you know when I was talking to sunny
yesterday he asked me when did you
become interested in World War two and I
told him when I was 8 years old
and immediately I knew that was a
mistake because I figured if he said
that in front of a crowd like this they
would immediately think Oh bet he had a
normal childhood World War two was the
greatest conflict the world has ever
seen
it ended more than 71 years ago with a
peace surrender on the deck of the
battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay you
would think that now that we’re in the
21st century everything possible would
have been written about World War 2 and
no I guarantee you there’s still plenty
of history to write there’s still plenty
of stories to be told
here’s one I bet you haven’t heard my
stepmother was an English woman from a
Royal Navy family her stepfather
bear with me here was a lieutenant in
the Royal Navy in 1940 he told me the
story at once of how he was in the
destroyer hero in a battle in a
Norwegian Fjord now there were
explosions torpedoes shells and it was a
bad day for the fish in the fjord
apparently lieutenant Alcock didn’t have
enough to do so during the battle he
spent his time fishing these poor fish
out of the water
and I thought okay well that’s a
different story I don’t think that ended
up in the captains report of the battle
if it had it might have gone like this
may it please their Lordships in this
action my ship sank two German
destroyers and oh yes lieutenant alcohol
collected 47 fish it’s not how it went
here’s another story that I bet you
haven’t heard before that’s begging to
be completed in 1942 an American naval
task force was making its way across the
North Atlantic to join the British
it was led by Admiral Billy Wilcox the
weather was awful high seas wind and
rain one day when they were in the
middle of the North Atlantic and where
Wilcox was seen on the quarterdeck of
his flagship the battleship Washington
alone a few minutes later a sailor
called out man overboard but the weather
was so bad the man couldn’t be saved
well it turned out the man overboard was
Admiral Wilcox it also happened that in
his cabin his suitcase was packed
now people had a lot of theories but
nobody saw what happened to him I’ve
learned that in an archive somewhere
there’s a file on Admiral Wilcox that’s
closed until the year 2018 maybe then
we’ll find out what really happened to
him and that story will be completed now
there’s more to the history of world war
2 than just stories like these but
stories like these can teach us so much
a few years ago at the Pacific War
Museum in Fredericksburg I listened to
Marine corporal Hershel Williams tell
his story he was at the Battle of Iwo
Jima the one where a photographer Joe
Rosenthal captured the famous flag
raising corporal Williams was given a
flamethrower and he was ordered to take
out Japanese pillboxes and that is what
he did with the help of marine riflemen
who were assigned to protect him at one
point Japanese soldiers charged him with
their bayonets but he fought them off he
won the Medal of Honor for this but what
I remember most about corporal Williams
is that he took no credit he gave all
the credit to the marine riflemen who
protected him especially the four who
were killed doing it
from corporal Williams we learn what it
took to defeat the Japanese in World War
two and we learn about courage and
humility World War two created an entire
generation of veterans with stories that
we can learn from it’s the job of
historians to tell those stories and to
tell the history of the war not to
glorify war hopefully not to glorify
that war but to learn from it and maybe
to humanize it now there’s no time limit
on writing history but the people who
made history the people who fought the
war can’t live forever and we’re rapidly
losing the veterans of the World War two
generation to me this becomes very real
when I pick up the phone and I call up
one of the veterans I know who’s still
alive this by the way is corporal
Williams this by the way is a ship
called HMS Eagle this ship was the one a
friend of mine in Fred Davenport was in
I called him up a few days ago and hoped
that he would answer the phone
Fred had told me the story about how his
ship was hit by four u-boat torpedoes
and sank in five minutes if Fred had
been in his usual battle station in an
ammunition magazine down below he
wouldn’t have gotten out but thankfully
he did thankfully he answered the phone
when I called but Fred is 95 all of the
World War two veterans I know are in
their 90’s except for one a marine named
ron van Stockham who just turned a
hundred now these veterans are priceless
we’re lucky to have them but they’re not
going to live forever
but maybe all is not lost if we talk to
the veterans we now have we record what
they say
and if we look for things that the
veterans who are no longer with us left
behind like memoirs diaries letters
photographs those things are treasures
that historians can use to tell stories
sometimes the treasure is in the form of
a letter for instance on the battleship
Washington an officer was censoring a
letter that a sailor was writing to his
mother back home and the letter went
something like this
dear mom if you knew where we was and
what we was going to do you’d get
the officer who sent this insert this
letter said he knew exactly how Jake
felt and that Officer happened to have a
famous name it was Douglas Fairbanks Jr
sometimes the treasure can come in the
form of a memoir lieutenant Alastair
Robertson was the navigating officer of
this ship HMS abdiel his daughter
Catherine is the keeper of his private
memoir of the war in the memoir he tells
a story about how one evening he was on
the bridge of the ship talking to a
signalmen when the cinnamon suddenly
blurted out to see them pulposus over
there well all eyes looked over in that
direction but what they saw was not
porpoises they were the tracks of
torpedos heading straight for the ship
to avoid them the captain ordered hard
a-port but to lieutenant Robertson the
ship took
unconscionable amount of time to turn
well she finally did just in time
and those porpoises missed the ship by
30 feet now sometimes the treasure is
Canadian Spitfire pilot Jerry Smith left
behind a log book and a diary and those
are kept by his younger sister Wendy
in 1942 Smith flew Spitfire off the
American aircraft carrier wasp bound for
the island of Malta after he took off
his gas tank didn’t work properly
and he decided to land back on board the
aircraft carrier problem was no one had
ever landed a Spitfire on an aircraft
carrier before there was a good reason
for that because the Spitfire didn’t
have a hook to catch one of the wires
along the flight deck to stop it much of
the crew of the wasp was watching
breathlessly as this story unfolded the
first time Smith came in for a landing
he was waved off he was coming in too
high too fast he came around again this
time he’d landed on the flight deck and
he started to break nobody thought he
was going to make it
except maybe him but he did he stopped
his plane just short of the bow with six
feet to spare the crew went wild he went
down below decks remember this is a dry
Smith eventually made it to Malta he
shot down some German airplanes flying a
Spitfire off Malta but a few months
later he went missing in action chasing
a German bomber out to sea
thanks to Smith’s sister Wendy I can
tell you his story thanks to lieutenant
Robertson’s daughter Katherine
I can tell you his story thanks to the
families of veterans we can continue
telling stories from World War two and
that is where you can come in this is
where you can help if you still have a
veteran in your family talk to the
veteran see if he or she is willing to
talk maybe they’re not as reticent as
they were before and record what they
have to say if your family had a veteran
from World War two then see if they left
behind something that can help tell
their story of the war in a big way or a
small way with help from people like you
historians can continue telling the
history of the war well into the 21st
century historians are not done with
World War two and I hope you’re not
either now believe it or not there’s
more to history than World War two
there’s history all around us we’re here
today by the San Antonio River at the
Witte museum which tells the story of
San Antonio and South Texas see if your
family has something that can help tell
that story I’d like to dedicate this to
two veterans first my father up here who
was a lieutenant in the United States
Army in World War two he was wounded in
the Battle of Anzio in 1944 and believe
me he had the scars to prove it also to
a man I never met a marine named Mike
Flynn Mike Flynn was my mother’s college
sweetheart at the University of Texas
during the war he went off to war and he
was killed in the Battle of Okinawa
just three days before the end of the
war and I’ve been hearing about in most
of my life may we never forget our vet
and long may we tell their stories thank
you [Applause]