Remembering D-Day, 70 years later

Sometimes I forget that it all really happened — after all, it was so long ago. But for the men who were there, it was real.

The barrels of their guns were every bit as true as the stainless steel water bottle that I hold in my hand, and the English Channel's wind-blown spray was no different than the water that shoots over the sides of the boat when I go fishing.

But it still feels like a movie. It shouldn't. It all happened. And to guys just like me.

It's hard to understand this, especially as I watch those who lent the steel to the spine of the Allied armies grow old and pass away. They, like World War II as a whole, have always seemed close and far at the same time — it's the generation that I don't ever remember as being young, but whose youth will be eternally remembered because of what they did.

Most of us read about D-Day in the histories, which not only insulate us from the horror, but let the commanders' names live on while the men — those fathers, sons, and brothers — are blended together into giant arrows that criss-cross the map of Europe or Asia.

This all looks similar no matter what battle you're reading about, and to many a book-buried scholar, the sands of Normandy have the same off-white hue as the dirt in the trenches of Verdun or the grass in the fields of Waterloo.

But those books will never be able to tell you what it was really like.

You'll never watch a book's eyes wander as he remembers his friend who died when his plane flew into the side of a mountain, or see his frail hands rub the scar tissue where that metal wasp bit him.

He won't shudder when he remembers that "rat-a-tat-tat" of the German anti-aircraft artillery, or be able to tell you in a cracked voice that if there was another war, they would be the very last person to sign up.

He can't explain the pure, utter fear he felt — or how he overcame it to do what needed to be done.

Those that can are our fathers, our grandfathers. We know them. We love them. Many of us have buried them. Unfortunately it won't always be that way, and we are one or two decades removed from having the "Greatest Generation" become a fact instead of a memory.

In the years to come, people will look at them the same way that we look at that great-great-grandfather who fought at Vicksburg or that distant relative who came over on the Mayflower — they existed, sure, but we don't know him, we've never heard his voice or gave him a Father's Day card or held the flashlight for him while he worked on a car in the driveway.

Nah. Once we're gone, they're just a name, a rank, and a small part of that big arrow. I know it's inevitable — time slows for no man — but it's heartbreaking just the same.

So while we're here, we should remember the anniversaries for things like Pearl Harbor or D-Day for what they are: not just another occasion to attend some ceremony, but a chance to be the people that can share the memories of those who, quite literally, saved the world from an overwhelming darkness.

Future generations won't be so lucky. The worst part is they don't even know it.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Halloween musings in a sleepy cemetery

There was no more perfect place to be at midnight on Halloween than on a lantern-lit tour of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yes, it was just as creepy as it sounds, and even though the walk isn't meant to scare, the atmosphere alone makes it not for the faint of heart.

Still, the place is absolutely remarkable. Opened in 1849, it was built around what's called the "Old Dutch Burying Ground" - the same one where the body of Washington Irving's restless horseman is said to reside. There seems to be no end to the gravestones, and they are here, there and everywhere, 40,000 scattered over 90 acres in clusters and rows and rectangles, under ornate monuments and broken slabs and weeping angels.

Revolutionary war officers lie next to painters and poets, and the gargantuan mausoleums of Gilded Age industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller sit just across from the low, sturdy grave of labor leader Samuel Gompers. It's a cross-section of America's finest, and a reminder that no matter how much we accomplish in this life, we all end up in the same marble-toothed fields.

Part of the cemetery was actually constructed on an old Revolutionary War redoubt, and from that vantage point high on a hill, one can see not only the ancient trenches threading their way through the earth, but also the section of ground the headless horseman rose from before his midnight gallops.

Irving's own grave is not far away, and his tombstone stands just a little higher, a little straighter, than those littered around him.

Sleepy Hollow has changed mightily since the writer's heyday, of course, and although some landmarks from his famed story remain - most notably the Pocantico River, which was the supposed safe haven for the hapless Ichabord Crane - it looks more like a run-down college town than a place of historic significance. Like acid rain on granite, the years have worn away its charm, and what remains is not always pleasant to look at it.

