Joan Nagy
Veterans Day Weekend, November 2001

S/Sgt. Stephen Gogolya

This veteran’s story strives to teach the media intelligentsia, the elite one-worlders, the 1960s anti-war crowd and the Hollywood sycophants the value of the warrior class, whom we now call upon to defend our homeland.

It is a lesson that must be repeated, because, as in the Vietnam War, the media are again trying to erode confidence in our military’s campaign. Our military does not need or deserve to carry the burden of home-front criticism or armchair analysis from those who have no first-hand knowledge of the hardships of war.

When I was a child, it was clear to me that men ran the world. From an early age, I contemplated how different the world would be if women ran things. What if father didn’t know best? In a feminine world, mothers would be in charge, and I imagined it a world with less strife, little suffering and, of course, no wars. Words would settle disputes, a kiss on a skinned knee could magically stop pain, and the Golden Rule would keep everyone in line. These two worlds would be diametrically opposed to one another as different as men are from women.

I never imagined that within the short span of my life I would get that chance to see and compare those two worlds side by side. However, I did, and to my surprise, it was not the feminine rule that provided the safest world.

It was the cultural revolution that made this close-up examination of two distinctively different worlds possible. Not on a grand scale, but in a narrow arena of life that set those two worlds in such close proximity that you could touch both with one sweep of your hand.

Like two parallel universes existing within the brief span of two generations, these diametrically opposed universes are showcased by two wars: the masculine world in which we fought World War II and the feminine world in which we tried to fight the Vietnam War.

I acknowledge that there are many differences between the two wars. It is the political and social climate in which those wars were waged that provide the area of comparison. Also, new information has recently come to light indicating the American public had less truth regarding the Vietnam War then and now, making it increasingly difficult to dismiss the seriousness of the threat of any communist regime.

When we fought World War II, our country was solidly behind the war effort. Media reports overwhelmingly supported the war. The goal was to win the war, defeat the enemy and welcome home our solders. This was the singular message, and the entire nation fell in line behind these ideals. The importance of the individual was lost to the importance of the overall mission. The whole nation; men, women and children, fought like men.

During the cultural revolution of the 1960s, there were sweeping social and ideological changes in many aspects of American life. The military and other American institutions became targets of the demonstrators. The military became an object of scorn and derision. Leaders who emerged from that generation held onto their adolescent loathing of the military. Any action taken by the military was immediately suspect and criticized.

The media surrendered totally to the cultural and social pressures of the revolution and cocooned itself in the feminine ideology. The media think with their feelings and then simply fail to think.

News coverage of the war often centered on the plight of the individual soldier, told by sensitive journalists whose primary view of the world and war was how it was affecting them on a personal level. This makes for compelling television, maybe a few times, but, quite frankly, even from the perspective of a total military neophyte, it is no way to fight and win a war.

However unfair, this popular form of journalism continues today. Its reverberations still spill over to imprison spineless politicians and prevent them from performing their constitutional duties.

I wonder how successful America would have been in World War II if she had to fight the war on three fronts: European, Pacific and American media? What if journalists in WWII used the individual stories of American service men and women as propaganda pieces to advance their own anti-war sentiments?

Take any of the stories behind any of the lives given fighting WWII and you could have real compelling drama against war. Would it have weakened the public’s resolve to continue the necessary level of casualties until final victory? My own uncle’s story contained such pathos, modern-day journalists would have loved to have told the story ....

Uncle Stephen

My uncle, Stephen Gogolya, was the only son of my maternal grandparents, John and Mary, and he and my mother were the first in the family to speak English. My mother, who was two years younger, accompanied him to first grade, where they learned English.

Sixteen years later, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my uncle enlisted in the Air Force. My grandparents, who still spoke mainly Hungarian, were horrified that their son, whom they hoped would be their strength and joy in their old age, would willingly enter the war.

