Monday, August 8th 2011, 4:00 AM
World War II veterans Bene Lupica (left) and Ed Fusco. (Photo by Mike Lupica)
They sat at the end of the long table at the restaurant Piccolo Nido in the North End of Boston, both of them out of the 15th Air Force, one of them a bombardier during World War II and one of them a navigator, talking now about the days when they were young and fighting for their country.
My dad, Bene Lupica, the bombardier, is 87 now. Ed Fusco, the father of one of my wife's best friends, the navigator, is 88. This felt like a reunion even though they were meeting for the first time, to talk about the better and safer and stronger world they thought they were making for everyone in 1944 and 1945.
The conversation would last through dinner and lunch the next day, all the way until they went to Fenway Park for Saturday's Yankees-Red Sox game.
"You take a boat over or a plane?" my dad said.
"Boat," Ed Fusco said.
My dad smiled.
"We took what looked like a brand-new plane," my dad said. "We thought it was going to be ours when we got over there."
"Were you scared?" Ed Fusco said.
My dad smiled again and said, "We were too busy doing our jobs to be scared."
And Ed Fusco said, "It's only when you get to be our age that you really think about what could have happened to you."
This was America now, the best one, in the stories they told and shared. This wasn't the America of these lightweight bickering politicians in Washington, or a President who looks more and more like a dressing-room fighter.
This wasn't the America that lost more good young men in Afghanistan over the weekend, shot out of the sky, some of them Navy SEALs from Team Six, the same team that brought down Osama Bin Laden. Now they're dead in a country we should have left long ago - dead for what? Fighting for somebody else's country?
Those tough, brave Navy SEALs were still alive when my dad and Ed Fusco talked about their war on Friday night, talked about the time when they were the ones up in the sky.
"We used to be better at things in this country," Ed Fusco said at one point. He barked out a laugh. "Now we can't even make any money."
Then the two of them, down there at their end of the table, out of '44 and '45 and their fear and their courage and their certainty about their war, were talking about where they sat in their B-24s, flying in the night sky over Italy and Austria and Yugoslavia and Germany. Ed Fusco flew 16 missions out of Italy and got shot down over Yugoslavia on his 17th and ended up serving 10 months in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
When he got out, you'd better believe he went straight to Paris. When he got there and phoned his mother, she told him, "You better call your father, he's looking for you."
Ed Fusco survived the missions he flew, and he survived prison camp. My father survived the 31 missions he flew for the 783rd Bombardment Squadron. They both came home and raised families and lived wonderful American lives. They didn't brag about what they'd done in the war, didn't imagine themselves as having done something remarkable. My dad and Ed Fusco and all like them were never the type.
They have never thought of themselves as the "greatest generation." This was just their generation, doing what it thought it was supposed to do, trying to make a better world for their children. Only now, they wonder what happened to that world, worry about the one being presented to their grandchildren. Worry about their own country most of all.
And maybe, just maybe, watching the way Congress and this President have embarrassed themselves in front of us and the rest of the world over these last months, watching the steady loss of life in wars we cannot afford or win, they wonder just what happened to the country they were fighting for nearly 70 years ago when they were young.
"It's still a great country," my dad said. "I never doubt that. We just need better people running it."
"The sooner the better," Ed Fusco said, and now the two of them laughed like the flyboys they used to be.
They were in B-24s in the terrifying European night when they were as young as my youngest son, who sat at the table with them and listened to the stories they told. They were the 15th Air Force, and by God, they are still here.
On Saturday, they walked through Boston's Public Garden, the rest of us making them pose for pictures near the swan boats.
And when it was time for the ballgame, it was just the two of them, ahead of the rest of us. Ed Fusco grabbed my dad's arm. Or maybe my dad grabbed his. Side by side they walked slowly into the American morning, somehow still believing, as they always had, in better days to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment