Real Men Are Irreplaceable, by Elizabeth A. Mitchell

My father was a boy during the London Blitz.  My grandfather recounts how one day he drove into London to find his office building in rubble.  No files, no reports, no nothing of what was so important just the day before.  My grandmother served as black-out warden for their neighborhood, an hour outside of London.  She recalls how from the end of their road they could see the London skyline burning.  Planes returning to the airbase near their home would pass overhead, and shrapnel, bombs, and long nights spent under the stairs, or in their Anderson shelter, were routine.

In those days of the dogged fight for Western civilization, heroes walked among us.  Soldiers, airmen, seamen, reconnaissance operatives, and brash world leaders with resolve for the fight. …