It is difficult for me to assess his motivation, never having known him and possessing only a handful of his letters; however, I suspect he was caught up in the emotions of the time. I know he was decent and fair-minded, so he was probably angered by the attack on the U.S. base in Hawaii. He wanted to serve in the Air Force, because more than anything, he wanted to fly. On one level, he may have viewed this war as an opportunity to see and travel the world and escape from the long, difficult hours spent working in a Pittsburgh steel mill.

My uncle was in the war more than two years. He had just been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross two weeks before that fateful day in March 1943. He was a staff sergeant and the top-turret gunner in a plane called the "Southern Comfort.” According to the newspaper accounts, the 10-man crew had to bail out of their plane after being hit in a German bombing expedition. Shifting wind currents moved his parachute, and he was dashed to his death on the rocky coast of England. All other members of his crew survived the bailout.

Few mementos from his life remain aside from all the wonderful pictures. We have the telegram from the secretary of war. The white paper with the large dark blue square at the top center of the Postal Telegraph looks almost pristine, except for the original folds which have been folded and unfolded hundreds of times over the years.

The telegram, signed by the adjutant general, was delivered the evening of April 6, 1943. It states: "The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your son Staff Sergeant Stephen L. Gogolya was killed in action in defense of his country in European area March 31.”

I can hold the dozen of assorted pictures, telegrams, newspaper clippings, letters and medals that represent the sum of his short life. One beautiful letter came from a friend and crew member, Sgt. Frank Hilsabeck, who assures our family that my uncle had a Catholic service, which the entire crew attended. And that my uncle’s last pay of 36 pounds, 6 shillings and 5 pence, about $146.40, would arrive home in within 60 to 90 days.

He also speaks of the times spent with my uncle on passes touring London during the day and going to dances in the evening or talking and sipping a beer. He offers this observation: "You can be rest assured that Steve not only carried with him the grace of God, but also the deep respect and admiration of his commanders.”

I cry reading the letter, never having known my uncle, but better understand why my grandmother sat by the front door in the early evenings and cried every day until her death, some 20 years later. These items are kept not out of habit or obligation, but they are held in a sense of awe for the sacrifice he made and the loss my family endured.

I celebrate the life my uncle gave to his country. I think what he did and what every young man and women who died in defense of this country in any war, from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War, is wonderful. And this cannot be said enough times. They are heroes in every sense of the word.

No single life, in war, is greater that the common goal of maintaining freedom for the masses. Those lives still remain precious to the individual families, but should never be used to pull the country off course when the goal is to maintain freedom for all.

Thoreau writes that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. And we do. We carve out little lives for ourselves, and we hope that the choices we make for our lives provide us with some measure of fulfillment.

We pretend to ignore the inevitable. But the majority of us, after living our lives of quiet desperation, will have died quiet deaths of meaningless exchange. Occasionally fate calls a few special souls whose young lives will be offered up in exchange for the noble cause of freedom, and they will remain forever young and courageous.

No person dying on a battlefield ever died an empty death. The Universe holds these sacrifices as sacred and throws them back into the sea of humanity. The cords of the sacrifices reverberate back through the ethereal time and resurfaces time and again in places such as Tiananmen Square, or in a raft 90 miles from the coast of Miami, or in Lech Walesa’s Poland. That is why the desire for freedom never leaves our earthly realm, is the natural yearning of the human spirit to breathe free.

Caption to the photo on the home page: The crew of the Southern Comfort, January 1943. Left to right: Capt. High Ashcraft, pilot; Lt. James M. Moberly, navigator; S/Sgt. Frank M. Corser, waist gunner; S/Sgt. Ray Armstrong, ball turret gunner; S/Sgt. Frank Hilsabeck, tail gunner; T/Sgt. James Patterson, flight engineer; T/Sgt. Douglas Glover, radio operator and gunner; S/Sgt. Stephen Gogolya, top-turret gunner (also pictured above); Lt. Bert M. Wells, bombardier; Lt. William J. Lakey, co-pilot.

Joan Nagy is a freelance writer. She can be reached at JoanMarieNagy@aol.com.

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