in so many ways, where we are where because of the remarkable individuals who came before us. many of whom don't think they're remarkable at all of here on the deck of the intrepid sea air and space museum, an aircraft carrier that saw action during world war ii, you can see the weapons of war. but what you don't see are the thousands of people, the millions of people who answer

the call. who left small towns and farms and big cities, east and west, north and south, to go thousands of miles away to fight the greatest war in the history of mankind and who prevailed. and then they came home and gave us the lives that we have today. i call them the greatest generation. and i am proud to say that it is a label that endures. so watch with me now a special rebroadcast of the greatest generation. >> you didn't ask somebody, are you in the military? there were 15 million of us in the meteorologist and the answer was, wasn't everybody? >> some of my earliest memories were men in uniform. i saw soldiers pass through the

army base on the way to war. i was 4 years old, so to me the soldiers looked grown up. i realized later most were not men, not yet. >> they were kids. think of them as a bunch of kids on a high school football game. that's how they went. it was a lot of fun for a lot of them. it was an escape from their families, an escape from church, from school masters, and they relished it. until they were killed or wounded. so that helps explain a lot. it helps answer the question, why did they do it? they did it because they were kids. >> women played a crucial role in winning world war ii but it was the men who saw the worst of it. they were ones who killed and saw men who killed.

these are the scenes that play out in their mind to this day. >> i can remember things that happened on iwo jima just like it was yesterday. but i can't remember a lot that happened yesterday. >> now they're in their physical and 80s, scattered among us. they're part of land scape of our lives. familiar and ordinary in their daily routines. but it is what they went through when they were young that we don't see. they have kept that to themselves, to their memory of another time of great uncertainty, danger and sacrifice. fewer than 7 million world war ii veterans are still with us. we're losing them at the rate of 1,000 per day. and now their children turning 50 beginning to understand how they, too, were shamed by dad's war. >> you could assemble at random

any dozen baby boomer gri eer k around the country and there would be a remarkable experience with their father. and it really does reinforce for me this notion that there is a style to a generation. >> they are a group as clearly defined as any we have ever had. >> you guys look beautiful. everybody look right in the camera here. >> historians call them gi generation. gi. government issued. citizens made into soldiers. they are also individuals and i have been meeting a lot of them. perhaps they're like your father, grandfather and uncle who was in the war. perhaps like me, you've wondered what made them the way they are. tonight, some of them tell us their stories. the stories we haven't heard about events and choices that make they will not nearly an

older generation. to me they are the greatest generation. ♪ [dramatic ♪ ic begins] ready! charge! charge! (in chinese) charge! let your reign begin. evony, the mobile game. download now.

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to begin to understand the world war ii generation, i took a trip home. when i was growing up in south dakota, my idea of a hero could be summed up in two words.

joe foss. he was the stuff of a young boy's dreams. from a difficult beginning on the prairie, he soared to the greatest heights. as a world war ii fighter pilot ace and recipient of the congressional medal of honor, he lives in arizona now. but he met me in south dakota and took me to the hard scrabble farm where he was born. >> we lived in that one room. no heat in the rest of the house. and there was a table and four chairs. and then if we had guests, we had those little nail kegs we would sit on and the guests would get chairs. >> was it around here that you would see an airplane? >> oh, yeah. you see they will all the time. they came from that direction. the pilot would wave across at you. i thought, gosh, would i like the get in that thing. >> joe was a natural in the skies. even in the terror and confusion of air to air combat with faster japanese planes trying to shoot him down. he was shot down once but he was

rescued. returned to the fight. and went on to match the world war i ace eddie. 26 planes shot down. in the squadron that foss led, half were boys, right off the farm just like joe. they knew how to hunt and they knew never to give up. >> duke davis, the commander, he was wounded in the morning and flew afternoon. he got hit in the side of the head. the shell hit his radio compartment on the side of the wild cat. and the lead splattered up into his leg and his arm and his face. he had a heck of a time getting the oxygen mask on later in the day. one of my boys got a bullet by the knee and came up by his crotch. we cut the bullet out, sent him to the hospital and in three days, he was back out there flying. >> they were tougher than tougher.

