It's Memorial Day, in the year after the last of the great anniversaries of the Good War.
Last year, through the prism of five decades (which sometimes clarifies, sometimes clouds) America looked back at V-J and V-E, Hiroshima and Iwo Jima, Auschwitz and Dresden.
Before that it was Normandy and Anzio, Midway and Guadalcanal, Bataan and Corregidor, all the way back to the day that did live in infamy, the day Pearl Harbor burned.
Never again will we recall those events - horrible in carnage, grand in courage, awesome in import - in quite that way. When round-number anniversaries next arrive to spur commemoration of World War II, we won't have with us so large a cohort of those who actually did the hard deeds, survived the horrors and grieved for those who did not.
Most of them are past 70 now; by the next round number, in the next millennium, many fewer will be with us. Their history, which still feels live to the touch, as close and as familiar as a grandmother's lined face or a father's oft-told tales, has begun its slide into another territory of memory, still honored but less real, taking its place next to the doughboys and Rough Riders, the Iron Brigade and the Minutemen.
We'll still watch the movies on the late show, but we won't be able to turn to the person in the easy chair and ask, ``What do you remember about that day?'' The formal history will dwarf the personal. When we speak of the ``post-war era,'' we'll have to explain to the young which war we mean.
Memorial Day is above all to honor the dead, but it's also to honor the living who knew them, shared their risk and can bear witness to the meaning of their sacrifice.
So, perhaps, on this Memorial Day whose 50-year prism looks back to the beginning of peace, it's fitting to honor also the survivors who worked so hard to make that peace fruitful.
And to note that, even after 50 years, the habit remains of looking to their generation to lead.
Some political consultant has styled Bob Dole's bid for the presidency as ``One Last Mission.'' There's hard-won truth beneath the glibness. Bob Dole gave a piece of himself to his country in that war. Though, in the next five months, we'll probably hear more about his battle wounds than either we, or the once-reserved Mr. Dole, would prefer, that does not take away from the rich meaning of his sacrifice.
