The Weekly Quill — Reinventing the Greatest Generation

In Search of the GI & Infrastructure Bills of Tomorrow

You have left your home to serve your country. 

Serve it to the credit of yourself, your family, your state and your country. 

You are now a comrade in the fraternity of American servicemen.

The American Legion, 1942

Though his landing craft had drifted about a mile from its intended landing point on Utah Beach on that fateful morning of June 6, 1944, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was spitting hot ready for combat, which was saying something considering his first tour had begun in that same country 26 years earlier. This was to be Roosevelt’s fifth amphibious invasion. He had already seen action in North Africa, Sicily and the treacherous mountains of Italy. His superior officer, Major General Raymond “Tubby” Barton put his foot down, insisting the 56-year-old stand down on D-Day. To this, in a May 26, 1944 letter, Roosevelt beseeched implored he be cleared to once again stand among his men: “I personally know both officers and men of these advance units and believe that it will steady them to know that I am with them.”

With only cane and pistol in hand, upon landing, the former president’s oldest son and namesake pronounced, “We’ll start the war from right here!” That he did alongside 23,250 who landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, many of whom were among more than 60,000 casualties in the first 30 days after the invasion. On the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of D-Day, the American Legion reported on one veteran’s reaction to seeing Omaha Beach after so much time had passed: with tears rolling down his cheeks, he admitted, “I don’t know how I made it…or why I made it.”

Weeks earlier, the National World War II Memorial had been dedicated in Washington, D.C. With 150,000 veterans there to honor the moment, the then-American Legion National Commander John Brieden explained that many in attendance felt that the monument was unneeded: “Veterans of World War II saw victory as reward enough – the freedom that emerged from their sacrifices, the prosperity of the 20th century, a world saved from dictatorship, imperialism, the Holocaust.”

Prosperity was not something WWII GIs took for granted. They had witnessed the other side of good fortune firsthand as no prior U.S. generation had. Many were the sons of those who had fought in World War I who’d been handed $60 and a train ticket home when the war ended in 1918. Not only did the federal government fail to show gratitude for the sacrifice and service of countless former soldiers who had great difficulty finding a job, within 11 years of returning home, the country was slammed into the Great Depression. 

…Continue Reading "Reinventing the Greatest Generation" Click Here

Visit Quill Intelligence to subscribe to The Weekly Quill and The Daily Feather

Danielle DiMartino Booth is founder and Chief Strategist at Quill Intelligence

Click Here to buy Fed Up:  An Insider’s Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America. 

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble.com | Indie Bound.com  |  Books?A?Million