>> they were. the thing behind it all, dedication to god and country. ♪ there's a star spangled banner waving somewhere ♪ ♪ in a distant land so many miles away ♪ ♪ only uncle sam's get to go there ♪ ♪ where i wish that i could also live someday ♪ >> after the war, joe never went back to farming. he became an entrepreneur, governor of south dakota, a sports executive, a writer and a hunter. but more than his resume, it is joe's spirit, his iron will to achieve that makes him the quint essential gi. a leader of men first tested and foreshaped by combat. >> in those young men, i think of them every day of my life. i think of those that didn't

make it. half of us didn't make it. >> you remember specific names and faces? >> i sure do. casey, danny doil, greg, gus, writ down line. i could name them all ♪ there's a star spangled banner ♪ >> it is not unusual that he remembers his fellow pilots 60 years later. this is one thing you learn about world war ii gis. those bombs from long ago are incredibly strong. >> they always told us from the time we went into boot camp, don't ever get too close to any of your buddies. he may not be here tomorrow. and you try not to do it, but still your buddies are your buddies. >> bill emerson's buddies today are at his local american legion post in indianapolis. when he turned 18 and the war was well underway, he knew he

would be drafted. so like a lot of other teenagers at the time, he didn't wait. he end listed so he could choose his branch of service. he chose the marines because he heard they were tough and he thought of himself as tough guy. until he got to the south pacific. >> my last campaign was iwo jima, and that was a scary one. there wasn't a time, the whole time i was on there. i was scared from the time i went in until the time i got off. and i didn't know i could be scared continuously for so long and make it. i was. i wasn't alone. a lot of other guys were in the same shape. especially at night. you had to watch because they

would, camouflage, right to come right through your area. and if they catch you off guard, they can kill you. we landed, we were getting all kinds of shell fire and everything. and i was talking to the guy right next to me on the beach. and all of a sudden he didn't answer me. i looked over and he was dead. he the hadn't even gruntled when the shell hit him. it xam close to getting me too. it took its toll. i mean, when i got back, my mother, she said you look like you've aged ten years. and i probably did. and i felt like i had aged maybe 40 years. because i went from a kid to an adult practically overnight. that's what the marines does for you. >> i think i said, very emotionally unhinged maybe five years after the war.

and at parties, i was suddenly bursting into tears. has he been drinking too much would be a general jeje conject. they didn't know what it was like to go through knot hole. >> paul has written about what it was like. a college english professor most recently at the university of pennsylvania, he wrote memorable books about both world wars. then finally he was able to talk about his own combat experience as an infantry lieutenant. >> tell me about march 15, 1935. >> i knew we were infamous when the company cooks arrived. they brought up their stoves in the dark is that they cooked a hot breakfast for the truman ts

for the first time. and everybody appreciate that had while recognizing this was going to be a bad scene when you're being prepared for some deep unhappiness. all of a sudden, there was an immense crash in the tree above us. a shell had hit there and shattered its fragments downwards, kill my sergeant immediately. he had an involuntary groan and i was hit in the back and the leg. >> what does that word hero mean to you in. >> somebody who survives the whole experience being ruined by it. some of the people that didn't win medals, like my medals, for example, a mexican boy. he was shot through the leg at the moment when i was damaged by

shell fire. he never mentioned it. he never said, i've been hit. he just went about his business with his bandages, cutting people's trousers off with his surgical shears as if it was a normal thing to him. that's a hero. somebody like that. that's something admirable. >> 53 years later, it still touches a deep chord. >> absolutely. >> many gis came home with the idea they were spared so they could do something else with their lives. johnny holmes volunteers at a catholic church school. even before he retired from his job, he began doing the construction and maintenance work at his school and church

that they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. on the job he usesle different talents. >> we will work hard selling cakes and cookies. i make a black walnut cookie. it is fantastic. i cook a sweet potato pie, make you slap your mom. >> johnny holds was not interested in being a cook in the army. he wanted to be on the front. so he volunteered for what became one of the most famous units in the war. the 71st tank battalion. because the services were still segregated, the 761st was all black. the first black unit allowed into combat. once in come bass, they killed 183 continualuous days of heavy fighting but for him, the victories never erased the losses. >> to see the kids your age, you

