The Delaware coast, Fort Miles and cinema evoke memories of a WWII era

How often do you reflect on history? Not just random historic events but more personally - on your own family's saga put in the context of our country's history, or even world history. Do you have moments when you think about your parents, grandparents, and the stories they told about their struggles, triumphs and how they survived the world they grew up in?

Maybe such a memory was triggered when you came across an old black and white photo in a drawer, or while you were watching a movie about another era and a scene evoked a reminder of an old family story.

Several such occasions recently have harkened me back in time to the decades that were my parent's formative years: the 1930s and 1940s during World War II.

These flashbacks have occurred when I've looked out across the Atlantic Ocean along a Delaware coastline still dotted with the shafts of old lookout towers from the war. Once last year, when walking through Cape Henlopen State Park toward the memorials at Fort Miles, ghosts from the war years appeared and were suddenly embodied and engaged in animated activity as my wife and I unexpectedly happened upon the springtime WWII re-enactment. (This year's re-enactment will be held April 28).

Still other times throughout the year I was reminded of that period while watching two brilliant historically themed movies, "Dunkirk" and "The Darkest Hour,"  featuring Winston Churchill and the story of Britain, its allies and the travails they faced during WWII.

In both movies Churchill was shown in his wartime bunker in the "map room," obsessing about the war taking place in the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, literally tracing - on that flat surface map of the world - the routes between North America and the United Kingdom by which England was anticipating receiving supplies from the U.S. Or, as he wondered: would those shipments ever make it, or instead be attacked by the German submarines that were prowling the ocean and sinking transports at will. During the course of the war German U-boats would sink 3,500 merchant ships in the Atlantic.

I visited Churchill's wartime bunker, when I was in London some years ago and observed the map up close. All along that map's surface, scores of little pins were stuck in the board; and other tiny puncture holes, from previous pin placements, left dark, and random swatches indicating the longitudes and latitudes where so many ships had traversed during the long years of the war. Those pins represented the locations of hundreds of transport ships and convoys moving goods and war supplies from the U.S. and South America, across the ocean, alongside British and U.S. Navy warships and vessels protecting them.

My father was serving in the U.S. Navy during the war, out in that ocean, on a ship symbolized by one of those tiny pins - his boat's location moved about regularly on that board just as surely as it was in reality being tossed around in high seas in the Atlantic. His boat was a submarine chaser, officially called a Patrol Craft. Along with thousands of others, he fought in what was known as the "Battle of the Atlantic" during WWII. His boat and others patrolled up and down the east coast - certainly off the Delaware shore - searching for enemy submarines and, on other missions, escorted convoys across the ocean.

Our family had other connections to that sea battle waged off the east coast. Two of my mother's sisters became young widows when their husbands in the merchant marines were killed as their ships were torpedoed and sunk by German submarines.

To Millennials and Gen X, that period in the lives of their grandparents and great-grandparents, great-aunts and -uncles, is pretty much ancient history. But let me put this in the context of modern history: every generation, for better or worse, is shaped by defining historical events. For Millennials it was the 911 terrorist attacks on the U.S., and the advent of the internet and mass technology. For their grandparents, the generation that came to be known as the "Greatest Generation," it was the Great Depression and World War II and its many dramatic events, including the country being attacked at Pearl Harbor, and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan.

For Baby Boomers historic touchstones for their generation included the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, Woodstock, Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation. But what also shaped the Baby Boomers' view of the world, I've observed over the years, were the stories we heard from our parents about the war years.

What they didn’t tell us themselves we learned about in the movies or from aunts and uncles or our friend’s parents.  Oftentimes, I think, we even measured ourselves, and our lives, against their coming-of-age stories during such a dramatic and intense time in history. For many of us our fathers were our heroes, and our mothers the stalwarts in the family, both epitomizing a “can do, must do” attitude.

Another big part of our family’s wartime chronicles was the story of how my mother and father met during the war. It was a family story that we all loved, because it had the added virtue of being romantic and true.

 My father was 17 when he enlisted in the Navy. After he shipped out his sister Charlotte asked her swimming teammate and best friend Barbara, if she would write to a lonely sailor - her brother. That pen pal endeavor blossomed into romance and love letters, and after the war they married and that woman became our mother.

However, like so many of the Baby Boomers and Millennials I'm guilty of having waited too long to record much of my family's history. It wasn't until after my father died that my sisters and I located his military discharge papers through the VA, and went through his drawers of old photos that we started to piece together more about his service, and in doing so began a years-long history lesson.
Like many of his contemporaries he never talked much about his service, but it was obvious in conversations sparked by others, or when he was watching a war documentary or movie, that he was proud of having served and that it had shaped his patriotism and world view. So when he died - three years ago this week - we had a color guard from the Navy and a bugler play taps at his funeral.

My father's Navy ship
Living on the Delaware coast, looking out over the ocean and fishing out among the old shipwrecks, I've had a constant curiosity about my father's ship, and where it was deployed during the Battle of the Atlantic. Having found a photo of the boat was a good start, but I soon encountered other forces at play that would inspire my search further. Just as I set out on my quest to learn more about the ship I had a surprise synchronicity lead me to an unexpected discovery. While browsing in an antique store in downtown Lewes, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted - hanging up on a crowded back wall - an old oil painting of my father's WWII ship - the patrol craft. It was a beautiful rendition of the ship on the high seas. I eagerly sought out and talked to the proprietor, who happened to be the mayor of Lewes, and he told me he found the painting in a local estate. The painting had been commissioned years ago by a sailor who had served on that ship, ultimately moved to and lived in Lewes, but had recently died.

I bought the painting and as an inspiration hung it in our house above the black and white war year photos of my parents - a reminder and tribute to a family war history I was continuing to piece together.

Finding that painting spurred even more curiosity, and inspired me to learn what I could about the submarine chasers - specifically the Patrol Craft class of ship. Searching the internet I located a definitive book, "Patrol Craft of WWII: A History of the Ships and Their Crews." So utilitarian were the boats that upon christening they were sent to sea without being formally named - they were simply commissioned with numbers on the bow. My father's ship was PC 1192. There were more than 300 of the boats commissioned during the war and 50,000 sailors served on them.

None of the ships survive today, but I discovered the "Patrol Craft Sailors Association" and a collection housing the history of the men and the ships in a museum in Bay City, Mich., founded in the name of sailors who served on the PC ships in WWII and later, in the Korean War. Among the smaller, but more meaningful discoveries that my search yielded was learning that the founders of the PC Sailors Association came up with as seaworthy and timeless a motto as any to honor their memory. It reads: "Patrol Craft Sailors, Too Good to Be Forgotten." That moniker just as easily holds for that entire generation.

The actor Tom Hanks has expressed that sentiment often. For decades Hanks had been immersed in WWII history for roles he's played and productions he's overseen in several movies and film series and this year he will produce and act in another WWII drama, about the life of sailor on a destroyer in the Battle of the Atlantic.

While most of his WWII movies have been stories of soldiers and land battles, this time he has written and will star in a movie "Greyhound," about a Naval officer who sees his first wartime action when he's given command of the ship, and tasked with escorting a military convoy under attack from German U-boats.

Through cinema and memorials Hanks continues to keep the memory of that era alive and has seized every opportunity to praise the Greatest Generation for their sacrifice and valor. In his comments at the dedication of the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the WWII Museum in New Orleans, he's reflected on what that generation endured. "Though the stories are personal, they're about individuals and what they went through for three to five years - with no idea of what the outcome would be," he noted.

"It's more than just remembering those who lost their lives in the war," Hanks went on to say, "but we should remember all Americans who were alive, conscientious, and chose to serve as best they could in the years from 1941 to 1945."

Hanks is particularly taken with one virtue that stands out about that era. He observes that there was a prevailing and collective "commonality of purpose ...the sense that we're all in this together. ... and we celebrate not simply nostalgia of it, but the human endeavor."

Reading those words inspires this final reflection on my family's wartime history. Through tracing that story I've come to better understand and appreciate that my father and his service in and of itself was not exceptional or extraordinary. But I'm reminded again how his generation certainly was  for their sacrifices, their patriotism, their perseverance, and their example.

The Fort Miles re-enactment next week and the movies that will continue to pay homage to that era are likely to conjure up many a flashback for vets and their families and for those whose parents and grandparents lived during WWII - a generation whose numbers are rapidly diminishing.

These occasions should happily give us pause to remember the Greatest Generation and embrace our individual family stories and ghosts that reunite us with the memories of those that lived during those difficult and defining times - for collectively they are the chronicles that tell an inspiring story in our nation's history when millions rose to the occasion. Truly those men and women and their stories are too good to be forgotten.