Melancholy facts.

Journalists of today like to call what they write "the rough draft of history" but this is only true if you assume that history will share the interests and values of the journalists. Admittedly, there are few signs as yet that it will not. There is no reason that I know of to suppose that subsequent generations of the English-speaking American elites will be any less devoted to pop-cultural trivia and stories of the heroes of our various "liberations" from traditional restraints than today's are. Yet it does seem just possible that they might also recover an interest in more traditional kinds of heroes, in which case they may find the rough draft our times have bequeathed them a little bit inadequate, particularly when it comes to military men.

This is to some extent a worldwide problem. In March Peter Oborne, political columnist of the London Daily Express, wrote an article for The Spectator titled "Of Hacks and Heroes" in which he argued that the attention given by the British media to the deaths of two prominent journalists, Auberon Waugh and John Diamond, was a sign of the increasing self-obsession of the British press and media culture. At roughly the same time that these two hacks bit the dust, a number of men with what once were thought to be rather impressive accomplishments to their credit, including "Johnnie" Johnson, Britain's top air ace of the Second World War, also died and were accorded little more than respectful obituaries.

 
   To ask whether some fundamental sense of proportion has been hopelessly 
   lost in all this is not to question the quality of Waugh and Diamond as 
   journalists [wrote Mr. Oborne], or their decency and goodness as human 
   beings .... But the fact that the death of a fine journalist is now deemed 
   to merit coverage on a far grander scale than the death of a war hero, a 
   great industrialist and a great entrepreneur is a striking contemporary 
   phenomenon. 

He goes on to compare his country's most prominent journalistic practitioners to the aristocrats of yesteryear. "The great dynasties of Dimbleby, Waugh, Lawson, and so forth come close to commanding the same kind of reverence as the ducal families in Walpole's London"--except that they bring with their social prestige only "media-class values--showy rather than deep, transient not long-term, clever not wise, sentimental and not compassionate" which "are dangerous to the health and longevity of any nation"

All this may be true enough for Britain, but if so it comes far short of stating the seriousness of the American case. For all the meretriciousness and shallowness of the British media, it has a long way still to go before it catches up with ours in sheer self-obsession. "Johnnie" Johnson was at least accorded full and detailed obituaries in all the major newspapers of Britain, as are other veterans of the Second World War almost every day. This is not true of America's "newspaper of record" The New York Times. The melancholy fact of actuarial reality means that now and probably for the next ten years not a day will go by when hundreds of veterans of the Second World War won't die, ten or a dozen of whom must have a claim to be genuine heroes. Most of the lives of the others would yield up at least one or two thrilling stories, could anyone be bothered to find them out, and in Britain, at least, some of them are going onto the record. Here follows a partial list of the obituaries of veterans of that war, most over 1000 words long, that appeared during the month of April in the Times or The Daily Telegraph, often in both.

 
   N. G. L. HAMMOND, a Greek scholar who put his expertise in the classics to 
   use with the Allied Military Mission to Greece. There he became an expert 
   in explosives, was promoted to lieutenant-colonel, was twice mentioned in 
   dispatches, and was awarded the DSO for his work organizing guerrilla 
   operations behind enemy lines. After the war he wrote an account of his 
   experiences titled Venture into Greece. He went on to become headmaster of 
   Clifton College and professor of Greek at the University of Bristol, and to 
   edit the second edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. 
 
   LT. GENERAL SIR DEREK LANG who as a member of the 4th Battalion of Cameron 
   Highlanders of the 51st (Highland) Division covering the retreat and 
   evacuation of the main British force at Dunkirk, fought heroically at St 
   Valery-en-Caux in June 1940. When he was eventually taken prisoner by the 
   advancing Germans, he swiftly escaped and made his way across France to 
   Marseilles, where he stowed away on a ship bound for Beirut and from there 
   made his way to re-join the British army in Palestine. For this exploit he 
   was awarded the Military Cross, and he later published a book, Return to St 
   Vale: An Escape through Wartime France. After the Normandy invasion he had 
   the satisfaction of leading the 5th Battalion of Camerons in the recapture 
   of St Valery. 
 
   SQUADRON LEADER, JOHN WRIGHT who, while flying Liberator bombers for the 
   RAF Coastal Command, became the first British pilot to attack a German 
   U-boat, U-456, with the revolutionary new acoustic torpedo in 1943. The 
   submarine was damaged and finally sunk the next day by a Royal Canadian Air 
   Force Sunderland bomber. Wright was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross 
   for his exploit. He later won a bar for his DFC for sinking another u-boat. 
   After the war, as a pilot for British South African Airways, his cool 
   landing of an airliner with only one landing gear at Lima, Peru won him a 
   citation from the city of Lima, as a "magnifico piloto." 
 
   ADMIRAL SIR CHARLES MADDEN, son of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Madden, 
   who joined the Royal Navy at the age of thirteen in 1920 and himself rose 
   to become Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet in the 1960s. During the war 
   he served as second in command of the battleship Warspite and took part in 
   the baffles of Calabria and Matapan and the bombardment of Tripoli, among 
   other actions. During the evacuation of Crete the Warspite was bombed 
   twice, and Madden led the fire and rescue parties. In 1944 he was given 
   command of the escort carrier Emperor, with its complement of twenty-four 
   Hellcat fighters, which served in the Far East. He was mentioned in 
   dispatches for his service on both ships. 
 
   LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR DELAVAL COTTER, BT, who, as an officer of the 
   13th/18th Royal Hussars, led one of the first tank squadrons to come ashore 
   on D-day. Two months later he won a DSO for his service in the baffle for 
   Mont Pincon, south of Aunaysur-Odon, clearing the village of La Variniere 
   of enemy troops and holding it for twenty-four hours against fierce 
   counterattacks until he could be reinforced. After the war he served in 
   Malaya and retired from the army in 1959. 
 
   MAJOR GENERAL DAVID LLOYD OWEN, who as commander from 1943 to 1945 of the 
   Long Range Desert Group, a reconnaissance unit composed largely of men who 
   had prewar experience in exploring the desert, won the MC for his part in 
   the joint raid on Tobruk by the LRDG and the SAS in September 1942. Later 
   he won the DSO for his leadership of clandestine forces in Albania, in 
   spite of a severe spinal injury sustained in a fall when parachuting into 
   that country. After the war he wrote memoirs entitled The Desert My 
   Dwelling Place (1957) and Providence Their Guide (1980). 
 
   AIR VICE-MARSHAL PATRICK O'CONNOR who as station medical officer at Sullom 
   Voe, the Coastal Command's base in the Shetland Islands, saved the life of 
   John Cruickshank, a pilot whose action in returning his Catalina flying 
   boat back to base while severely ...