Recently I came to understand that World War II was not really that long ago. In the 1950s it was still pretty fresh in people's minds. (Now this is not a new thought to those who lived through those years, but to someone who is forty it might be an indication that he or she has finally grown up. ;) My husband and I came to a similar realization about the Civil War recently. We'd always thought of it as being ages and ages ago, but in the overall scheme of things, when you're thinking genealogically and counting back the generations, it's not ancient history. There were elderly people living at the time my husband and I were born who were alive when the Civil War was going on! I must seem really old to our children when I tell them that I remember seeing Spanish-American and World War I vets marching (or riding) in Memorial Day parades when I was a child. But someday they will get a clearer view of how quickly time passes when they tell their own children that men and women who served their country in the Second World War were still around when they were younger. Unfortunately, one of them is not their own great-uncle . . .When I was little I remember hearing the grown-ups talk about "Sonny." I knew I hadn't met him but I'd seen a picture of a handsome young man in an army uniform at my grandma and grandpa's house and he looked like family. Later I learned that he was my dad's older brother and he'd died in September of 1944 at the age of 20. To me he was a stranger. I had no memories of him; he was only a name. He died fifteen years before I was born during a war that was already in the history books when I went to school.
Carl Adelbert Syers was seriously injured while his unit was engaged in battle with the Japanese on an island in the South Pacific. He was put on a hospital ship which was headed back to the States, but he passed away while en route. His family received the customary telegram and were stricken with grief.
My dad still gets a little choked up when talking about his brother whose nickname was "Sonny." Dad was nine at the time; the baby of the family. He was not real close to his brother due to the age gap, but he knew life would never be the same. Friends and acquaintances had lost older brothers in the War; a few even lost fathers. Now they'd said their good-byes to Sonny and knew the pain firsthand. It wasn't the same as when his grandfather died four years before. Old people were supposed to die, not 20-year old young men. This was his own brother who was supposed to finish growing up, get married, and have a family. This was his own Sonny who'd never again plant a kiss on his mother's forehead, help his father plow the field, tease his brother about his latest girlfriend or play with his sister's little boy. They would never hear his call, his laugh, or his whistle from down the two-track. There should've been a full life ahead; plying a trade, managing a business, or starting his own farm on the family's property. Life just wasn't fair! Why did Sonny have to die?
It wasn't until I was grown and had children of my own that I came to the slow realization that I could've had another uncle in my life. My grandmother was only a few years older than my present age when she lost her oldest son and I have two boys that are close to twenty. It's frightening to think of losing one of them and so far from home! I think I have a better understanding now of how blessed my own generation is and how tenuous life can be. No matter how patriotic the parents or how heroic the soldier, or how deserving the cause, the loss of life at so young an age is still a tragic thing.
We'll be flying our flag on November 11th and as I take it in that evening I'll remember my Uncle Carl and the family that still misses him.
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