Andrew (Television Executive)
Looking at the past from the present day can make it seem unimaginably distant.
(That is to say, reading history books can make the past seem sterile and settled.)
But looking at the past from the past makes it feel close and present and vibrant.
(which is to say, reading letters, newspapers, and other historic documents written at a time when that past was not settled gives it the feeling that it is still alive.)
Kit Rhett Aultman
@ajroach42 one of the most important things I learned about history came from watching my uncle, who was in the throes of a Greatest Generation phase, talk to my grandfather, a WWII veteran.
Uncle: "Daddy, I have no idea how y'all pulled it together and held on to win that war."
Grandfather: "At the time, we weren't at all sure we would."
That was really my first confrontation with the fact that the war was, in fact, daily fear that the Axis might win.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@ajroach42 Grandaddy trained bombardiers, so I think he had it easier than a ball gunner, but one thing I think gets left out of the lens of large scale intergenerational history is the fact that both generations before the Baby Boomers were severely traumatized in a widespread way. And it really directly trickles down into the Boomers; entire generations under conscription and being sent to Korea and Vietnam; their parents racked by a very public war and they themselves lined up to be next.
Andrew (Television Executive)
@roadriverrail My great uncle was a ball gunner.
He wouldn't talk about it, and he was essentially deaf as a result of it.
Occasionally, though, towards the end of his life, he'd talk about how scared he had been, how scared and young they had all been.
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