But first a couple of photos Cassidy posted to Facebook:
Posing with the medals won by her Police Explorer troop.
Below, also from Facebook, a photo that illustrates the concept of how easy it is to be fooled into believing something that isn't true.
Take a really good look. What is so special about this photo is that the light-colored figures are the camels; the black ones, their SHADOWS.
THE SILENT GENERATION, Part 2
A few of things I should have mentioned in Part 1:
World War II was total war. (Unlike the later Korean, Vietnam, Gulf wars.) Every man between 18 and 40 was drafted. The only men seen on the streets during the war were: soldiers in uniform, those declared 4-F (physically unfit), or those so expert in vital jobs that they could not be replaced. (My husband, for example, a skilled machinist at Pratt & Whitney, was exempt. He joined up anyway, spending the war as a Master Sergeant in an Ordnance Battalion.)
A great many factory jobs—particularly anything related to the war effort—were taken over by women, beginning the great migration from woman confined to home and family to women becoming an important part of the work force. The poster girl for the women of WWII: Rosie the Riveter (hair hidden beneath a scarf, rivet gun in hand).
And then there was rationing. Imagine not being able to buy what you want at the grocery store unless you have the right coupon. Families were allowed only so much meat, so many eggs, so much butter, etc., each month. Used up your coupons? That was it until the next month. A deprivation experienced by every civilian in the country.
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1945 -
So what was happening with The Silent Generation, the kids born in the years from 1928 to 1945?
Most of us were old enough to exult in the end of the war in Europe, old enough to feel the horror of what ended the war in the Pacific. Sadly, that night we flooded the streets to celebrate, we had no idea of the extent of the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had not yet felt the guilt that the Nazis were not the only ones to commit genocide.
And yet, a war begun in 1939 and grown to encompass the world was finally over, all of us inoculated with the kind of patriotism, pride, and optimism that being the country instrumental in winning the war inevitably brings.
In the years just after the war, most of us were in high school or college; the youngest born into a world strongly influenced by the years just prior to their birth, even if they could not remember the war. And we were finally discovering the why of how the world went so wrong. In history classes, countless books, movies, and on that flickering black and white oddity called television.
We learned about the millions who died in Europe; six million Jews in Western Europe; the figures in Russia vary from 20 million to 27 million. (I've seen the mass grave in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) where so many died of starvation when the city was besieged by the Germans.) We learned about the rise of Fascism in Germany in the 1930s. About the little man with the funny mustache who mesmerized people with his ranting speeches at rallies. A man who advocated make-Germany-great-again. Which meant getting rid of all thoughts by anyone who was not "Aryan" (white), to the extent of burning books written by anyone considered "unacceptable." And eventually led, in 1938, to Kristallnacht, a wide-spread attack on Jewish business and synagogues. (Details readily available online.)
Sadly, almost everyone in Europe, the United States as well, could not believe anyone could take this ranting lunatic seriously. (Though this period is before my memory, I've seen countless newsreels since, showing Adolf Hitler on a podium, the audience standing, arms outstretched and shouting, "Zieg Heil!") And whenever it amazes me that no one could see the menace in what was happening, I have only to look around me as the decade following 2015 begins to look more and more like the 1930s in Germany.
Whites only. Everyone else has to go! That was Hitler's the message. Yet the leaders of the most powerful countries in the world stood back, shook their heads, refused to take the ranting little man seriously. Isolationism, that was the ticket. Each country would mind its own business. That silly man with the square mustache, preaching a new Germany, an Aryan-only Germany, could not possibly do what he said he would.
Adolf Hitler seized the German government, and Europe still clung to the idea of appeasement, while the U.S., still suffering from the Great Depression, continued to look on, determined to stay out of it.
In September 1939, German tanks (a new weapon of warfare) rolled into Poland. The world blinked, but did nothing. The French, confident in the strength of something called "the Maginot Line," failed to quake in their boots. But the Maginot Line was designed to defend against trench warfare, as seen in WWI. In May 1940 German tanks rolled over it as if it didn't exist. The Brits, ever honorable, quickly sent troops to aid their long-time ally, but no one was prepared for the might of the German war machine. The French government capitulated, citing its desire to spare Paris being leveled. Which left the British nowhere to go but the beach at Dunkirk. (Thanks to the recent movie, I don't have to explain one of the greatest rescue efforts of all time.)
And then came the Battle of Britain—Britain alone against the German might; Hitler, in the summer of 1940, planning to invade, and that small island nation fighting back—experiencing enormous casualties as they stood alone against Fascism. An effort that inspired Winston Churchill's words that still ring through the decades: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
And still the U.S. sat on its hands and watched. Until a country on the far side of the world, inspired by the unhindered military build-up in 1930s Germany, constructed aircraft carriers (another brand new addition to the annals of warfare) and fighter-bombers to go with them. And caught us flat-footed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The death toll: more than 2400 service personnel and civilians. The only "plus" of that day. Our own aircraft carriers were at sea and not bombed-out wrecks, as were our battleships, cruisers, destroyers, airfields.
At long last, we were in it. Up to our necks. President Roosevelt declared war the next day. [My memories of WWII begin here. My parents, saying as little as possible about our plunge into war, inadvertently leaving me to think that Hawaii was on an island just off East Coast. (We had lived a year on Cape Cod when I was four, so even though we now lived in northeastern Connecticut, I knew how close the coast was.)]
And after four years of coping with total war, a war ending in victory for our side—a victory that would not have been possible without the enormous contribution of the U S of A—the children of that time became The Silent Generation. We just knew that after all that sacrifice, the world would never again be so foolish.
Which—sigh—is likely how I learned to speak up, say what I think, even if it makes other people angry. Lesson learned.
Why have I rehashed what many people consider ancient history?
Aw, come on! The parallel between the 1930s and the past decade is painfully, terrifyingly apparent. Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" is code for "Make America White Again." The Trump "base" is built on White Supremacy. As it is on Male Supremacy. (i.e., women are good for fun & procreation, and that's all, folks).
Trump may not be a little man with a square mustache, but his goals are the same. Grief to anyone "not one of us." Including grief to every woman who rejects being subservient, every woman who believes she has the right to think for herself, to do what she believes to be right.
Voters of the U S of A, stand up and be counted. Don't look the other way, hoping Fascism will go away. It won't. At least not without your vote for Democracy, for Justice for all—including every race, religion, and gender.
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Thanks for stopping by,
Grace (Blair Bancroft)
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