And, fascinating though the tour was, I could not help but gaze at the stones with the same measure of dread I always feel when in a graveyard. After all, it's a glimpse into your own inevitable future, and that disconcerting truth is one we'd all prefer to ignore until our final hours (and even then, not so much.)

But at the same time, visits to these places can be both humbling and motivating. It's good to realize now and again that there actually is an "end of the line," that the four-digit number at the receiving end of that dash is hurtling towards us with every waking hour, and when it arrives, it will not care whether or not we feel our chapters are finished.

Therefore, I concluded, it must be our job to pack that dash with as much as we can, enough so that if there is some way for us to look back on the lives we've led, we'll be able to say that we missed out on nothing.

Chuck Palahniuk once wrote that "All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring." I disagree. He kills us anyway. But as long as there's that chance that someone can one day look upon my grave, as I looked upon Irving's, and say, "This was a man who made a difference - this is a man whose work lives on!" - it won't seem quite so intimidating.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Tags: Halloween, Headless Horseman, History, Literature New York, Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving,

Veterans of the "Great War" deserve better

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

STEVE JANOSKI

Americans have never been too good at remembering our history. From the condos that decorate some of the Civil War's major battlefields to the callous disregard given to historic buildings that lie in the way of "progress," we've always been a nation that's looked more toward the future than the past.

Although that philosophy might be part of the reason that we've risen (as a country) to the heights we have in a relatively short period, there are also certain instances where this can lead to neglecting portions of our past that should have been honored more appropriately.

Unfortunately, when Corporal Frank Buckles passed away on Feb. 27, we lost our chance to show the last American veteran of World War I that our neglect was in fact a mistake, and that we would fix it as soon as we could by making a monument to those who fought in what is becoming a forgotten war.

World War I is abstract in the minds of many — a long-ago war fought on European soil that that is permanently overshadowed in the pages of the history books by its much larger sister war, fought just 21 years later.

The people who fought in it, though, were real people — like my great-grandfather who, although he died long before I was born, was part of the artillery corps in France.

When I look at the rolls of his regiment or the yellowed letters he sent home from the European front, that war becomes tangible — no longer dry pages in a history book, but something that really happened, that somebody had to live through.

The war, however, was always real for Buckles. He had gone to France as an ambulance driver at just 16 years-old, and saw first hand the devastation that the "War to end all wars" wreaked on men.

Before his death, Buckles had been a proponent of creating a national monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and was the honorary chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation.

Edwin Fountain, who sits on the board of directors for the Foundation, said that although a memorial exists in Washington to the "Great War," when it was originally dedicated in 1931, it was only meant to commemorate the 499 residents of that city who became casualties — not for the plethora of other Americans who died in the green fields of France.

Over time, as other war monuments were erected to honor the following wars of the 20th century, the WWI monument was neglected, and fell into disrepair — a terrible sin that has disrespected every one of the 5 million men who served in the war, and the 116,000 who never saw home again because of it.

Buckles called not only for the restoration of the D.C. monument, but also that it be rededicated as a national memorial. As the last members of the "Lost Generation" began to pass into history, he finally got some attention,

In 2009, he spoke to lawmakers in Congress about the need for a memorial — at the time, he was 108 — and for once, Congress listened.

Since then, Fountain said, about $7 million in stimulus money was secured in order to restore the monument in a way that will be tastefully done.

"We don't want to detract at all from the existing monument, because it's very peaceful, and it's been tucked off in the trees," he said. "It has a very different feel than the other (monuments.)"

"We want to add statues that will give it a national component, but would still be deferential to the original (purpose)," he said.

Restoration is currently underway, but Fountain said that only half the mission is completed, as the site still must be rededicated to recognize it as a national memorial.

Legislation is slowly making its way through Congress that would accomplish this, and Senate Bill No. 253 is a bipartisan effort that would authorize the establishment of this national memorial.

In the House of Representatives, the act is called, appropriately, the Frank Buckles WWI Memorial Act.

