Green Street Boy (A Son of the Greatest Generation)

A Portrait of an American Hero and a Generation That Is Slowly Fading Away

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Vronsky, an investigative historian who also teaches history at Ryerson University in Toronto, recently spoke with The Post about his newest true-crime examination. Some responses have been condensed and edited for clarity. So I thought about and realized I needed to back up 20 to 25 years — as the average age for a serial killer when they first kill is And because the familial is so important in the making of a serial killer, you have to look at the fathers.

So when I began to look at the experience of the G. We had to fight this enemy with incredible savagery, almost in the way we fought Neanderthals. This was a war of total destruction. And so our young men who went to fight there were called into an almost-genocidal war because we were fighting genocidal perpetrators. Therefore, I think a lot of men came back from that war traumatized and with no outlet for them. When men came back from the Vietnam War, within several years after that, we had diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. But nothing of that was available to these men coming back from the Second World War and they had to essentially suck it up — they were tossed the G.

Bill, told to go to college and forget about it. And so the more I explored the children of World War II veterans, this notion appeared of their fathers returning in this sullen silence from the war and never speaking about it — this kind of brooding shadow — I began to realize that if this is the case with healthy individuals, imagine the fathers of those who became serial killers. What was their World War II experience? Did they go overseas? Did they see combat?

Their fathers were often veterans coming back from that war in a traumatized state. And then just the horror of it began to emerge in these last two decades when we began to see the rate, for example, of rape that our soldiers perpetrated in that war. And of course, not only for the guys who are perpetrating these things, but anyone who witnessed or heard about it.

I remember those magazines as a kid and I remember this visceral feeling I had when seeing those covers. And, of course, those covers were not pornographic, which I think makes it worse because pornography relieves your imagination.

Casualty lists indicate that the man was Pvt. George DeLisle of Michigan, who was killed in action on September 9, , age The other man was Pvt. Arnold Davis of West Virginia, who died of his wounds a month later. He better remembers his closest friend: Sergeant Hughes, he was just like my brother. He was platoon sergeant over me, I was one of the squad leaders.

Then a strange thing happened one night. We was in Germany then. We stayed together in a trench, it was freezing. In the first week of December , the 3rd Battalion was among the first Allied forces to cross the Saar River into Germany itself. Ray abruptly sits up in bed, propped on an elbow, frowning, straining to get a bead on the ghostly past.

Good thing we was laying down. Hughes of Kentucky was killed in action December 5, The German attack that morning was a probe for the massive counteroffensive that came 11 days later and began what history calls the Battle of the Bulge.

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What could I do? Forty good men surrendered that day. Ray eases back on his pillow. He spends much of his days in bed now, watching soap operas and televangelists, drifting. His most poignant war memories are of his older brother Johnnie, who went off to war three years before Ray. Six-foot tall, powerfully built man. Taught me to hunt, taught me to fish.

Do anything for you, smile when he did it. Ray and their mother saw him off at the train station in San Antonio.

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They landed first in North Africa, then led the invasion of southern Italy in early September They were Texas farm boys, the Halliburton brothers, two of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, nearly all of them anonymously in the broad view of history. Neither Johnnie nor Ray became famous or even noteworthy. What they do understand is how to turn themselves into brands, with "friend" and "follower" tallies that serve as sales figures.

As with most sales, positivity and confidence work best. Keith Campbell, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, who has written three books about generational increases in narcissism including When You Love a Man Who Loves Himself. When everyone is telling you about their vacations, parties and promotions, you start to embellish your own life to keep up. If you do this well enough on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, you can become a microcelebrity. Millennials grew up watching reality-TV shows, most of which are basically documentaries about narcissists. Now they have trained themselves to be reality-TV-ready.

One last time they gather, the Greatest Generation

So for people to be defining who they are at the age of 14 is almost a huge evolutionary jump," says casting director Doron Ofir, who auditioned participants for Jersey Shore, Millionaire Matchmaker, A Shot at Love and RuPaul's Drag Race, among other shows.

I hope that one day they provide an Emmy for casting of reality shows--because, you know, I'd assume I'm a shoo-in. I would like that gold statue. And then I will take a photo of it, and then I will Instagram it. I have gone just about as far as I can in an article without talking about myself.