see their helmet bent in. and to lay there kicking like a rabb rabbit, that's one hell of a notion. young kids lay there and holler for their mother. i saw that. i saw it several times. for every person that i killed over in europe during the war, for every person, i have made it better for somebody else. but i did make myself a promise. i promised god if you let me get

back out safely from this, i'll be a better man. i did. and i think he kind of heard me. >> gis teach us again what we already know. how combat, killing and seeing others killed is a brutal way to spend your youth. and that experience can haunt them years later. but as we will see, we are only now coming to fully appreciate that as the war changed them, they came home and changed us. .. it's how well you mow fast! it's not how fast you mow...it's how well you mow fast. they're not just words to mow by, they're words to live by. the john deere ztrak z345r with the accel deep deck to mow faster better. take a test drive and save up to on

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. be it pro claimed that this day shall also be known as and be officially declared robert e. bush day in grateful appreciation for the life that he has lived among us and the honor he has shared with us. >> bob bush has two sons and a daughter. they grew up with a hero in the house. their father is a recipient of the nation's highest honor of

bravery and combat, the congressional medal of honor. when they were kids, they saw the medal in a box in his den. but like a few million other children of gis, susan, rick and mick bush are only now learning to appreciate how many of their father's behavior toward them was formed by the war experiences he kept to himself. >> probably don't remember anything relating to the war until i was 12 or 13 years old. i don't remember my first recollection of realizing he had a glass eye. it certainly wasn't until i was probably in my early teens. >> when bob bush was a teenager, he was receiving his medal of honor from president harry truman in ceremonies on the white house lawn. bush was 18. the age that most kids are graduating from high school. only a few months earlier, he had wayne marine medic on the island of okinawa.

in the midst of a ferocious japanese attack, he crawled on to a battlefield, treated and revived a wounded lieutenant. >> then japanese threw hand grenades down. i threw my arm up like this. i had a 45 in the shoulder holster so that saved me but it took out this eye. it hit me really hard. >> bush picked up the wounded lieutenant's rifle, killing a number of japanese soldiers. >> it didn't mean anything to shoot them. it didn't. i never laid awake at night. they were the enemy. they were after me. and boy, that preservation of life is a big deterrent to how you feel about shooting somebody. it didn't bother me one bit. when i left there, there was more of them on the ground than there was me. that seems to be the way you grade that particular game, if you must call it a game. it is like basketball.

who gets most points wins. ♪ >> they were the winners and the celebrations could have gone on for months but they didn't. most gis weren't looking to be called heroes. they are looking ahead, wanting to take what they learned if battle to building their lives. bob bush for one was in a hurry to make up for lotteries time. he married his girlfriend and started at a lumber yard. within five years he owned the business. over the next two decades, he and his family developed bay view lumber into a building materials empire base in the bay view, washington. returning gis like bob bush laid the foundation for what would be called the american dream.

a wife, kids, the latest appliances, a home of your own. the gi bill, generous government benefits, helped them buy the homes they were building. it paid for college educations and helped them start businesses. new was in. new suburbs and new cars and highways to get there. building the country was the easy part, gis would discover. passing on to children the tough values that won the war, that would take all the effort a war hero could muster. bob bush wanted his sonls to be in the business but he didn't want to make it too easy for they will. so each son paid his father for a lumber and hardware store. the older sob mick knew he would follow in his father's foot steps. bush's younger son rick tried other things before he bought from his father a store of his own. >> okay.

