The boys are back

I mentioned yesterday that the generation of World War I veterans has died off, and the ones from the Second World War are also fading away. But they’re going with style. And here are two stories about that.

Three of the last surviving airmen of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942 held their last reunion yesterday at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The fourth was not well enough to join them. They’re all in their 90s.

At a time when Americans were still stunned by the attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese advances throughout the Pacific, James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle led 80 men flying B-25 bombers on a one-way raid into the heart of the Empire to essentially make the point that the sleeping tiger was indeed awake and that there would be consequences. Because there were no aircraft that could fly round trip, they dropped their bombs on Tokyo and then flew on to land in China. Many did not make it.

It was a bold, possibly suicidal mission, but it shocked the Japanese and raised American morale at a time when both outcomes were magnified in the extreme.

Yesterday Richard Cole, 98, Edward Saylor, 93 and David Thatcher, 93, met and drank a toast with 107-year-old cognac from a bottle that was at one time Doolittle’s. Cole proposed the toast.

“…To those we lost on the mission and those who have passed away since. Thank you very much, and may they rest in peace.”

My second story is also about a vet from WWII—an air ground crewman for the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command named Harold Jellicoe Percival. He died last month in a Lancashire retirement home, aged 99. Percival was part of another seminal bombing operation, the Dambusters raid of 1943 over the Ruhr.

Because he never married and had no direct family, the managers were afraid that his funeral would have no one to mourn him. A small story in the local paper went viral on social networks as the call went out for service members to ensure that Percival did not go alone into that good night. It came multiple times into my Twitter feed at the weekend.

And it turns out that hundreds answered the call—more than 400, as a matter of fact. The 300 who couldn’t get into the funeral home stood outside in the rain and then followed Percival on his last journey.

Like I said—that generation is fading. In their 90s now; and that’s the young ones. But they’re not forgotten, thank God.