A Salute to the Titans

Ah, Veterans Day. A solemn pause in the raging chaos of life—a time to salute the Titans who stared down hell and punched back. But let’s be clear: this isn’t some tepid reflection on patriotic clichés. No, today we ride through the dust clouds of history to meet the warriors of the Greatest Generation—those grizzled, gutsy badasses who didn’t just survive the 20th century’s deadliest trial by fire but defined what it means to be American.

I’m damn lucky (and grateful) to be alive (for a lot of reasons). Probably the main miracle is that I was born in the first place. My paternal grandfather, at the ripe old age of 19, was a waist gunner on a B-17 during the Second World War. In 1943, a B-17 crewmember had only a 21% chance of completing a 25-mission tour. My grandfather, Guy McCardle, the first (I’m the third iteration), survived 26. He always said that the last one didn’t count, though, because it was a “milk run,” and the enemy didn’t shoot FLAK at the aircraft.

Then there was the fact that his aircraft was so badly damaged on his first mission that he had to bail out over occupied France and make his way back across the English Channel. Half of the 19-year-olds I know these days would have trouble making it to the next town in a car. For his actions in the war my grandfather, Pop as the grandkids call him, was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal.

I speak of him in the present tense cause he is still with us at age 102, living with my 100-year-old grandmother at their long-time home in Pennsylvania. That’s him in the photo below, fifth from the left. I’m told that during that particular mission, they had to land last because the flaps would not deploy, and they were not sure if the tires were flat or not.

 

Damaged B17
Guy McCardle I, fifth from left, checking out the damage to the crew’s B-17 after a successful landing without the benefit of flaps to slow them down.

Ghosts of Normandy and Bastogne

My unlikely existence is not unique at all. Think of those poor bastards who lived through Normandy and Bastogne.

Picture it: June 6, 1944. The gates of hell open, and young men—boys, really—launch themselves into the teeth of death at Normandy. The air reeks of salt, blood, and diesel. Machine guns chatter like rabid hyenas. Yet, they keep going. Some call it courage; some say it was madness. But in that madness lies a strange, beautiful clarity. They didn’t think of medals or parades. No, their mission was raw and primal: kill or be killed, liberate or die trying. Any life they lived after that day was lived in the bonus column. So many met their ends as sandy corpses on a foreign shore.