Fountain asks that citizens call their senators and congressmen and ask that they support the bill, which would finally give these brave men the posthumous honors that they all deserved to see with their own eyes.

I have to agree with him… it's only 93 years late.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Remembering the "Greatest Generation"

JANOSKI, STEVE

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 

On Oct. 23, a monument was dedicated in Fort Lee to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

According to an article in The Record, dozens of veterans who fought in that epic battle were on hand for the ceremony, as well as a crowd of about 150, mostly senior citizens.

Assemblywoman Joan Voss, D-Fort Lee, was also in attendance, and her observation on the makeup of the crowd was a disheartening statement to read just a few days before Veterans' Day.

"Where are your grandchildren? Where are your children?" she asked.

Where were they indeed. What could have been more important?

This country has always ignored, forgotten, and neglected its history. We have spit on our veterans, we build condos on our battlefields, and the average American knows so little about history that it makes me wonder exactly how much public schools are worth.

But have we really forgotten World War II already, just 65 years after its end?

As I had written previously, my grandfather, who served in the Pacific Theatre, recently passed away.

This was a stinging reminder that the generation who literally saved the world from the great, enveloping darkness that was Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is dying, and dying quickly.

Military veterans aside, my generation is a spoiled bunch in comparison. We've faced no great "Great Enemy," never had to storm beaches under hails of flying lead.

The average person's "sacrifices" for the War on Terrorism are nonexistent, and life has continued much like it did for the past two decades for most of us.

That generation was not so fortunate. Instead of throwing baseballs, they threw hand grenades; instead of shooting deer, they shot men.

Their triumph in that war was the one of the great accomplishments in all of human history, and an enduring testament to the will and courage that regular men can exhibit when placed in extraordinary circumstances.

We are here, we are free, because of their actions on those bloody beaches in the South Pacific and the frozen forests of Western Europe, and their actions alone.

My grandmother once told me that she remembered her father, a veteran of the U.S. Artillery during World War I himself, pointing out the veterans of the Spanish-American War during a parade, and telling her to remember them, because there weren't many left.

We are that point now with the World War II vets.

As time takes its cruel toll, the old soldiers' memories fade and their bodies fail. Every day, we are losing more of than just our family members— we are losing our past, and a piece of our identity as Americans.

Some things can bring it back to us.

A couple weeks ago, I held an M-1 Garand, the American rifle that won World War II, in my hands. I put the wood stock close to my cheek, felt the kick of that when it fired, heard the distinctive "ping" of the cartridge ejecting that you heard so often in "Saving Private Ryan."

I tried to imagine shooting it at another soldier in the woods instead of a target at the range. Tried to imagine hitting that person, knowing I ended his life, and then having to do it over and over again.

On Oct. 23, a monument was dedicated in Fort Lee to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

According to an article in The Record, dozens of veterans who fought in that epic battle were on hand for the ceremony, as well as a crowd of about 150, mostly senior citizens.

Assemblywoman Joan Voss, D-Fort Lee, was also in attendance, and her observation on the makeup of the crowd was a disheartening statement to read just a few days before Veterans' Day.

"Where are your grandchildren? Where are your children?" she asked.

Where were they indeed. What could have been more important?

This country has always ignored, forgotten, and neglected its history. We have spit on our veterans, we build condos on our battlefields, and the average American knows so little about history that it makes me wonder exactly how much public schools are worth.

But have we really forgotten World War II already, just 65 years after its end?

As I had written previously, my grandfather, who served in the Pacific Theatre, recently passed away.

This was a stinging reminder that the generation who literally saved the world from the great, enveloping darkness that was Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is dying, and dying quickly.

Military veterans aside, my generation is a spoiled bunch in comparison. We've faced no great "Great Enemy," never had to storm beaches under hails of flying lead.

The average person's "sacrifices" for the War on Terrorism are nonexistent, and life has continued much like it did for the past two decades for most of us.

That generation was not so fortunate. Instead of throwing baseballs, they threw hand grenades; instead of shooting deer, they shot men.

