COLUMN: A day to remember heroes

From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '98 From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '98Tomorrow is Veteran's Day. Unless you wander by the flagpole next to Franklin Field and see the ROTC ceremony in the morning, however, it will probably pass you by without much of a thought. For many of us, the very idea of arming ourselves to do battle is a foreign one, and few of us can imagine fighting in live combat. Yet for over 200 years, Americans have done just that, risking their very lives to ensure the welfare of fellow Americans who weren't even born yet. Before the outbreak of World War II, my grandfather was a young photographer working for a man named Olan Mills in his Tennessee portrait studio. Today, Olan Mills is the largest studio conglomerate in the nation, but back then it was a small operation comprised of only my grandfather and a few other photographers. His job entailed taking portraits of people, developing film and packaging the photographs. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a lot changed in my grandfather's life. After he was drafted, the Army sent him to Signal Corps Headquarters in New York, where he was retrained as a both an infantryman and a combat photographer. In time, the Army decided that my grandfather could best use his existing skills in the Pacific Theater, where his job would be to trail Douglas MacArthur and the U.S. Army in their war against the Japanese Empire. That he did, landing in Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines en route to Japan, taking pictures all along the way. For four years he island-hopped in Asia, carrying a .45 handgun in one hand and a Leica camera in the other. As a sergeant, he had an entire platoon of men under his command and was responsible for setting up darkrooms and photo laboratories in some of the worst jungles on Earth. When Robert Capa landed at Omaha Beach, which director Steven Spielberg recently depicted in the film Saving Private Ryan, the fighting was so intense that the veteran war corespondent was able to squeeze off only a single roll of film. Personally, I can't imagine taking the time to record the horror surrounding me on a battlefield, but that's exactly what men like my grandfather did. Landing at beaches and on islands he didn't even know the names of, my grandfather rode in with the troops on the miserable landing craft and then captured the fighting on film once he hit the sand. When I came back from Army paratrooper training late last spring, my grandmother asked if I had taken any pictures during my nearly month-long stay. I told her I didn't take any. "I was too busy trying to stay alive and healthy every day," I explained. I'm glad my grandfather wasn't around when I said that because he would have pointed out that there was no excuse for not taking pictures. My grandfather died not too long ago, but what he left behind is one of the most stunning visual accounts I have ever seen of the Second World War. Encased in a thick black binder and marked with his own commentary, many of the photographs he took in the Pacific have sat in a closet at my grandmother's house for the better part of the past 50 years. Of course, most of the combat photos he took during the war were confiscated by the War Department after he developed them, but he still managed to keep some amazing images in a folder that he took home with him. One photograph shows the bombed-out rubble of Tokyo. Another shows a Japanese general, Togo, lying bleeding on a stretcher moments after a suicide attempt. Yet another shows the remains of what used to be a city in Leyte, Philippines. Not all of the photographs are so horrifying, though. One captures his platoon hoisting glasses of beer on Christmas Eve, 1943. Another shows my grandfather with New Guinea natives who had never before seen a man with his light skin color. At heart, my grandfather was a portrait artist, yet so many of his best pictures aren't of landscapes or military bases, but of American soldiers. These pictures are my favorites, because they don't show the war in its surroundings, but rather in the eyes of the men who fought the battles. These are the men we should remember tomorrow, the men who walked before us on our behalf over 50 years ago. As historian Stephen Ambrose wrote, "They were the sons of democracy, and they saved democracy. We owe them a debt we can never repay." Tomorrow, it's our duty as citizens to remember every man and woman who stepped forth for our country in time of conflict. This is their day, and to neither remember nor honor them would be an unconscionable disgrace.