May 8th is an auspicious day. On this date in 1541, Hernando de Soto became the first European to gaze upon the Mississippi River. In 1915, the Royal Navy announced that 703 passengers and crew of the RMS Lusitania, torpedoed by a German U-boat, had been rescued, and 1,300 more were lost. And, of course, in 1945, President Truman announced the surrender of Germany, bringing World War 2 to an end in the European Theater. President Truman pronounced this day "Victory in Europe" Day - or V-E Day.
There was still a war to win in the Pacific, but May 8th, 1945, was a great day in history. Adolf Hitler was dead, having shot himself in his underground bunker. The rest of the Nazi government was either fleeing for their lives, surrendering to the Americans and British to avoid capture by the Russians, or joining Hitler in taking the coward's way out.
My father was in Victorville, California, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces, checking out in B-29s in preparation for heading to the Pacific. As it happened, Dad never deployed; the Pacific war also ended while he was waiting for orders.
Dad's brother, my uncle Don, was lying in a bed in a British hospital, still in a coma due to the fragment from a German 88 shell that had taken off his forehead and ruined his left eye. He recovered, but was never the same, living the rest of his life with a metal plate in his head and a glass eye.
My Mom's older brother, my uncle Carl, was a Marine; on this day, he was in a U.S. Navy hospital ship, recovering from the sepsis that had nearly killed him. The sepsis was the result of the Japanese bayonet he had taken through the shoulder on Iwo Jima.
My Mom's younger brother, my uncle Norman, was a radio operator/gunner in a B-26. He was at his airfield in France when the news broke.
So many famillies were affected by this war - American, Russian, Canadian, British - all the nations of Europe were affected by the Nazi war machine and Adolf Hitler's unbridled ambiton for conquest.
Many of my favorite expressions of military bravado came out of that conflict. To name a few:
Captain Richard Winters, of the 101st Airborne, wrote later of leadership and the role officers play in war:
Lastly, ''Hang tough!'' Never, ever give up regardless of the adversity. If you are a leader, a fellow who other fellows look to, you have to keep going.
Soviet general Georgy Zhukov, a brilliant tank general, admitted in a very un-Soviet spate of honesty:
We got 16,000 wonderful vehicles. We got all the steel that we make our tanks out of. Of course, we couldn't have done without Western aid.
Much of that Western aid was from the United States.
The most decorated soldier in American history, Audie Murphy, said of bravery in war:
I'll tell you what bravery really is. Bravery is just determination to do a job that you know has to be done.
And, of course, Winston Churchill, who summed up the entire conflict in typical style:
If you're going through Hell, keep going.
The European war brought to the fore men like Vasily Zaitsev, like "Mad Jack" Churchill, like Audie Murphy, like the cascade of heroes from the United States, Britain, Canada, and elsewhere who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. Like the men who took the beaches of North Africa in Operation Torch and the men of the British Empire who were already in Africa, all of whom drove Germany out of that continent. Like the men who gave their all in the failed drive to the Rhine that was Operation Market Garden, and like the determined and courageous members of the various underground movements who risked either torture and execution or, if they were lucky, just execution on capture.
War is one of the greatest of human endeavors. It pushes people and nations to do things they never thought themselves capable of. It tests men and equipment to their limits. And World War 2 was, so far, the greatest and deadliest such conflict in human history.
See Also: Essex Files: 80 Years After V-E Day - America’s Triumph in Freedom’s Finest Hour
On May 8, 1945, the Supreme Allied Commander, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, said:
"Humility must be the measure of a man whose success was bought with the blood of his subordinates, and paid for with the lives of his friends."
The war in Europe lasted six years. And today, 80 years ago, was the day it all ended. We should all take a moment to remember all of those who fought, all of those who died, and those few still with us who were there. We should celebrate this day, as our forefathers did in 1945. But we should also remember George Santayana's caution: Only the dead have seen the end of war.
