World War II was a lot more real when I was growing up

Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean?

This year marks the 70th anniversary since the end of the Second World War. And of course today is December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, commemorating 74 years since the Japanese sneak attack on U.S. Navy installations in Hawaii. That's the event that brought the U.S. into the war and kept it there until the very end.

When I was a kid, there were WWII veterans all over the place. They're still with us, but there are a lot fewer of them every day, and the ones who are left are older and, well, quieter, I guess.

The WWII vets I knew often told stories about their experiences when I was growing up. Or at least the ones who didn't mind talking about their service did. Others had such harrowing memories of combat that they never discussed them.

Mine is the last generation of people that had dads who fought in the war. And even then I'm really at the tail end of that class. My dad entered the Army in 1946, a year after the war officially ended, and served in the Occupation Army of Japan. And he was older than most of my friends' dads.

So my experience of the war was more third-hand than anything else. But even in the 1970s and 80s, you heard about the war more than you do now. Which is understandable, because it's slowly fading into a more distant past. We'll have WWII vets around for many more years, but their numbers will drop precipitously as time goes on. They already have, really.

I know this partly because I am particularly interested in the First World War, and the last few veterans of that conflict died out in the past five years or so. (This Wikipedia article provides a good summary.) I've read and studied so much about "the Great War" for so many years that it has become somewhat personal to me, even though I obviously don't know anyone who fought in it.

So when the last WWI veterans passed in the early part of this decade, I felt like that really shut the door on an era of history. The First World War brought about a wealth of technological advances, but it was still in some ways very much a 19th-century war, with horsed cavalry and bright uniforms (early on, at least) and things we associate more with the Civil War than "modern" military operations.

Those 100-plus-year-old First World War vets were our last direct and human links to one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of mankind. Their deaths meant we could only relate to that war through the written and recorded word.

And the same will one day soon be true of the Second World War. It's a conflict whose flame will burn brighter and longer here in the U.S. simply because we were so much more deeply involved in it, but eventually those living, breathing connections to this momentous historic event will be gone.

And I guess that makes me sad. Especially on Pearl Harbor Day, when our country was finally awakened from the blissfully ignorant thought that maybe we can just keep ourselves out of foreign conflicts and "Those People" will simply leave us alone.

It's not so much history that repeats itself, folks, as the lessons of history.

Here's wishing a blessed Pearl Harbor Day to those men and women who lived through it and are still around to talk about it.

Why I hate war but love reading about it

If you're someone who flies with any regularity, try this:

The next time you're sitting in the gate area waiting to board a plane, look around at what everyone else is reading. And specifically, look at what the middle-aged males are reading. Three-quarters of the time, if they're reading a book rather than a newspaper, it's going to be some sort of nonfiction history. And most of the time, that means military history.

As a group, we guys in our 40s and 50s LOVE us some military history. The Civil War is a big one. Lots and lots of Civil War books to be seen at airports. Many of these readers, I've noticed from their accents, are southern. Which means for them, they're not "Civil War" books at all, but rather "War of Northern Aggression" books. No event in American history has been debated, discussed and generally dissected more than the Civil War, especially among those who are still fighting it for one reason or another.

You'll also see a lot of guys with books on World War II. There's a more direct connection there, since many of our fathers and grandfathers actually fought in "Dubya-Dubya Two," as Archie Bunker always called it. A lot of men can picture themselves as GIs slogging it out at Guadalcanal or fighting the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge.

Which I think is sort of the point. I believe one of the main attractions of military history for men of my generation (or maybe any generation) is that they see war as a manly, virtuous thing. When you sit at a desk all day, there can be a part of you that longs to do something macho. And what's more macho than carrying a rifle and killing foreigners?

My war of choice is World War I. At last count, I had read, cover to cover, 25 to 30 different books related to the First World War. I've done sermons at church that tie into it, and I genuinely want a membership to the Great War Society (yes, there is such a thing).

But if you have any compassion at all, to be a student of World War I necessarily means that you are anti-war. No one with a shred of decency can read about the slaughter of millions of young men on the battlefields of France and Russia and think that war is anything but vulgar.

And yet I'm fascinated by it. When I read about trench warfare and what it was like to go "over the top" with 60 to 80 pounds of gear on your back into heavy machine gun fire and poison gas shells, I invariably try and put myself into that situation. I wonder if I would have had what it took to attack knowing the odds of my survival were slim. Knowing that a single bullet to the gut could mean a slow and painful death in No Man's Land. I want to see how I would measure up.

Because that's how we guys are raised, you understand. It's always about passing tests and showing you're tough and all of that. Some boys are smart enough to avoid that stuff and seem to understand their inherent self-worth without having to prove it by fighting.

I didn't get into many fights myself, but I still did pretty much whatever anyone dared me to do. I guess I felt better about myself when I passed whatever "test" was put in front of me. Many times, the "test" was something stupid and dangerous. And I still did it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The point is, part of my fascination with war is wondering how I would handle it. And at the same time, I feel incredibly blessed that I've never had to find out. Nor would I ever want my sons to experience it. When it comes to All Things Soldier, I walk a fine line between obsession and repulsion.

When I used to hang around airports, I often wondered if the guys reading those war books were thinking the same thing I was. If they were wondering, "Oh sure, I can write up a memo and do a sales forecast, but how would I react if a 6-foot-4 German came at me with a bayonet? Would I be man enough to handle it?"

Such a strange and pointless way of thinking, I know. What does it matter? If my boys are going to wonder about their manhood, I would rather they ask themselves how they would handle their anger in an argument with their girlfriend or wife. Or how they would react to the sorts of moral and ethical dilemmas that define who we really are. I would rather they ask how tough they are in spirit rather than in fist.

But still, I have to admit, whenever I read one of my Great War books, I always end up mentally putting myself in those filthy, stinking trenches. And the answer to how I would perform in battle really matters to me. I wish it didn't, but it does. I have a sinking suspicion it always will.