My parent’s generation had the attack on Pearl Harbor while the tail end of Gen X and the early millennials had 9-11. Boomers like myself and the rest of Gen X never had a singular attack on our country that caused us to rush to recruiting stations to enlist.
Battleship row with torpedoes streaking toward the USS West Virginia
It is not like we didn’t have wars like the Vietnam War or the first Gulf War. We had incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis and Iranian Hostage Crisis. But it was the Cold War for the most part and attacks and conflict were elsewhere. After Pearl Harbor we vowed never to be taken by surprise again until we were in 9-11. However, it was a group of non-state actors who perpetrated that attack while we were looking elsewhere. That finally taught us that evil and attacks could come from any direction.
USS Arizona’s forward magazine exploding
I’m glad we never had another attack like Pearl Harbor. I do wish we as a country could be as united as we were back then but the world is a different and less innocent place now. In a world dominated by mass communication, whether over the airwaves or the Internet, the posters below seem almost naive. Unfortunately.
Finally, remembering Doris “Dorie” Miller, the Complementary Spouse and I visited the Doris Miller Memorial in Waco, Texas last October. It lies in a park along the Brazos River.
The first units ashore or on land have gotten most of the attention in the Battle of Normandy. They rightly deserve this attention as landing on a hostile beach or behind the beaches in the dark of night is a terrifying task. That said, this post will given attention to the follow-on units that arrived in June and July of 1944. Part of my reasoning is that they don’t get this attention and the other part is that my sister-in-law’s father who passed away in April at age 102 was a member of one of these units.
Early July saw both the 8th and 35th Infantry Divisions arrive in France. The 8th was soon in action helping to capture the cities of Brest and Rennes. As July progressed, three armored divisions, the 4th, 5th, and 6th, landed in France and were instrumental in closing the Falaise Gap. The final infantry division to participate in the Battle of Normandy was the 28th Infantry Division which arrived on July 22nd to join Operation Cobra.
Of particular interest to me is the 8th Infantry Division. Walter Driscoll, my sister-in-law’s father, was assigned to 3rd Platoon Mortar Squad, Co. A, 1st Battalion, 121st Regiment, 8th Infantry Division as a PFC. He passed away at the age of 102 on April 1st just short of his 103rd birthday. A native of Massachusetts, he was married for 58 years, raised three daughters (two of whom served as officers in the USAF Nurse Corps), had eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Walter was wounded in action in Normandy and carried the shrapnel in his hand throughout the rest of his life. That shrapnel was recovered after his cremation by the funeral director and presented to the family. He tells the story of how he was wounded in the oral history video below. The French subtitles are due to this being a project of the World War II Veterans Memories located in Normandy.
There are not many of these veterans still alive and that Walter made it to 102 was remarkable in and of itself. We should be grateful that a number of their stories have been captured either in video or audio format. Without that, the human element would be lost and our knowledge of these events would be confined to the history books.
We are now closer to the 22nd Century than we are to the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. That thought is somewhat unsettling to me. As I noted last year, by December 7, 1941, my Dad had already been a draftee in the Army for close to a year, my Mom was working in New York City for the British Lend-Lease Office, and my Uncle John allegedly would skip college the next day to enlist in the Navy.
Despite all of this, long-lost letters regarding one of the sailors killed on the USS Oklahoma were returned to a family just last week. They concerned Machinist Mate 2C Lorentz Hultgren whose body was finally DNA identified in 2015. At the time of the letter from 1944, his body could not be identified. He will now be buried with full military honors in the National Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) early in 2023.
Besides Hultgren, two other sailors were finally identified this past August.
The effort to identify sailors killed at Pearl Harbor continues to this day, 81 years after the attack.
Two more sailors, Petty Officer Second Class Claude Ralph Garcia and Petty Officer First Class Keith Warren Tipsword — each serving about the USS West Virginia — were identified this past August.
Most know that the USS Arizona was never refloated and serves as the final resting place for those killed there. The battleship USS Utah also was never refloated and its remains still lie on the floor of Pearl Harbor.
The Utah is referred to as the “forgotten ship”. A memorial to it was established in 1972. Adjacent to the USS Utah Memorial is that of the USS Oklahoma. Both are on Ford Island. As of 2022, they are now available to be visited with reservations which was an issue in the past as Ford Island remains an active military facility. The Ford Island Bus Tour can be accessed here.
The USS Oklahoma Memorial was only dedicated in 2007. The video below shows the dedication of the memorial, some of the survivors, and the memorial.
by 
