By Jerry Carino | Asbury Park (N.J.) Press | May 7, 2015
MIDDLETON, N.J. — A handwritten note rested on the dining room table in David Scheinhartz's home.
"We all live in the land of the free because of the few who were and are brave," it read.
The 91-year-old Scheinhartz was one of the brave, and still is. Friday marks the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. As a telephone lineman and radio mechanic with the U.S. Army Air Force's 364th Fighter Group, Scheinhartz was stationed in England in 1944-45 and recalls the events like they happened last week. He knows it's important to tell his story as the ranks of the Greatest Generation dwindle.
"Sixteen million of us served in World War II," he said. "There's less than a million of us left, and we're losing between 800 and a thousand every single day."
Scheinhartz, a grandfather of five who has lived in the New Monmouth section of Middletown for 47 years with his wife Sybil, wants us to remember who they were and what they stood for.
"One word describes the Greatest Generation, two letters, W-E. We," he said. "Everybody did what was best for 'we.' Unfortunately today there's also a two-letter word that describes most of the current generation (me). If we could get the country to become 'we,' we wouldn't have the problems that we're having."
'Guys were hugging and kissing'
Scheinhartz's perspective is born of hard-earned experience. Growing up in the Bronx in New York during the Great Depression, he waited on bread lines with his father.
"I remember in 1934 we were having dinner by candlelight, my family, and not because it was romantic," he said. "Because we didn't have electricity."
Scheinhartz enlisted on Dec. 1, 1942 and ended up in Honington, England, in February 1944. The encampment got bombed the night of his arrival, but the Germans missed the target. London, a short ride to the south, was not so lucky.
"A lot of London was devastated," he said. "I never saw London lit up (at night). It's amazing what the British people went through."
On June 6, 1944 — D-Day — "the sky over England was unreal," he said. "Thousands of bombers. You looked up and you couldn't see anything else. They were going over to support the landing on Normandy."
When the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945, it touched off an instant celebration.
"Guys were drinking and hugging each other," Scheinhartz said. "It was great."
But it was not over. His group moved to Frankfurt, Germany.
"I asked people there, 'Were you a Nazi?' Everyone I spoke to said 'no,'" he recalled. "But not one of them looked me in the eye. They turned and walked away with their head down."
On Aug. 1, the 364th got some bad news: They would be heading to Japan, where war in the Pacific raged on.
"I knew in my heart I was not going to come home," he said. "We were told before we got on the trucks, between 225,000 and 500,000 of us would be dead. They expected over a million Japanese to be dead."
Two weeks later, on V-J Day, the celebration surpassed that of V-E Day.
"Guys were hugging and kissing and crying," Scheinhartz said. "It was unbelievable."
To critics who decried the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Scheinhartz would say, "Why don't you ask the guys who were heading to Japan if they think President Truman did the right thing?"
Importance of memory
He came home to a hero's welcome, even at a no-nonsense place like New Jersey's Fort Dix.
"When I went in, 1942, at 5:30 in the morning the first sergeant would come screaming through the barracks, 'Get out of the sack and get out of here!'" he said. "When we came back three years later, the sergeant came through the barracks and said, 'Come on, guys, time to get up.' What a difference, the respect they had."
Scheinhartz said he's deeply saddened by the ongoing scandal in the Department of Veterans Affairs, which manipulated records to delay or forgo the medical care of tens of thousands of ailing veterans and sparked rounds of political finger-pointing.
What's happening now is absolutely disgraceful. It's unreal," Scheinhartz said. "I keep hearing, 'Support the troops, support the troops.' My beloved parents taught me, when you walk the walk, you have the right to talk the talk. Unfortunately a lot of people talk the talk and never walk the walk."
At 91, Scheinhartz still gets around well. Whenever he's out, he wears one of his beloved veterans caps.
"People come up to him and say, 'Thank you for your service,'" Sybil Scheinhartz said. "They say, 'If it wasn't for you, we'd probably be speaking German or Japanese.''
He wants high school and college students to know more about the event that defined the 20th century. Too few realize that 16 million Americans served and 400,000 made the ultimate sacrifice, he said. Those numbers should not be relegated to trivia. They should be seared into the nation's collective consciousness.
"We're the greatest country in the world, and what makes it the greatest country in the world is the people," he said. "As long as we're together as one family, we will always be the greatest country in the world."
He emphasized "we."
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