In one sense, Daniel Chirot learned about international politics as a baby: Born in Vichy France during World War II, he (with his family) evaded German roundups of Jews. Chirot made it to the United States when he was 6. This month he retires from his professorship at the University of Washington after 45 years of teaching and research. 

Fifth in a series on war veterans

Over Regensburg, Germany, flak not only hit the plane, but tore into a crew member and the chief pilot’s thigh. As the pilot tried to stanch bleeding, co-pilot Bill Patten took over the controls.

Patten, 26, was a pilot with the 15th Air Force. He had a wife and daughter back home in Kansas City, Mo. Once in a while he’d read a Bible someone had sent to him, but as a not-too-religious military man, he took little comfort in it.

Fourth in a series on war veterans

She had been married four days when her husband left for war in 1944. She didn’t know where he was going, and when—or if—she’d ever see him again. Barbara Larson, 94, shrugs and smiles: “That’s just the way it was back then.”

Second in a series on war veterans

The 19-year-old Marine dug through volcanic black beach sand, carving out a foxhole to protect himself from a terrifying barrage of Japanese artillery. He abandoned his rifle when its muzzle embedded in the choking sand, rendering it useless, and picked up another from a nearby dead infantryman. His most pressing thought: survival.

In this column over the past three decades I’ve mentioned five times a novel of warning, José Gironella’s The Cypresses Believe in God. Sadly, it’s out of print: Since my last recommendation I’ve learned the least expensive used copy you can buy costs $64, which is steep even for 997 pages. So, as a public service, here are key quotations from the book set in 1931-1936 Spain, as that country polarized its way to a civil war.

The first Sunday after Labor Day is National Grandparents Day, which has its own official flower: the forget-me-not. If your grandparents are still alive, have you thanked them? If they’re deceased, do you honor them?

For Christmas 1961 my mother bought me a nun’s suit from the St. Anthony Messenger magazine. 

To St. Joseph’s Church I would make my pilgrimage, pry open the heavy wooden portals; dip fingers in holy water fonts; part the stained glass doors across the narthex; genuflect when reaching the communion rail; kneel before flickering votive candles; and beg with the earnestness of a 9-year-old zealot that the impassive Virgin oblige me with the sign I sought—a raised eyelid, the slightest finger movement. 

She declined.