Winston Churchill was the man for the moment. Between him and Edward R Murrow, they held the mother nations firm and steeled the resolve among the common people to finish the battle. My grandfather volunteered for the effort in 1939 before war was declared. When it was over he finally met his son, a seven year old who asked his mother "will this man be staying with us for a while?"
He refused to ever tell his story, evidently it was too painful to discuss with anyone who was not there. He told me about playing chess in his head under blackout conditions. Pawn to Queen 4. He told me about going to Paris once and getting kissed twice by General de Gaulle (Croix de Guerre). But that was all he would tell me.
As I prepared to graduate with my Ph.D. I discovered my grandfather had been waiting for years to be there when it happened. I was going to be the first ever Ph.D. in the family.
I was lucky that my Ph.D. was not a struggle akin to what my forebears had fought. I had results and papers and it all fell into place.
As I took my family for a tour of the research labs I had inhabited for the previous 6 years, I showed them the fume hoods, the spectrometers, the tissue culture labs, the microscope room.. then I took them for a tour of the computer room...this was mid-nineties...Silicon Graphics still ruled the high end work stations we used and I brought up some proteins in 3-D.....then I switched to to a cross-eyed stereo view of the same thing to show it in 3-D.
My grandpa laughed and said that he had been using the same technology all through WWII as a topographer. He had been flying over enemy territory taking photo's every few seconds (depending on speed) and using them to make maps of the ground below.
Here I was trying to show off my high tech and it turn's out I got my aptitude for 3-D imaging the same way he did. My graduation was much more important to him than it was to me. It still seems small to me. He died 3 weeks after, possibly related to the trans-atlantic flight he took to witness family history in the making.
If only I could ask him now.
The other day I watched a program by Bill Moyers. In that program they discussed how Churchill was the perfect leader for the moment since he could not be defeated. He could not be bombed into oblivion. He would lead the fight forward....and if you wonder how the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan get their balls to continue...it's pretty simple. Just like my grandpa did.
http://www.pbs.org/...