In the past few weeks I have learnt of the deaths of two men whose passing marks the ongoing end of an era. I won't mention their names because there are many like them and, in that sense, neither of these two were special.
The first I did not know very well. He was just a very old and sick man. But it turns out that when he was in his 20s in the 1940s he was captaining a U.S. submarine in the Pacific. "Where the action was," he told me when I asked. He was part of that group brought to light in the book and film "Run Silent, Run Deep". He told me of his war -- the sinking of two enemy warships in terribly dangerous conditions -- as if he was describing a trip to the grocery shop.
The second was a dear relative and one of the nicest people I have ever met. He was a young kid from rural Pennsylvania who found himself fighting on the beaches of Normandy, a place he probably had never heard of. He could talk you through "Band of Brothers", telling you what was coming next all the way across the Rhine and into Austria. He jovially mocked the ex-soldiers in it who said they did not need rescuing from Bastogne. "That's not what they said then," he said.
With twinkling eyes, he once told younger relatives who were planning to backpack through Europe that he had done that too when he was their age. They did not immediately get it.
Men (and women) like this are leaving us daily. I am so very glad that I spoke to these men and got at least some of their stories. We should all be asking as many as we come across about their time and keeping it alive, even if it is only in a small way like this post. They will all be gone very soon.
One thing I did get to do was thank my relative for helping me to have freedom in my life. His reply, if I recall correctly, was simply, "Your welcome".
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