Their triumph in that war was the one of the great accomplishments in all of human history, and an enduring testament to the will and courage that regular men can exhibit when placed in extraordinary circumstances.

We are here, we are free, because of their actions on those bloody beaches in the South Pacific and the frozen forests of Western Europe, and their actions alone.

My grandmother once told me that she remembered her father, a veteran of the U.S. Artillery during World War I himself, pointing out the veterans of the Spanish-American War during a parade, and telling her to remember them, because there weren't many left.

We are that point now with the World War II vets.

As time takes its cruel toll, the old soldiers' memories fade and their bodies fail. Every day, we are losing more of than just our family members— we are losing our past, and a piece of our identity as Americans.

Some things can bring it back to us.

A couple weeks ago, I held an M-1 Garand, the American rifle that won World War II, in my hands. I put the wood stock close to my cheek, felt the kick of that when it fired, heard the distinctive "ping" of the cartridge ejecting that you heard so often in "Saving Private Ryan."

I tried to imagine shooting it at another soldier in the woods instead of a target at the range. Tried to imagine hitting that person, knowing I ended his life, and then having to do it over and over again.

One veteran at the Fort Lee ceremony knows that feeling too well.

"I killed so many men," he said, while shaking his head.

The memories haven't left them. The ones who survived, the lucky ones, as we call them, gave everything to save us. They came out alive and nearly traded their humanity doing it.

So if you've got the time, remember them this Veteran's Day. When the clock tolls at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, and commemorates the German signing of the armistice to end World War I, thank whatever god you want that you were lucky enough to know any of these guys.

George Patton once said, "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

We have the opportunity.

Thank God…but them too.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/history/more_history_news/107140928_Remembering_the__Greatest_Generation_.html?c=y&page=2

Making life for the movies

BY STEVE JANOSKI

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S. Thompson

I was never fond of the idea of a “bucket list.”

In my eyes it was a pretentious sort of thing to write down things that you determine you must, beyond all reasonable doubt, do before you die, or else you would declare all your years a waste.

Either do the things or don't, but posting your list on your refrigerator door like Martin Luther with one of your kid's animal magnets seems insincere at best.


Death, of course, has a way of changing things, and breaking down my innate cynicism I've worked so hard to sharpen, and so two weeks ago, as I looked over my grandfather's laid-out corpse, I couldn't help but feel a tingle of my own mortality.

It happens every time I go to a funeral, and that's why I avoid those functions as much as possible.

But even as I took in the sight of him lying in a casket, there wasn't that sense of overwhelming regret and destructive sorrow- he was 84 years-old, and had lived a long life that was truly, and in every sense of the word, worth living.

Born in 1926, he was a part of what's been called the “Greatest Generation,” having signed up with the Navy at the tender age of 17 in 1944. He was promptly sent to the Pacific Theater, where he was part of the crew of a PBY Catalina, the “flying boat” type plane that could land on water.

The PBY was often used as a sub-hunter in the Pacific, and although the details of the engagements were left out, an eager energy would trace across his old eyes when he recalled the adventure of those days.

During one of those missions, his head was grazed by a .50 bullet that barely missed- one inch the other way, and this writer wouldn't be here.

Over the course of the war the years immediately after, he was stationed across both America and the South Pacific, and by the age of 22, he'd seen more of the world than most of my generation will see in their entire lives.

Being a young man watching these old lions die brings home the reality that no matter how long life seems, it is truly a harrowingly short ride that should be enjoyed with the most intensity that can be drawn from each breath.

So recently, as a way of keeping my intentions straight- you guessed it- I'm beginning to write up a bucket list. I'm not going to call it that, because I still think it's a ridiculous term, but I've admitted that there are certain things that I've thought about doing but had considered out of my reach for one reason or another.

Unlike the movie, I'm not going sky-diving, because I still can't figure out why someone would want to jump out of a plane that isn't falling as fast as they are.

However, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? Absolutely. I've gotten into the outdoors much more in the last few years, and summiting Hemingway's legendary conquest would be a story worth living myself.

