It's the cup of brandy that no one wants to drink.
On Tuesday, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, the surviving Doolittle Raiders will gather publicly for the last time.
They once were among the
most universally admired and revered men in the United States. There
were 80 of the Raiders in April 1942, when they carried out one of the
most courageous and heart-stirring military operations in this nation's
history. The mere mention of their unit's name, in those years, would
bring tears to the eyes of grateful Americans.
Now only four survive.
After Japan's sneak
attack on Pearl Harbor, with the United States reeling and wounded,
something dramatic was needed to turn the war effort around.
Even though there were no
friendly airfields close enough to Japan for the United States to
launch a retaliation, a daring plan was devised. Sixteen B-25s were
modified so that they could take off from the deck of an aircraft
carrier. This had never before been tried -- sending such big, heavy
bombers from a carrier.
The 16 five-man crews,
under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle, who himself flew the lead
plane off the USS Hornet, knew that they would not be able to return to
the carrier. They would have to hit Japan and then hope to make it to
China for a safe landing.
But on the day of the
raid, the Japanese military caught wind of the plan. The Raiders were
told that they would have to take off from much farther out in the
Pacific Ocean than they had counted on. They were told that because of
this they would not have enough fuel to make it to safety.
And those men went anyway.
They bombed Tokyo, and
then flew as far as they could. Four planes crash-landed; 11 more crews
bailed out, and three of the Raiders died. Eight more were captured;
three were executed. Another died of starvation in a Japanese prison
camp. One crew made it to Russia.
The Doolittle Raid sent a message from the United States to its enemies, and to the rest of the world:
We will fight.
And, no matter what it takes, we will win.
Of the 80 Raiders, 62
survived the war. They were celebrated as national heroes, models of
bravery. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced a motion picture based on the
raid; "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," starring Spencer Tracy and Van
Johnson, was a patriotic and emotional box-office hit, and the phrase
became part of the national lexicon. In the movie-theater previews for
the film, MGM proclaimed that it was presenting the story "with supreme
pride."
Beginning in 1946, the
surviving Raiders have held a reunion each April, to commemorate the
mission. The reunion is in a different city each year. In 1959, the city
of Tucson, Arizona, as a gesture of respect and gratitude, presented
the Doolittle Raiders with a set of 80 silver goblets. Each goblet was
engraved with the name of a Raider.
Every year, a wooden
display case bearing all 80 goblets is transported to the reunion city.
Each time a Raider passes away, his goblet is turned upside down in the
case at the next reunion, as his old friends bear solemn witness.
Also in the wooden case
is a bottle of 1896 Hennessy Very Special cognac. The year is not
happenstance: 1896 was when Jimmy Doolittle was born.
There has always been a
plan: When there are only two surviving Raiders, they would open the
bottle, at last drink from it, and toast their comrades who preceded
them in death.
As 2013 began, there were five living Raiders; then, in February, Tom Griffin passed away at age 96.
The name may be familiar to those of you who regularly read this column; in 2011, I wrote about the role Mr. Griffin played at his son's wedding.
What a man he was. After
bailing out of his plane over a mountainous Chinese forest after the
Tokyo raid, he became ill with malaria, and almost died. When he
recovered, he was sent to Europe to fly more combat missions. He was
shot down, captured, and spent 22 months in a German prisoner of war
camp.
The selflessness of
these men, the sheer guts ... there was a passage in the Cincinnati
Enquirer obituary for Mr. Griffin that, on the surface, had nothing to
do with the war, but that emblematizes the depth of his sense of duty
and devotion:
"When his wife became
ill and needed to go into a nursing home, he visited her every day. He
walked from his house to the nursing home, fed his wife and at the end
of the day brought home her clothes. At night, he washed and ironed her
clothes. Then he walked them up to her room the next morning. He did
that for three years until her death in 2005."
So now, out of the
original 80, only four Raiders remain: Dick Cole (Doolittle's co-pilot
on the Tokyo raid), Robert Hite, Edward Saylor and David Thatcher. All
are in their 90s. They have decided that there are too few of them for
the public reunions to continue.
The events in Fort
Walton Beach this week will mark the end. It has come full circle;
Florida's nearby Eglin Field was where the Raiders trained in secrecy
for the Tokyo mission.
The town is planning to
do all it can to honor the men: a six-day celebration of their valor,
including luncheons, a dinner and a parade.
Do the men ever wonder
if those of us for whom they helped save the country have tended to it
in a way that is worthy of their sacrifice? They don't talk about that,
at least not around other people. But if you find yourself near Fort
Walton Beach this week, and if you should encounter any of the Raiders,
you might want to offer them a word of thanks. I can tell you from
firsthand observation that they appreciate hearing that they are
remembered.
The men have decided
that after this final public reunion they will wait until a later date
-- some time this year -- to get together once more, informally and in
absolute privacy. That is when they will open the bottle of brandy. The
years are flowing by too swiftly now; they are not going to wait until
there are only two of them.
They will fill the four remaining upturned goblets.
And raise them in a toast to those who are gone.
Give us the day, the hour, and the minute so that we may raise our cups in salute and thanks to you,great men of the greatest generation.
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