Greatest Generation

After the rise of Germany to the East and Japan to the West, American eighteen-year-olds were yanked off farms and flown overseas. Women ran factories, airports, and baseball diamonds. Rosie the Riveter flexed her muscles on posters, a symbol of what would come. Our Grandpa went to Guam and then to islands that had no names, little dots on the map. He couldn’t give away his location in letters home. Loose Lips Sink Ships. His ship never reached battle, but held an island already captured. Grandpa mopped and cooked, swam and fished, until D-Day, VE Day, and Armistice Day brought America’s boys home. An unlucky few were called back up and sent to Korea, which most Americans couldn’t find on a map. Grandpa was among them. He went to Seoul and worked in a munitions depot, far from gunfire. If he had lived long enough, he would have gone to Vietnam as well. It was all he knew.

Grandma didn’t wait for Grandpa to come home. She found better men, men who were smart enough not to re-enlist. Divorced or widowed, they gave her comfort when she pretended to be lonely. She gave and took passion that was denied her before. Maybe one day there would be no war and Grandpa would return, but she wasn’t counting on it.

Grim-faced officers brought Grandpa’s dog tags to Grandma’s house in 1952. There were no remains, only rumors. The officers told her that he was a man of honor, though they knew no such thing. Grandma took it well. She had never loved Grandpa so much, just put up with him. Her generation married who they were supposed to, when expected to. Grandpa had spent more time away than by her side. Grandma was as independent as any woman in her century, or the next. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, as much as wander.

Grandpa met a Korean woman in Seoul, and loved her. She was not strong and dependable like Grandma, but spoke a universal, wordless language, in a dim room on a backstreet. It was she who removed his dog tags and tossed them. Her son found and wore them. That son died in an American bombing raid an hour West. Grandpa didn’t know he was listed as killed in action until long after he deserted.

Grandma hosted our family holidays for the rest of her life. We brought many side-dishes, hoping to discourage her from hauling out her mother’s unsavory cookbook. We tried introducing her to men of her age, but she hated men of her age. Men of her age left and never returned. One husband had been enough, she said. Multiple lovers were not enough, but one husband was.

At Grandma’s funeral, the dog tags were placed in her pale hands. We took turns telling stories about her and Grandpa, how they persevered through the darkest of days, and survived with the help of each others’ undying love, no matter how near or far. A few of their old friends arrived on canes and walkers, then sat listening, not hearing much. We were honored by their presence and grateful to their generation, the Greatest Generation. They knew their generation was no different than any other, but they kept it to themselves. They didn’t want to disappoint us.