>> bush says he's officially retired. but he maintains a home office and he just can't stop expanding the business. although both boys documented their dad's line of work, they have not been as enthusiastic about his total immersion in the business. for father bob, the gi, building the business half of the war was the mission without end. for the sons, babyboomers, work provided the means to live well. >> what a difference. >> maybe we put the one into the batch plant to start with and move. >> keep your nose in whine that ball. >> the family says bob bush rarely took time off for recreation or travel but he always found time for his other family. fellow gis who won the congressional medal of honor.

a few months ago, bush attended a reunion of the medal of honor society in saratoga springs, new york. >> it is really lifting to get together with fellow veterans and enjoy each other. we're just like brothers. >> bob, if you could change anything right now, based on all that you've seen and all that you've been through. what would you change? >> i think the discipline amongst the young people, even within my home, i can see this lack of ability to interim rhett and understand hard times. in our house, they didn't have any. i really overprovided. so i didn't teach them properly. i missed the boat there. >> when you look at how successful your children have been, how well they live now, do you look at each other sometimes and say i hope they can afford all this? >> right. >> robert says that occasionally. >> especially with me.

>> i tell you, i'm scared to see rick go to the store and so is mary. ♪ >> when it comes to his attitude about money and work, bob bush is no different from millions of other gis. they grew up during great depression. a decade of deep economic despair on the land like a plague. members of bush's generation watched their parents struggle for the barest of necessities. that affected them as much as the war that followed. it is understandable that bob bush and other gis vowed a better life for their own children. but it is difficult now for the children who are living those better lives to understand why their parents still act as if it

could all go away. >> mick and i both worked at the concrete plant. we were shoveling gravel in the homicider. he owned the business do. but he wanted ed ted to get us understand the four letter word, work. >> if i put him in that situation that he put us in, we would be in jail. you can't start kids working when they're 12 or 13 years old. >> do you think because he what he went through in his formative years, on okinawa and building this business, that he was a little tougher that he needed to be? that his standard was so high for himself? >> i think that's true. it was really mission to put food on the zpatable and a roof over our heads. >> he said they were working seven days a week but they figured they could work more if they could do it eight days a week.

>> can you imagine you working eight days a week? >> no. i can't. >> we love you guys. >> i love you too. we'll see you later. >> i don't want to wake up and be 75 and go, gee, i guess i retire now and spend some time with my family. i want to do it as i go along. >> it was good get together. >> rick is a real challenge. this guy is a real challenge. and i'm saying, whatever happened to this four-letter word work? when do we work? it is absolutely the reverse of the way we did it. the world war ii boys that came home with the same determination that i had, all of them were successful and they built the country. and they understand the success and failures of war. when you've been there, there's not too much, too many surprises that will shake you up. .

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the moon now leading the russia investigation saying we must never, ever sacrifice our integrity. special counsel robert mueller made that comment while speaking. the president met with families of the fallen at arlington national cemetery after laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier. for now, back to our regular programming. they had been affected by a pair of huge historical events, the depression and then the world war, which has marked them in ways that have established their attitudes and style and has carried through their whole lifetime. and i think it has affected how

they raise their kids. and so as a core larry we've been effected by as well. >> they grew up with a war here over for a father. lloyd kilmer sr. he lives in the retirement community sun city west where he led a campaign to create a boulevard of flags. his town now is nicknamed flag city. that has a lot of meeg for lloyd because he was held by the germans until a u.s. tank battalion carrying american flags liberated his prison camp. >> tell me about what happened the day that the american forces arrived? what do you remember? >> i remember almost as if it was yesterday. i remember a nazi flag was lowered and the american flag was raised. i think of it most every time that i drive up and down our boulevard of flags in sun city

west. >> i must say, this is a long way from a german prisoner of camp, lloyd. >> it's a long way. a long ways. >> lloyd met and married ruth after his first wife died a few years ago. ruth has encouraged lloyd to write his history and to talk about it. she has decorated their home with his mementos. lloyd grew up in a struggling farm town, finished high school during the great depression, and with no real job prospects, enlisted in the army air corps where his life changed fast. >> one year from the day that i stepped foot and flew my first airplane, i have flying four inch bombers. >> that's quite remarkable. >> the need was there. it had to be done. >> he became part of eighth air force, flying bombing raids from england deep into germany. it was one of the riskiest jobs in the war.

