TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

WWII Generation Offers Lesson In Peace

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 25, 2007

In the past month, several Tribune stories have spotlighted our aging World War II veterans, a reality brought into clear focus by the 66th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

One friend from church was there when the Japanese attacked; he described how he vainly discharged his rifle at the low-flying planes. He went on to jump from a landing craft at Normandy, he fought in the thick of the Battle of the Bulge and he was one of the soldiers present when Dachau was liberated.

For many of us - the baby boom generation - our parents have some amazing stories to tell: those who served in the armed forces and those who stayed at home. My parents, Grace and David, grew up around London, and as of this writing I am deep into a series of digital interviews, detailing their experiences in their own words.

My parents were children during The Blitz, and they fled in response to the bombs and the threat of invasion. My dad lived away from home for several years, but my mother soon returned.

"If my mum and dad are going be killed by a bomb," she had said, "I want to be with them."

This week, my mother talked about the times bombs rained down around her east London home. One day, the family heard a V-1 flying bomb ("doodlebug," "buzz bomb") overhead; the heinous devices flew low enough to see. The engine cut at just the wrong moment and the family ran for its backyard shelter. The blast demolished three houses across the street and blew away the front of her family's home.

My mother said my grandparents would read aloud from Psalm 46, "God is our refuge and strength," and Psalm 91, "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." All the while, they could hear the bombs crashing, closer and closer.

After Victory in Europe Day, the church they attended sponsored a weekly Sunday afternoon tea for prisoners of war from a nearby camp. My mother's family became good friends with two of the Germans while they were waiting to be repatriated.

One of the young men, Gunter, returned to find that his home was within the borders of East Germany. Almost five decades later, after the 1989 demolition of the Berlin Wall, my mother, along with my dad, was able to visit her old friend.

"I never knew what real love was," he told them, "until those days after the war when your church reached out to me and the other soldiers."

As I listen to the stories, and there are a lot, I'm getting a picture of our world that is more deeply human than any observations made or conclusions drawn by the history books or the politicians or the commentators.

Winston Churchill said, "We will fight them on the beaches." Any Englishman worth his salt would have stood his ground with pride, and Churchill's England certainly did. But those same good people were just as quick to make their enemies a cup of tea given the first chance, even though it hadn't been too many months previous that terrible bombings had blown their neighborhood to smithereens.

As the East German, Gunter, observed, genuine love is so much stronger than the kind of hate that breeds and sustains the horrors of war.

The Christmas kind of peace is a lot like the quality of love Gunter felt in my mother's postwar London. It's active, it's insistent, it's countercultural and it's difficult to understand. It certainly doesn't tolerate evil lying down; instead, it gets up and does something about it, usually something costly.

Today, we all pause to celebrate the birth of revolutionary love. Our world, once again, is at war. What can those of us whose collective voice really is the voice of America do? What can we do in the way of gifting our community with Christmas peace?

Columnist Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@ gmail.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT