I grew up on our family’s SWVA dairy farm, surrounded by older men who’d starved through the Hoover Days of The Great Depression and whipped the Nazis. The Greatest Generation, they called ’em. I just called ’em Papaw and his buddies.
They didn’t talk much. But when they did, it landed.
There’s one story Papaw told that hit me hard, damn near had me crying as a kid. It was about one of his fellow WWII B-17 Bomber crews, limping back over the English Channel. Their plane was shot to hell. Three engines gone. Fire in the fuselage. The squadron leader seeing the situation got on the radio: “Bail out, boys. Save yourselves.”
The pilot of the doomed plane came back calm as Sunday morning: “Can’t do it, Captain. Hydraulics are toast. Tommy-Boy’s trapped in the belly turret. We ain’t leaving him. He’s not dying alone. Tell our families why.”
Then silence.
That’s brotherhood that only a few people on earth know.