Milbank: Politics worse off as Greatest Generation fades away

On April 24, 1944, 2nd Lt. John R. Pedevillano was flying in a B-17 over Nazi territory when the fighters escorting his formation were drawn away in combat, leaving the bombers defenseless against air and ground fire for an hour.

Sixteen U.S. planes went down, and Pedevillano — the youngest B-17 bombardier in the 306th Bomb Group — was hit. But he and his crew managed to keep flying, going down behind enemy lines after dropping their payload on Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Pedevillano remained a Nazi prisoner of war for a year before he was liberated by Gen. George S. Patton’s forces, and he went on to a career with Westinghouse, eventually retiring in College Park, Md.

His heroics might have gone unheralded, like those of thousands of others of his generation, had they not come to the attention of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee and himself a former prisoner of war in Vietnam. In a ceremony Tuesday, McCain presented Pedevillano, almost 93, with a Presidential Unit Citation to honor, 71 years later, his unsung valor.

Pedevillano, now walking with a cane, wept as he listened to the citation. As is typical of heroes of his generation, he found the attention on him entirely misplaced.

“There were 16 million other people in the service,” he told me through his tears after the Air Force string quintet closed the ceremony with the service’s “Wild Blue Yonder” song. “They’d done just as much as I did and deserved everything I’ve gotten.”

It’s heartwarming that, as the Greatest Generation departs, heroes such as Pedevillano are getting recognition they didn’t receive earlier, when such sacrifice was common. It’s also good for those of us who haven’t been called, because their sense of humble service and of national unity seems to elude us in public affairs.

A cause greater than self

This is the first Congress in more than 60 years without a World War II vet. It’s no accident that the rise of the Greatest Generation in politics was also a time of American greatness and that their declining numbers have come with decline and dysfunction in Washington. They knew a cause greater than self and an enemy greater than a political opponent.

Their decades-long quest for common purpose, and Pedevillano’s quiet heroism, stands in jarring contrast to the all-too-typical squabbling that occurred before McCain’s committee Tuesday morning. McCain berated Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey over Middle East policy, accusing the administration of “self-delusion” and calling the nation’s top uniformed officer “intellectually dishonest.”

It was a different McCain, serene and nostalgic, at Pedevillano’s ceremony a few minutes later. “This is a generation, which, let’s be very frank, is now leaving us,” he said. “The inspiration that they provided to us, whether we served in the military or not, is something that is of transcendent importance.”

Gen. Larry Spencer, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, recalled the triumph and tragedy of the “Mighty Eighth,” in which Pedevillano served under the command of Jimmy Doolittle. The Eighth Air Force suffered 47,000 casualties, including 26,000 deaths. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough,” Spencer said.

Yet it almost seemed too much to Pedevillano, who tried often to escape his captors at the Nazi prison Stalag Luft 7, and who was forced to march 300 miles as his jailers tried to evade invading allied troops. In a barely audible voice, he expressed only one regret as he modestly accepted his commendation. “Unfortunately, my wife, after 64 years, is not here with me,” he said. “She’s now interred at Arlington National Cemetery, and in the very near future I hope to be with her.”

Pedevillano has earned that rest with her and with the brothers he lost more than 70 years ago. We do well to remember them. We would do better to emulate their quiet and selfless sense of country.