yet he volunteered for it. on his 16th mission, after bombing a german tank factory, his b-24 was crippled by overwhelming anti-aircraft fire. >> we were hit had in a ferocious way. one engine was still operating, an outboard engine. and i said to my engineer, transfer me more gas to number four. and my engineer applied, lieutenant, there ain't no more gas. that meant we were going in. er they found a place and put her down and that's what we did. the germans were pretty well prepared for us. they had quite contingent of soldiers out, and dogs as well. >> the germans captured kilmer and the rest of his ten-man

crew. he ended up on a dangerous and grueling trip to stalag 7 a to munich. it was disease ridden and brutal. >> the germans gave us stuff they had soup. we had some black bread and this, what we could gather from red cross parcels. and i weighed less than 100 pounds when i was liberated from prison camp. >> what did you come to hate that you had to eat in prison that you can't eat anymore? >> we don't have cabbage served at our house anymore, or turnips and food of that sort. >> here's grape nuts. is that what you would like now? >> yes.

>> ruth amet ruth when he was i his 70s. her husband had also been in the war so she was already familiar with the effect prison camps can have. she understood his need never to be hungry or cold or in crowded rooms or awakened suddenly from a nap. she also understood, there were times he didn't want to talk. she understood that better, perhaps, than his son does when they were growing up. >> he did not communicate with us very much. and i think that's something that research has shown that expows have a lot of trouble communicating one-on-one and doing very close bonding relationships. he was always a distant figure. he wouldn't just throw his arm around and say let's do such and such. we would go out and do something.

it would be all planned. it would be a mission. >> it was the father's job to go out and get a job and provide for his family. and it was the wife's job to raise the children. and take care of the house. so i filled in around the edges. i drove the car and i took them on vacations. >> lloyd kilmer jr. is a high school principal who recently finished his phd at the university of nebraska. there was a time in his teenage years when lloyd senior thought the boy needed military discipline. >> even today, parents say, if you don't shape up, we're going to send to you military school, to prep school. it is usually just an idle threat. not with my folks. this was not a threat. this was fact.

get with it or you're going and that's what happened. off to culver military academy that i went. and i went for three summers. my brother pushed things farther so he got to go during the school year, a more intensive program. >> frank, very much of a free spirit. he dropped out of college after three semesters and went to california. he is a plumber in california, in san francisco. >> i certainly didn't set out to be a plumber. but i have found that i have mechanical amount to do and the problem solving that comes from this work is very satisfying to me. >> sfrank a plumbing specialist. he installs and services high end equipment at health clubs, for example, and at expensive homes. although frank has explained to his father that he is making good money as a plumber, he

senses that lloyd sr. does not approve. >> my father is not an intro speck speck i have the person. i suspect whenever family relations or family friends would say, somehow franky doing, he would say, he's out in california trying to find himself. but in terms of understanding or being interested in my decision to be a practicing buddhist, never happened. i lived in a monastery for about four years and i think it really probably made him physically ill to imagine that i was doing something so bizarre and socially unacceptable. i think over all, to be brutally honest, that i have been a major disappointment to him.

>> from the point of when i was commissioned and i got those silver wings, a kid from minnesota, with no college education, at that point, i felt that i had capabilities and i could do anything that i wanted to do. and i was very confident that i could do it. >> my biggest struggle when i was an adolescent was to try to find something worth doing. something to apply myself to that was appropriate. and i think for that generation, a huge task was held up for them. and it was, sure, it was scary, it took them away from their families. their lives were at risk and i think most would say they were never the same afterwards. but to fight good fight for a young man is i think a very

attractive calling. it is a clear road to a virtuous activity which i think in our day is a lot harder to find. ♪ nah. what else? what if we digitize the whole supply chain? so people can customize their bike before they buy it. that worked better than expected. i'll dial it back. yeah, dial it back. just a little. live business, powered by sap. when you run live, you run simple.

