Today is Veterans Day, which is set aside to honor all those who served in American wars. Yet again, however, we need to stop a moment to pay special attention to those who served during World War II.

Though it ended more than 60 years ago, in 2004 there were still nearly 4 million veterans of World War II. But they are leaving us at an alarming rate.

They are in their 80s or 90s now and, sadly, on many days their obituaries appear on the pages of this and other newspapers across the country. When they depart, so do the attributes and first-hand experiences that made their generation different.

My father, who served in the Navy in the South Pacific, turned 83 a few weeks ago. My brother, sister and I paid a visit, and he wanted to stop at the American Legion for a short time.

He has trouble walking and ordinarily would need some help getting on the stool at the bar. But, with his picture on the wall as a commander of the post back in 1959, he wouldn’t hear of it.

``I’m supposed to be a tough guy in here,’’ he said as he pushed away my attempts to help him into a seat.

Veterans Day originated in 1919 as Armistice or V.E. (Victory in Europe) Day, to mark the anniversary of the end of the World War on Nov. 11, 1918. Congress called for an annual observance with a law passed in 1926, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938.

It took only a few years, however, before the label ``World War’’ became obsolete. Germany, Italy and Japan took care of that, and made war the defining moment for a generation of men, women and children.

And those veterans were tough, whether on bombing missions over Germany, marching across Europe after D-Day or pushing the Japanese navy back toward Asia. Many of their living stories of courage, life-and-death struggle and tragedy, however, are being lost forever as they succumb to old age.

Quite recently, on the same day on our obituary page, I had to pause more than once after coming upon references to the war. I read of a Navy veteran whose ship was torpedoed in the Pacific and who spent three days on a raft before being rescued, and about a man in an armored division who was in the Battle of the Bulge.

Have the details from those experiences been preserved with family members’ memories? Were they written down and kept alive for descendents?

Numerous veterans in this area have been involved with our newspaper stories over the past decades as we have tried to present real experiences to illustrate the anniversaries of such events as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Okinawa, Iwo Jima and the war’s end on both fronts.

But they were just a small fraction of the dwindling number of veterans out there.

My father has never wanted to talk much about his experiences in the New Hebrides during the war. I know a lot of other veterans have felt the same way. But I think it’s important to document their memories, not so much as history but as a record of human life as lived down in the pits where the history books don’t descend.

And let’s face it. War is the pits, or, as most veterans of World War II would say, ``it’s hell.’’

It was hell on Earth for millions of men and women, but that’s all the more reason to keep it alive. In addition, the war was about love and friendship, character and leadership, fear and laughter.

Let’s not let those experiences die. Veterans could write them down, tell them to family members or privately dictate them to a recording device such as a cassette or CD recorder.

It is important for people today and those of the future to understand a young person’s involvement in World II and be aware of some of the experiences that made the generation so great _ and tough.

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Cary Brunswick, managing editor of The Daily Star, can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.