I’m saving
my take on “the greatest generation” for another time, but in the new
year—which brings the 70th anniversary of some significant World War II
events—I want to alert readers to the accelerating rate of attrition among TGG
members.
Of my 37 or
so nonfiction books, 18 wholly addressed WW II subjects and several others had
significant "War Two" content. The first, my
operational history of the Douglas SBD Dauntless, was published in 1976. The next three appeared in 1979. Very few of the contributors to those books
remain alive today. The last of my
Dauntless contributors passed away last year.
The only one of 20 Corsair contributors I know to be still living flew
F4Us in Central America in the 1970s. At
least 31 of the 48 Hellcat contributors have departed the pattern, and 21 of 25
Wildcat veterans. Probably most of those
unaccounted for are in fact deceased.
However,
attrition among more recent contributors provides a baseline for the growing
mortality among the men who lived the events I write about. My 2005 account of the First Battle of the
Philippine Sea, titled Clash of the
Carriers, was the first treatment of the subject in more than 20
years. At the time of publication one
quarter of the veterans I consulted already were deceased.
In 2010 I
completed Whirlwind, the first
one-volume history of all Allied air operations over Japan. In just five years the mortality had jumped
from 25 percent to 40 percent of contributors deceased upon publication. That was unsettling, prompting a prediction
that fewer than half the veterans represented in the next book would see it
published.
Unfortunately,
I was right. When my history of USS Enterprise (CV-6) (“the fightingest
ship”) was released in March 2012, 16 of the 30 were gone, or 53 percent. Two more have departed since then: Rear
Admiral Jig Dog Ramage (“Rampage without the P”) and Captain Stanley “Swede”
Vejtasa. Both were Big E stalwarts. When Jig died in July 2012 he had just passed
his 96th birthday, and I was privileged to know him since 1967. Along the way he contributed to three of my
books from his vantage as CO of Bombing Squadron 10 in 1944. When I think of leaders, many names come to
mind. When I think of Jig, I think:
Leader.
Swede was
an exceptional naval aviator. He entered
combat flying SBDs from USS Yorktown
(CV-5) in 1942, receiving a Navy Cross for the Battle of the Coral Sea. Later that year he joined Fighting 10 and
defended Enterprise from successive Japanese air attacks during the Battle of
Santa Cruz. Credited with seven victories in one mission, he was recommended
for the Medal of Honor but received another Navy Cross. He died at 98, enormously respected by all
who knew him.
My main
point is that none of those books could be written with the same amount of
detail today—in the latter case just months later. History
has a shelf life, and WW II first-person history is reaching its expiration
date. One jarring example: last
September I attended the reunion of the American Fighter Aces Association. The median age of the 20 attendees
was—ninety. The young sports from Korea
were in their early eighties.
Historians
should keep another thing in mind: we’re probably losing more than 2,000 WW II
vets a day but we cannot assume that those remaining have adequate
memories. Two of the most senior Enterprise sailors I contacted declined
to be interviewed because they did not trust their memories. Other veterans tend to remember things as
they “should have been” rather than as they likely were. That’s why it’s always (always) important to
cross check and verify. My motto in such
cases: “When in doubt, leave it out.”
Aside from
fading and faulty memories, some old timers like to gild the historical lily. There’s a popular email about a P-51 ace who
reputedly was shot down, evaded capture, and stole a Focke Wulf 190 to return
to freedom. I knew him somewhat, and he
was an accomplished story teller. But there
was no documentation: nothing about him going MIA in unit records, and no
Missing Air Crew Report. Absent an MACR,
alarm bells usually start ringing.
Finally
some of us gleaned the facts. In talking
to the gent’s squadron mates it developed that he had visited a nearby RAF base
on the continent around VE Day and borrowed the FW to show off for his
pals.
For other
military subjects, bear in mind that the clock is running almost as fast for
Korean War vets, who probably average about eight years younger than WW II
folks. And, hard to believe, we began
slogging through the Vietnam mire in 1964, nearly half a century ago.
In
conclusion, I’ll offer three words of advice to budding interviewers:
Do
It
Now.