So first, yes, I'm aware that I started this piece--in which I complain about millennials' narcissism--with the word I. I know that this magazine, which for decades did not print bylines, started putting authors' names on the cover regularly in and that one of the first names was mine. As I mocked reality shows in the previous paragraph, I kept thinking about the fact that I got to the final round for 's Real World: I know my number of Twitter followers far better than the tally on my car's odometer; although Facebook has a strictly enforced limit of 5, friends, I somehow have 5, It was impossible not to remember, the whole time I was accusing millennials of being lazy, that I was supposed to finish this article nearly a year ago.

I moved home for the first six months after college. When I got hired at Time, my co-workers hated me for cozying up to the editor of the magazine. I talk to one of my parents every other day and depend on my dad for financial advice.

D-day: One last time they gather, the Greatest Generation | UK news | The Guardian

It's highly possible that I'm a particularly lame year-old, but still, none of these traits are new to millennials; they've been around at least since the Reformation, when Martin Luther told Christians they didn't need the church to talk to God, and became more pronounced at the end of the 18th century in the Romantic period, when artists stopped using their work to celebrate God and started using it to express themselves.

In , Christopher Lasch wrote in The Culture of Narcissism, "The media give substance to, and thus intensify, narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage common people to identify themselves with the stars and to hate the 'herd,' and make it more and more difficult for them to accept the banality of everyday existence. So while the entire first half of this article is absolutely true I had data! They're not a new species; they've just mutated to adapt to their environment. For example, millennials' perceived entitlement isn't a result of overprotection but an adaptation to a world of abundance.

And then people were farmers and factory workers. Nobody gets very much fulfillment from either of those things," says Jeffrey Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University, who invented the phrase emerging adulthood, which people foolishly use instead of the catchy twixters. Twixters put off life choices because they can choose from a huge array of career options, some of which, like jobs in social media, didn't exist 10 years ago.

What idiot would try to work her way up at a company when she's going to have an average of seven jobs before age 26? Because of online dating, Facebook circles and the ability to connect with people internationally, they no longer have to marry someone from their high school class or even their home country.

Because life expectancy is increasing so rapidly and technology allows women to get pregnant in their 40s, they're more free to postpone big decisions.

Photographer Dan Winters shows us the modern-day life of an unheralded World War II veteran

The median age for an American woman's first marriage went from Top 10 Things My Generation Likes. And while all that choice might end in disappointment, it's a lottery worth playing. One became a pilot; one became a doctor. When you grow up during the Great Depression and fight off the Nazis, you want safety and stability," says Tucker Max, 37, who set an example for millennials when instead of using his Duke law degree to practice law, he took his blog rants about his drunken, lecherous adventures and turned them into a mega-best-selling book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, that he got an independent publisher to print.

And millennials didn't want to do that.

In fact, a lot of what counts as typical millennial behavior is how rich kids have always behaved. The Internet has democratized opportunity for many young people, giving them access and information that once belonged mostly to the wealthy. When I was growing up in the s, I thought I would be a lawyer, since that was the best option I knew about for people who sucked at math in my middle-class suburb, but I saw a lot more options once I got to Stanford. But now it's, Wait, I know someone who knows someone," says Jane Buckingham, who studies workplace changes as founder of Trendera, a consumer-insights firm.

Because millennials don't respect authority, they also don't resent it.

That's why they're the first teens who aren't rebelling. They're not even sullen. They were that 'Wah-wah' voice. The most simple decision of should I do this or should I do that--our audience will check in with their parents. Most of my friends, their parents are on social and they're following them or sharing stuff with them," says Jessica Brillhart, a filmmaker at Google's Creative Lab, who worked on the commercial.

It's hard to hate your parents when they also listen to rap and watch Jon Stewart. In fact, many parents of millennials would proudly call their child-rearing style peer-enting. Maybe all that coddling has paid off in these parent-child relationships," says Jon Murray, who created The Real World and other reality shows, including Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

He says that seeing regular people celebrated on TV gives millennials confidence: It can be a little irritating that they want to be on the next rung so quickly. Maybe I'm partly responsible for it. I like this generation, so I have no issues with that. Kim Kardashian, who represents to nonmillennials all that is wrong with her generation, readily admits that she has no particular talent. But she also knows why she appeals to her peers.

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