The Great World War 2 Afterparty is Over
Our ancestors secured eighty years of peace, effective institutions, and moral clarity. My paternal grandfather served as a bombardier in Europe during World War 2.
One Christmas in 2002, I asked him to share everything he remembered about the war. I had always admired my grandparents' generation and eagerly collected their stories. Yet, I had never directly questioned them about the war’s combat, which silently shaped everything around us.
My other grandfather, an infantryman in the Pacific, had passed away years earlier, taking with him dark secrets—why certain sights made him sick or the nature of the hidden wound that earned him an “extra” Purple Heart.
I told my surviving grandfather I wanted to preserve his memories, so he recounted every story he could remember. We talked through the night and into the morning.
The picture I got of the war from those stories was far from the glossy cartoon version of World War 2 that we learn from popular culture. It was full of foolish mistakes and gross incompetence, casual brutality, petty vice. Most of all what I realized was how confused everyone was.
The personal accounts reveal a war marked less by heroism and more by human error, violence, and confusion.
Author's summary: Personal wartime stories reveal World War 2 as a complex, confused conflict marked by human flaws rather than the glorified version often portrayed.