This is not your granddaddy’s war
Though she was a homemaker, the late, great Rose Brady of Connellsville was no homebody. “Social distancing” was not her thing.
Not when the mother of seven joined the nurse volunteer program at what in those days was Connellsville State Hospital. Not when she became a leader in Red Cross blood drives.
And certainly not when she founded and directed the Connellsville Canteen, a community-wide undertaking to greet every passenger and troop train that passed through town during much of World War II. The Canteen served up coffee, sandwiches, and warm greetings to America’s fighting men and women as they criss-crossed the country enroute to God knows where.
Rose Brady and her hundreds of women volunteers were doing their part to win the war – the gigantic worldwide conflagration that convulsed, and took, millions of lives in the middle of the 20th century.
There’s been a lot of talk comparing those years with our struggles to tame the coronavirus. Columnist Eugene Robinson put it this way:
“I think of the stories my parents, grandparents and in-laws told me about living through World War II, and I believe that’s the best historical reference point. They talked about rationing, blackouts, mobilizations — disruptions that affected every community and every household, and that gave every individual a role to play. We have done this before, and now we must do it again….”
Even Donald Trump has gotten into the act, referring to himself as a wartime president, presumably like Franklin Roosevelt.
Excuse me, but there are some major differences between World War II and today. One not insignificant difference is this: World War II called on every citizen to be ACTIVELY engaged. For most of us today, the emphasis is on PASSIVE engagement.
Staying home is not exactly doing what Rose Brady and millions of others did in the early 1940s. The U.S military drafted, recruited and trained 16 million men. The army, navy, and the Marines then flung these 16 million individuals to the far corners of the globe, from the Aleutian Islands to North Africa, Italy, western Europe and the Far East – to China and India and to the Southwest Pacific.
As for women, while they were not enrolled in the ranks as combatants, they did serve, most especially on the home front.
Millions of women joined assembly lines across the country. It’s fair to say that thousands upon thousands of American women uprooted themselves to take jobs many miles far from where they started the war.
Others, like Brady and her intrepid and entetprising Canteen volunteers, stayed home while making invaluable contributions to the war effort.
World War II unleashed a tidal wave of activity, at home and abroad, that broadened the American horizon both physically and psychologically.
The country brimmed with confidence during the war. In the middle of the conflict, C.L. Sulzberger observed that the American people were daily demonstrating a “tremendous exuberance” of the spirit which “showed up in pride over the achievements of its soldiers, confidence in its ability to surmount unexpected problems, eagerness to tackle unfamiliar enterprises, and an absolute lack of inhibition.”
Compare that to where we are today: mostly hunkered down at home waiting for the all clear. Instead of tuned in to Edward R. Morrow reporting from embattled London, we’re watching Netflix.
The question is: what will the nation look like once the pathogen has run its course? Will success in combating the contagion propel us on to greater heights? Will we emerge with “an absolute lack of inhibition” or with souls cramped and crumbled by the onslaught of the “silent enemy” President Trump references?
One can argue the greatest onus will be on us as individuals to answer that question. But leadership must and will play a role. In a “fireside chat” soon after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt knocked down rumors that “11,000 or 12,000” died in the surprise attack of Dec. 7 , 1941. (Including civilians, some 2,400 Americans were killed.)
He also took the trouble to say it wasn’t true that the secret dead of Pearl Harbor were even then being transported by ship to New York harbor, where they would be unloaded for clandestine burial “in a common grave.”
Leadership today must been equally vigilant in turning aside rumor- and fear-mongering. Our mental and political health depends on it.
And President Trump must play a steadier hand. Slow off the mark, he’s since been all over the place: one minute he’s saying the country will be largely back to normal by Easter; the next he’s saying he’ll be guided by the experts, who have intimated that “social distancing” and “sheltering in place” will have to go on longer than the second week of April.
It’s not been easy, the last few days and weeks. If this is war, it’s a kind we’ve never seen before. As Eugene Robinson observed, “The heroism and sacrifice we need in this war look very different from the requirements of past conflicts.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.