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>> just when you think world war ii still affects only the actual combat veterans, you meet someone like jeannette in the minneapolis suburb of chaskin, minnesota. when jeannette's boyfriend was drafted into the army in 1944, they decided to marry before he shipped out. they had four months together as man and wife. then before camille left, they found out jeannette was expecting. their son robert was born while camille was in basic training to become a paratrooper. >> when the phone rang, he said, well, dear, i'm on my way overseas. we're not getting any if you fu to come home. tears welled up in my eyes. i said well, i guess you won't get to see our boy.

he used to say, i wish i could be there with you. he called him bobby. i wish i could be there with you and bobby to hold him. just to be there with you. when bob was about 17 months old, the rap came at the door one day. it was western union man. and of course, when i opened it up, i thought it was going to say wounded or missing. but when it said we regret to inform you your husband was killed in action. oh, boy. it seemed like the world just fell down. >> in time, jeannette learned what happened on camille's last day. he and his men had been trying to hold a bridge against german tanks. >> there was a big, it is called 88 self-propelled millimeter gun. and they trained it on the men, my husband and his buddies, from

500 yards. and they let it go and that was it. he died instantly. but he died a hero. they presented that silver star to me. the other wife was standing beside me the otherparents of a. that was a very sad, sad day. and then when the war was over, you know, everybody was honking horns and yelling and hollering which, you know, they should. my heart wasn't in it, you know? i couldn't rejoice. >> a few years after the war,

jeanette remarried, but she and her husband decided that jeanette's son, bob, should keep the name as a way to honor their fallen g.i. . >> i started telling him as soon as he was old enough to know, because i had pictures up of his dad and showed him the medals, but not until he was about 14, that was when he said, someday i'm going to go visit my father's grave. which he did in 1994. >> camille is buried in a cemetery in holland not far from where he was killed. the son he never knew made these home movies when he went there to see his father's grave. >> it was an awesome feeling to walk up to the marker. what struck me was -- what

struck me was my dad was there. ♪ i have a son of my own, and i've talked to him about what must have gone on in his head over there. that's the part that's scary to me. and that's the part that -- it would be difficult for anybody to understand is -- is i think most of those guys over there were just scared as hell because they probably thought they were in hell most of the time. i'm sure many people who fought there believe one of the reasons we still have this country is because of them, and i believe that's true. god knows what would have happened had we not defeated the

enemy. >> i just knew we were going to win. i just knew it. i knew we were. i knew we had to and i knew we would. i just -- i guess i had that blind faith or something. did not have a clue what it was going to cost. terrible price. ♪ ♪ ♪

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this was a familiar ritual when i was growing up on the south dakota prairie. the men in my community and others would place flags at the grave sites of veterans on memorial day and veteran's day. these veterans are hobbled by old age now, but i've come to understand their values and their spirits, the memories of what they did a half a century ago that still guide their lives. they wonder what will happen once they're gone. >> they as a group encountered a menace to their way of life and their values that was on a scale we will never see in our lives, and fought the good fight, made the sacrifice. ♪ >> i mean, every road that you drive on, every interstate that you're on, all the major companies, the monuments in your

community, everywhere you look, there's this physical legacy that's left over. when they're all gone, you'll say this is one of the great, certainly one of the great american generations of our history and maybe one of the great generations of all-time in western civilization. >> hey. i thought today was a workday. >> i was lucky to get my dad. i'm lucky i'm here. many people aren't alive today because their perspective fathers were killed in the war. i just don't want to let my parents down, myself down, or just -- i want to be able to pass on what they've given to us. ♪ >> i just have a lot more connection to him. i feel a lot more connected. i think i understand as best as i can what he went through. i respect him for what he did. i thank him for what he did. and i'm going to be there for

him when he needs me. ♪ ♪ >> for all of us at nbc news, thank you for watching this special rebroadcast of "the greatest generation." ♪

it's never good news when the phone rings at 5:00 in the morning. i knew something wasn't right. he just began sobbing and saying no, no, something horrible must have happened. >> it was just before midnight when the shooting started. >> had been shot multiple times. he was on the ground face down. >> a man was dead, but not just any man. >> how do you kill superman? how is superman dead? >> he was an olympian and a father, killed, his wife says, by an intruder in his own backyard.