CSM George Alatzas, USA (RET)
Beginning in 1946, the surviving Raiders have held a reunion each April to commemorate the mission. The reunion is in a different city each year. In 1959 the city of Tuscon, Arizona, as a gesture of respect and gratitude, presented the Doolittle Raiders with a set of 80 silver goblets. Each goblet was engraved with the name of a Raider. Every year a wooden display case bearing all 80 goblets is transported to the reunion city. Each time a Raider passes away, his goblet is turned upside down in the case at the next union, as his old friends bear solemn witness.
Also in the wooden case is a bottle of 1896 Hennessy Very Special cognac. The year is not happenstance; it was Jimmy Doolittle’s birth year.
There has always been a plan. When there are only two surviving Raiders, they would open the bottle at last, drink from it and toast their comrades who preceded them in death.
As 2013 began, there were five living Raiders. Then in February, Tom Griffin passed away at age 96.
What a man he was. After bailing out of his plane over a mountainous Chinese forest after the Tokyo raid, he became ill with malaria and almost died. When he recovered he was sent to Europe to fly more combat missions. He was shot down, captured and spent 22 months in a German prisoner of war camp.
The selflessness of these men, the sheer guts. There was a passage in the Cincinnati Enquirer obituary for Mr. Griffin that on the surface had nothing to do with the war, but that nonetheless punctuates the depth of his sense of duty and devotion.
When his wife became ill and needed to go into a nursing home, he visited her every day. He walked from his house to the nursing home, fed his wife and at the end of the day brought home her clothes. At night, he washed and ironed her clothes. Then he walked them up to her room the next morning. He did that for three years until her death in 2005.
So now, out of the original 80, only four Raiders remain: Dick Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot on the raid, Robert Hite, Edward Saylor and David Thatcher. All are in their 90s. They have decided that there are too few of them for the public reunions to continue.
The events in Fort Walton Beach marked the end. It has come full circle; Florida’s nearby Eglin Field was where the Raiders trained in secrecy for the Tokyo mission.
Do the men ever wonder if those of us for whom they helped save the country have tended to it in a way that is worthy of their sacrifice? They don’t talk about that, at least not around other people. If you should encounter any of the Raiders, you might want to offer them a word of thanks. I can tell you from first hand observation that they appreciate hearing that they are remembered.
The men have decided that after the final public reunion they will get together once more, informally and in absolute privacy. That is when they will open the bottle of brandy. The years are flowing by too swiftly now; they are not going to wait until there are only two of them.
They will fill the four remaining upturned goblets and raise them in a toast to those who are gone.