exhibit more courage than soldiers of any other major war America has fought in? With just that question I think most people would say no, and that American’s that have fought in any war have shown the same resolve and courage as any other generation has. That’s true, but maybe I’m asking the wrong question. What I’m trying to get at is that the soldiers of WWII perhaps faced the most formidable enemy and had the most to lose. And by saying this I’m not trying to demean any veterans or current soldiers of any war. But let’s be honest, the soldiers sent to the most recent Iraq war didn’t go with the prospect of actually losing. Sure they feared for their personal lives just as much as any other soldier has in the past, but they were not concerned about the formidable onslaught they’d face from Saddam’s Iraqi Army. Nor were they concerned with actually retreating. And though they may have been concerned with their own safety, not in a million years was the back of their minds filled with a mainland invasion from the enemy, and worse yet their friends and family back home being overrun and killed by the Hussein war machine if things progressed that badly. Yet these were the grim prospects soldiers during WWII faced most of the war. Talk about pressure. I mean we look back at events like D-Day and the dropping of the A-bombs like they were forgone conclusions of American and Allied ingenuity. They were of course, but to the people and leaders at the time, there were no sure-shots by a long shot. We lived with sobering reality that the German War Machine was a serious threat to not only Europe’s freedom, but the World’s. Sure Saddam and Co. were a threat to Iraq and the Middle East, but there was no major concerns at not being able to “contain” him. Sure the Vietnam War was debated to no end and most experts leave the result as a draw, but had the U.S. really wanted to win, they could’ve easily dropped a few A-bombs on the Viet Cong and that would’ve been that. Again, though the threat of communism and the Cold War were real, no one expected Viet Cong boats storming the beaches of Malibu and Huntington. The Korean War was mostly isolated to that peninsula and WWI never had the scope that the second did. I guess the Civil War contained the most “local” threat but let’s remember, the last time the United States mainland was invaded by an opposing force was the War of 1812.
I’m not war history buff, but to me, it seems WWII soldiers had to fight against the greatest odds, that’s all. We look at the war today with hindsight vision and it looks like the Allied forces were looking at victory the whole time. Sadly, that wasn’t the case and 400,000 Americans paid the ultimate price as we fought against one of the greatest evils this world has seen. In the war we fought against Saddam’s Iraq, we basically had an obscenely unfair advantage. While the Iraqi Army was stuck using outdated equipment courtesy of the 1970’s Soviet Army and untrained soldiers and villages, American forces promptly crushed any resistance with their Abrams tanks and laser-guided missiles on their way to Baghdad. Give the Iraqi army comparable equipment and the same amount of men, and I’d venture a guess we’d lose against them because of their resolve. This was the case we faced during WWII, and I’d say the only reason we won was because of our resolve against the Nazis power.
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-Albert Einstein