Edward Saylor was a hero. The real thing.
He was one of just four survivors of one of the most daring military acts of all time. He took part in the famous Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April, 1942.
Lt. Col. Saylor was 94 when he died this week at his home in Sumner, Wash.
There just are three men left who served on that mission. It was bold, brash and fraught with peril.
The Japanese had attacked U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor just four months earlier. President Roosevelt and the Pentagon brass were reeling as the Japanese were marching through Asia and the Pacific. They needed to do something — anything — to rattle the enemy. So they came up with a plan.
Why not load some U.S. Army Air Corps B-25 bombers aboard an aircraft carrier — the USS Hornet — strip them down to just the fuel and the bombs they need, teach the pilots how to launch a land-based bomber off a floating carrier deck and then have that squadron of planes drop its ordnance on targets in Japan? Lt. Col. James Doolittle would command the raid.
Edward Saylor served as a flight engineer-gunner aboard one of those planes.
He completed the mission at great risk, completed 28 more years in the Air Force before retiring and lived a long and happy life.
He received the Medal of Honor for his supreme bravery.
Sadly, he is just one more of a diminishing number of The Greatest Generation who went off to war to defeat tyranny. Of the 16 million or so men and women who served in World War II, fewer than 2 million are left. They are dying at a rapid rate daily.
Those of us who came up after them owe these men and women everything.
Rest in peace, Lt. Col. Saylor.
Thank you.