Newswise — With family members, I attended the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. There was also a Memorial Day parade and an observance at Arlington National Cemetery. These events evoked in me complex emotions, including awe and patriotic pride as well as sadness and a sense of loss.
We highly-prize the traditional values of yesterday's soldiers: love of country and selfless sacrifice of life and limb. Our pride mingles with sadness, however, when we realize what a tremendous cost was paid by our soldiers who were lost in battle. Now, after the passage of decades, we are also learning what those losses meant to the lives of their young families. More than just left behind, we were bereft.
Therefore, we World War II orphans attend to war memorials and military celebrations with special care. Gold stars, Purple-Heart badges, triangular-folded flags, 21-gun salutes, missing-man airplane formations and the playing of "Taps" hold sacramental value for us. For years we have been seeking to understand the full meaning of our fathers' sacrifices. We identify with Adlai Stevenson who said in the eulogy for his friend Eleanor Roosevelt, "We are always saying goodbye in this world " always standing on the edge of loss attempting to retrieve some memory, some human meaning, from the silence " something which is precious and gone."
Not long ago I stood at the foot of my father's grave in the American Military Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, the Netherlands. Looking at his cross and the thousands of other crosses and signs of David there, I was overcome by the sense that our world had been diminished by such a dear loss of life. But I realized that it had also been expanded and re-valued by that very loss. Coming to understand the full measure of our forebears' sacrifice made me want to be as good, to count for as much, as I could. I began by telling my story of coming to learn about my father's life and death.
Just as many veterans remained silent about their experiences in the war, we children nursed our anguish quietly. After long years, members of the greatest generation recently began telling their stories. Now we members of the next generation are also beginning to tell ours. At a meeting of the American World War II Orphans Network last week in Washington, " in the midst of the Memorial Day Weekend observances " several of us met to share our stories and to encourage others to share theirs and to begin to heal from the hurt of loss. Today our soldiers are fighting again, sacrificing again. And young families are bereft again. As we celebrate the soldiers of past years, including the noble Allied armada's invasion at Normandy 60 years ago, let our hearts swell with pride at our soldiers' achievement and at that of all soldiers who bravely served our country. But also let our hearts go out to all soldiers' families who are standing on the edge of loss attempting to retrieve some memory, some human meaning, from the silence.
Ben W. McClelland, holder of the Schillig Chair in English Composition at the University of Mississippi, recently published the book "Soldier's Son" (University Press of Mississippi). The memoir describes his emotional quest to "know" his father, 1st Lt. Ewing Ray "Pete" McClelland, who was killed shortly after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944.
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