After the War

This is the way people talked after World War II. Since about 1 million men died in World War II from the U.S. everyone talked this way because everyone's lives were severely disrupted by this war. There is NO ONE I knew whose life didn't change dramatically during World War II unlike the Korean War, the Viet Nam War and the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The wars since World War II were mainly felt by the people who went there and their families only. Most other people's lives weren't changed that much physically, only psychologically.

I was born 3 years after World War II and so grew up hearing stories about people's experiences and how traumatized everyone was during and after the war. There was always talk about how there never would be another big war like this one. But, in the end this is the human race and about 25 years after any war people forget what it actually was like by the next generation or two.

The most important reason to not forget World War II is to not repeat it. Visit the graves from the Normandy invasion. See the 10,000 American, British, and French Graves there and realize how many men died just that first day trying to take back successfully France and Europe for the Free World.

It seemed very important that Obama and Putin spoke yesterday during the remembrance of World War II by the nations of europe and the U.S. and Canada and Russia. It was very good to see all of them remembering this war's end.

When I was little people who had been in the war were in their 20s to 70s during the 1950s because the ages people were in the war then was from about 17 or 18 until their 60s during World War II. The first few years after World War II many many died from their injuries both physical and mental as in PTSD. Motorcycle gangs were started by pilots who bombed Europe and needed an outlet for their agressions and many died that way too. Others got married and lived relatively peaceful lives from then on. Others took more risks and died because they couldn't live with their injuries or PTSD or psychological problems from the war.

Just like all other wars some found a way forward and some didn't and it is still that way today from all the wars U.S. soldiers have been in ever since.

The very youngest of all the soldiers from World War II are now in their 80s or more and now here at the 70th Anniversary of the 1944 D-Day it might be the last big group of soldiers remembering it ever because of the advanced ages of this group now.