Opinion : The Greatest Generation we never knew, at least not well enough

I was standing at the door of St. Elizabeth Church in Hiawatha, taking photos as the Honor Flight staff lined the hallway and applauded the World War II veterans leaving their orientation.

The vets -- 99 of them on this flight-- will go to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Sept. 12, to see the World War II Memorial.

I took photos as several of the veterans as they left the meeting, trying to capture their faces as well as the applauding hands of the Honor Flight volunteers.

But when the first veteran got past me, I put down the camera and turned around.

The man walking by looked like my high school geometry teacher, Mr. Nelson.

I looked at the photo on my camera, enlarging it so i could read the veterans name tag

Robert Nelson.

It was Mr. Nelson.

Mr. Nelson never once mentioned his military service. (Maybe, if he had been a history teacher, he might have).

I wish he would have.

But Mr. Nelson lived in an era in which World War II veterans said very little abouit what they saw and experienced.

Part of the reason for, this, I think, is the sheer numbers.

In the 1940s, the population of the U.S. was around 132 million. Sixteen million served during World War II.

That number represented 12 percent of our country's population. To put that number into perspective: If every male high school graduate for the next 10 years joined the military that would still be fewer than the total number of Americans who went to war between 1941 and 1945.

Mr. Nelson did not think his military service was special, because every man his age did the same thing, unless there was some specific reason for not going.

For my grandfather, his age (28) and the fact that he had seriously broken his leg in a car-horse accident a few years before the war began kept him home. While his brother went to Europe, my grandfather stayed on the farm in rural Brandon, got married and had his two children. If he had gone to war, you would not be reading this article because I would not be here to write it. Yes, I do ponder this at times.

But Grandpa Paul was the exception. Almost every healthy male served their country, leaving the women to run the homes and factories and raise the kids. Even athletes and actors went to war.

And many of them never came home.

Of the 16 million Americans who served during World War II, more than 405,000 died. Both of those numbers are approximately 1 to 1.5 percent of the totals from our current war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Benton County lost 54 men during World War II (They deserve to be mentioned; their names, as listed in the War Department Honor List of June 1946, are printed at the end of this column).

Along with the 405,000 who died, many more came home wounded. I remember, before the 1996 election season, shaking left hands with Sen. Robert Dole, who lost the use of his right arm during World War II.

The other reason our veterans said so little about World War was the sheer horror of it. The terror of combat. The hardship of living, traveling and fighting across deserts, jungles and other treacherous environments. Prison camps. Concentration camps. The pain of killing. The pain of seeing friends die. Millions of men experienced this for years, and then had to return to "normal" society. You can't blame them for keeping so silent for so long.

I learned very quickly from my conversations with these veterans this sad fact: The more a World War II veteran had to tell, the more painful it was for him to share it. So for decades, most of them said nothing.

But now that this great, unknown generation is quickly dying off -- someone has estimated that America buries 1,000 WWII veterans every day -- some of them are finally starting to share there stories.

And when they do, I hope we listen. Very carefully.

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Below is the list of Benton County military personnel who died during World War II:

Wayne Agnew

Gordon Allee

Charlie Auguston

Victor D. Birch

LaVerne Bockholt

Robert Boddicker

Victor Butz

Charles Carlson

Daniel Chehak

Raymond Chekal

Maurice Crew

Frank Custer

Marvin Dille

William Edmonds

Revere Elliott

Russell Fett

John Fishel

Floyd Frese

Edward Fry

Albert Furler

Kenneth Gaddy

March E. Geater

George Grieder

Leo Gulick

Luvern Husted

Robert Inman

Lewis Jackson

Everett Johnson

Wilfred Kessler

John King

Arthur Koeppen

Robert Kohl

Donald Krumm

Lyle Kubite

Phillip R. Kevitt MC

Elton Melberg

Byron Nelson

Norman Newton

Byron Oehlert

Lyman Oppelt

Clarence Parizek

Donald Peacock

Lawrence Phelps

James Ponder

Louie Popenhagen

Oliver Rapps

M.D. Shellenberger

Wallace Snyder

Harold R. Stahr

Milton Stoll

Harold Webert

Harold Wieditz

Homer Woodson

Lloyd Worthen

Another Benton County soldier who died during World War II, but is not listed in that 1946 publication is Russell Brubaker, who died while fighting in the South Pacific.