Texas. The Hill Country. The local Walmart has a poster on the wall. It hangs near the entrance of the store. The poster is faded and aged, containing many three-by-five photos, housed in clear plastic sleeves, all in rows, on display for the world to see.
The poster calls itself the “Wall of Honor,” even though you’d have to go out of your way to actually notice the poster. Let alone honor it.
The modest snapshots of military veterans peer down at us busy shoppers as we all hurry past, moving so importantly, each carrying our plastic bags of mass-produced, homogenized consumer crapola.
On my way out, I see the poster and something makes me stop and take a closer look. I am standing before the Wall of Honor. And I’m struck by how many World War II-vets are on this wall.
Their generation is disappearing steadily, we lose a few dozen of them every day. You don’t see their pictures much anymore.
And yet as I write this, February is almost here. Singapore fell in February of ‘42. The Germans surrendered in Stalingrad in February of ‘43. Dresden was bombed in February of ‘45. Iwo Jima was that same February.
I wonder if school kids still read about Iwo Jima.
My father was a World War II fanatic. An amateur scholar of the War. He was always reading about battles, studying conflicts, and learning about the aircraft. He read Ernie Pyle aloud to me. He adored Bill Maudlin.
My father painstakingly built tiny World War II airplane models, and model tanks, then gifted them to all my little friends, making sure each of us boys knew about the heroes who sacrificed their lives so that we could have the freedom to be in Cub Scouts and eat Spaghetti-Os and play with our Stretch Armstrong dolls in peace.
Those World War-II vets were his heroes. When he was growing up, they were his fathers, his uncles, his elders, his Little League coaches, his high-school teachers, his clergymen, his bosses, neighbors, and friends.
They were men who rarely complained. Who grew up beneath Great Depressions. They were just children in uniform. My grandfather, for example, grew two inches while in Italy.
Babies. Who left home as boys. Who came back as sages and cynics. They gave so much. And I worry sometimes that we’re forgetting them.
I ask the Walmart greeter whether the veterans on this wall are still alive, and if so, do any work at this particular Walmart?
The greeter is an older man. He is amused that I’ve even found the wall. He joins me there in a moment of contemplation.
Together we are gazing at the black-and-white photos. Shoppers move past us. We are in our own little world.
He speaks with a heavy Spanish accent. It’s almost difficult to understand him.
“Those men are all gone now, señor,” he says. “But I worked with many of these men, long ago. When I first come to this country. These men took me in and gave me a new life.”
I reply, “They were such good men, weren’t they?”
He shakes his head. “No señor. They were more than good. They were the Greatest Generation.”