I'd like to take a boat down the Amazon River, because the sheer natural brutality of that region has captured my imagination for years.

One day, I'd like to stand at the Straits of Gibraltar, and then later on that day, get drunk at a bar that lies at edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

There are many journeys I plan on embarking on, and with my natural tendency to seek out the worst people and seediest parts of wherever I am, I'm sure they'll be interesting.

This way, when I'm done living this life, I'll be able to say that I made it all worth it, and lived a life that the wild men of the world would look on with approval after some producer makes a movie out of it decades from now.

As one man I know often says, “It's better to wear out than rust out.”

There could be no better motto for anyone's life.

It's finally here. Slainte.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

By Steve Janoski

What's one of the quickest ways to irritate your friends? Ask them the same question, all year long.

"Hey man, you know what's coming?"

They'll get a confused look on their faces. What could you possibly be talking about?

"No…. what?"

"Saint Paddy's Day!" I say elatedly.

They shake their heads, and say over their shoulder as they're walking away, "dude, it's July."

Generally people look at my Italian features, or my Polish last name, and wonder where this affinity for such an ethnic holiday came from.

I tell them, as I have so many times over the years, that ethnicity is more than a matter of how you look or what name you've got— it's about what lies in your heart.

Growing up, I was taught by my grandmother that St. Patrick's Day was a day of celebration, infused with a historical sense of pride at being both Irish and Catholic, and each year, we'd go into New York City to watch the parade and honor that pride.

She'd tell me never to wear orange "because it's the Protestant color," and point to the green line painted down Fifth Avenue to mark the parade route, saying how in the early days the Protestants would come douse it in orange paint, enraging the Catholics.

We would watch from near St. Patrick's Cathedral as the U.S. Army's "Fighting 69th" New York regiment led the parade off, as solemn and fierce looking as the men who made the unit famous long ago by making some of the most brutal but gloriously valiant charges of the Civil War.

Their flag, famous for its deep green background and golden harp, is still carried throughout the parade, with the regiment's motto inscribed on the bottom of it: "Riam nar druid o sbarin lann"— "Those who never retreat from the clash of spears."

We'd see the Irish wolfhounds trudge by, along with hundreds of bagpipers of various societies, and the wails of "Scotland the Brave" would flood the great boulevards.

Eventually we'd eat at an Irish pub of some sort, with a young me catching my first glimpse of the densely packed bar crowd that I'd eventually join— and after turning 21, I did so with gusto.

Of course, many St. Paddy's Days since then have turned into a Mulligan stew of rowdiness that I can't write about until I'm entirely sure that the statute of limitations has expired, but even looking at the holiday through the amber bottom of a Jameson-filled pint glass, I've tried to remember what this holiday is really for… and it's not drinking.

It's for every son of Erin who came over to this strange new land during the Great Famine, covered in fleas and dying of starvation, and built this country up by the labor of their hands and the force of their will, carving out their own little corner of the American Experiment.

It's for those who stepped off the ships and straight into the Civil War, and fought to end a form of slavery that mirrored their own brutal oppression in the Old Country.

It's for my great-grandfather, James Lynch, who left his comfortable home in Jersey City to load up on the big boats and fight in the Great War, sitting in sodden trenches in France working the artillery, unsure if he would ever see the shores of home again.

It's for Jack Dempsey and JFK and Whitey Bulger, for the Molly Maguires and Micky Ward and every O' or Mc' who ever wore a patrolman's shield in any city. It's for Brendan Behan and Paddy Murphy and the Easter Rising, for Yeats and the Dead Rabbits and the IRA.

It's for every Irish firefighter who ran into those buildings on 9/11, and whose only remains were found in the form of the countless claddagh rings found in the rubble.

It's a day for best and the worst of us, whether we came here long ago or just yesterday, who share the blood of that tough little island that defeated one empire and helped to build another, and have made the "Irish experience" in America worthy of the annals of history.

To all of you, to all of us— Slainte. Enjoy.

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