Debt to Our Fathers

Debt to Our Fathers Who Fought WWII

May 29, 2012   Memorial Day

A personel reflection.

A Salute to WWII Veterans

The current younger generation, has no depth to this appreciation if they have any at all.  The only exceptions are people like my 34 y/o son, who was born with a warrior's spirit and started studying all things related to the law enforcement and the military at age 12.  He was voracious in his study and we subscribed to a dozen magazines like S.W.A.T.,Guns and Ammo, etc. My wife was alarmed; but I told her that a teenage male with this intensity is going to learn this stuff whether you like it or not.  As parents we should not resist or be critical, but be sure he learns from skilled mature persons.  The world will always need good soldiers and good cops.  Besides, he has never been violent in any way; on the contrary he is usually the first to step in to defend a kid who is being picked on by other students.  He is morally and ethically a leader among his peers.  She relented and found a senior detective from the Seattle PD, one of my patients, to teach Jason how to shoot.  J had memorized all the proceedures for arm safety for all standard weapons and endlessly practiced all the shooting positions for pistol and rifle and learned when each was most appropriate for every standard situation.  I also reminded her that her mother's father, Bill Templeton, was in the Cavalry in WWI and as well as being a top notch horseman, won several nationsl championships shooting both riifle and pistol.  I suggested that this preoccupation with firearms was likely to be in part genetic and would probably be a fine shooter.  When he went to police firing range with the detective, for his first experience with a real firearm (he had the usual .22 caliber beginners rifle), he started with the detective 9mm Sig Sauer (a Swiss firarm and one of the best in the world), he impressed everyone there by placing every shot in the first clip (15 rounds) in the central body mass and was inside the target three times. Gary, our friend the detective said: "Jason, I have experienced beat cops that don;t do any better than that."  An elderly man, a veteran of every armed conflict for 50 years of his carrier had a case full of a variety of firearms, some very old and some very new.  He took an interest in Jason, and let him fire every one of his weapons.  Needless to say, this experience just inflammed J's studies.  When he was a little older I told him about my father's nightmare experience in war.  He was so touched to finally understand why grandpa was so withdrawn, he started reading everything he could about WWII; an became the WWII expert at his prep school.  This has continues to be refined over the years, and he has the greatest respect for soldiers.  But he is an oddity among his peers, and it took him several years to get over being disgusted with their ignorance.  He finally got over that and takes every opportunity to teach them the history of warfare.

To recover from the current mess, we must rekindle that practical "can do" spirit of my father's generation.  Only that level of devotion and persistence will defeat the forces of EVIL manifested by the sociopaths that have gained control of this country.

Mo