They were there. They were very much there. They were like a great forest of tall trees that filled the space around our childhoods. They made us chocolate sodas and filled our gas tanks, sold us insurance, bagged our groceries, and healed our wounds. They were so tall, both in body and spirit, that they blocked the cold winds and the harsh suns of childhood from us. And then they were gone.

They became a forest of tall men and women in other ways, a towering forest of green and blue, khaki and olive, white and tan. They became uniforms. They became warriors and heroes. They dropped the shovels and stethoscopes, typewriters and pencils. They dropped the aprons and hammers and saws, and then they were gone and all the noise of labor and familial tears and laughter went with them.

They took with them the big rough hands and gentle advice, the security and strength we relied on. And then, through the next five years, in ugly flashes of light and terrible claps of thunder, the trees began to fall and then they were really, truly gone.

You knew them when you were small and they were tall. You remember, all of you, the silence, the terrible, awful silence they left behind. Our childhood days began and ended with offices and barns and fields, school rooms and rail yards and stores filled with strangers.

We all have our own memories of those trees and how we hung on their limbs and hugged their girth, pushing our faces against their comforting, rough shoulders. Once upon a time, even in the deepest, darkest days of the Great Depression, they were there. They hid their worries from us, hid their pain and concern and made themselves look taller, stronger. They took us to the movies and picnics. They held us on their shoulders as the parades passed by with trumpets and drums, twirling batons and cars full of clowns and flags. There were always flags, and they taught us to salute. And then they were gone.

They went, one and all, boys and girls right out of high school, men and women from work, or even the breadlines and street corners, to fight under that flag and fall under it, and they were wrapped in it. Their comrades, who could still stand, wept for them and put them in the dirt of other countries. And then they were gone.

Today, they are called the Greatest Generation. Many of them would have disagreed with that title. They thought their fathers and mothers and grandparents who truly knew hardship, who came here in the belly of boats and suffered prejudice and real hunger and real hard work, were the greatest generation. All of them deserved the title.

Some of that forest of tall figures are blessedly, still with us today. They don’t seem as tall, but they are. They are truly survivors. They survived the terrible ’30s and the nightmares of Bataan, Iwo Jima and Saipan, of Bastogne and the bloody fields of France. We see them from time to time lining the parades as we did once, or in the backs of red, white and blue festooned convertibles as part of those parades. We see them, the strongest of them, the still fit survivors, in their veterans’ caps, shuffling through the aisles at the markets.

When you see them, stop and shake their hands, salute them and thank them. We have tall trees to honor today. We have new wars and young blood to fight them, but the forest of that generation is thinning out. Where once there was the shade of them to cool us, there is now, in their absence, more light and space, but more emptiness.

Once they were Americans. Once they stood between us and the darkness.

And now they are gone.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.

 

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