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stood erect in his basement in Roswell, where he lived out his life, surrounded by military memorabilia and proudly repeated the exact words he said to the officer who asked, “What ees nuts?” “I’ll tell you what it means,” Harper said. “It means, ‘go to hell,’ and if you don’t understand that, we are going to kill every (unprintable) German over here.”

There was a common theme among every one of the survivors of the war. They regretted that so many of their buddies were left behind. Often they would tear up when they reflected on their good fortune to have made it home and a close friend did not. “Why me?” they all said. “Why was my life spared and my friends taken?”

Visiting cemeteries across Europe and Punchbowl in Hawaii makes you feel proud of the Greatest Generation, but leaves you asking the question, “Why do men do such stupid things? Was there divine intervention in WWII since the Allies had to overcome such impossible odds?”

That makes me think of a dinner conversation in Budapest with the cousin of a good friend. “I do not believe in God,” she said. “How could a God allow six million people to be murdered?”