NO DRAFT-DODGERS IN WWII
©2000 James David Pearce
Even though he was well aware that he personally never had done anything great, Clem took a lot of pride in the fact that he had been from what television newsman Tom Brokaw decided was "the Greatest Generation."Brokaw developed his thesis and his money-making book by studying the life of his dad and his dad's contemporaries.
And Clem knew that it was a fact. That generation which had been hardened in the Depression and then ordered onto the beaches was something exceptional.
They were not at all like their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, who had been ambivalent about slavery and sweatshops, or bought their way out of service, or moved West to steal from the Indians when times got tight back East.
And they certainly weren't like those draft-card-burning unworthies who either went to Canada or marched against Johnson and Nixon and the Vietnam War. No siree.
That Greatest Generation was cut from a different stripe, and certainly had a right to be proud of it. Yes siree.
Of course, Clem had to admit, there might have been a few who maybe didn't meet all the measurements.
In the World War II Greatest Generation, while there weren't any real "draft-dodgers," there had been a few "essential occupations," possibly some "family hardship cases" (John Wayne), some "flat feet," maybe one or two "trick knees" (Gregory Peck), a couple of "crowd phobias" (Frank Sinatra), and a whole lot of "90-Day Wonders."
But nothing like "real draft-dodging," Clem reasoned.
There was that fellow in France who ran from the Germans, and then got lost. Dropped his gun, too.
Fellow named Eddie Slovik, out of Chicago.
But Eisenhower had him publicly shot, real quick, and that tended to calm down most everybody else.
~~~
L. R. (Teeny) Mizelle of Colerain
USAF, England, WWII
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