American heroes are everywhere. They have jobs, they have families, spouses, children and grandchildren. They take out the trash, throw the Frisbee for the dog, complain about the unusually cold spring and change the oil in their daughter's car. An entire generation of WWII veterans have grown accustomed to a conventional lifestyle, while harboring memories of harrowing experiences-- the conventional soldier's lifestyle-- and every so often, the rest of us get to peek through the window and see America's greatness.

In the Wall Street Journal's weekend edition, historical author James D. Hornfischer shared memories of his intimate encounters with WWII veterans while researching for his books.

"Bob Hagen knew the worst of the battle while serving on destroyers in the Pacific during World War II. He saw action at Guadalcanal. He was the gunnery officer on the USS Johnston when it was hit hard in the Battle Of Samar near the Philippines on October 25, 1944. For two hours he directed the ship's main guns, firing gamely at an overwhelming enemy. A Japanese shell turned two two officers standing on the flying bridge, 10 feet below his station, into a pink mist. When the order to abandon ship came across, Hagen found himself floating in shark-infested waters watching the Johnston sink. His best friend, the ship's doctor, Robert Browne, was still aboard, refusing to seek safety until all the wounded had been evacuated. Hagen saw Browne re-entering the wardroom when a large shell from a Japanese warship followed him inside. At that moment, the war crystallized as a hard-to-discuss horror.

Hagen was a hard man, and proud. Even 60 years out, he was still a bit curmudgeonly talking about the dramatic naval history he had been part of. But recounting Browne's death to me in 2001, a man who had fought heroically in a suicidal defense of a small U.S. carrier task unit supporting the invasion of Levte could only swallow back his sadness. That look in his eye and break in his voice took me past the veneer of his ever-ready chagrin and bravado. They took me to the things that have never left him.

Bob Hagen died in 2009, and the rest of his generation is soon going where we all must go. About 1.8 million World War II veterans remain alive today."

Hornfischer explains the power of these in-person encounters:

"For those of us who have never served in uniform, it's easy to see World War II as a grand, sweeping drama, featuring actors large and small driven by a sense of overriding mission, all sins and failings vindicated by victory. Yet for the veterans I meet, the war is often about something else entirely. Any talk bring them back to a single, pervasive memory sequence: a moment of impossible decision or helplessness when, through their action or inaction, they believe, a comrade paid the eternal price. They can't talk about the war without reliving their powerlessness to influence its predations, without revealing how it changed them."

Their stories change us as well:

"Otto Schwartz served on the USS Houston in the early days of World War II. The heavy cruiser was sunk off Java on February 28, 1942, and Schwarz spent more than three years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. When he returned to New Jersey in 1945 he was a different man than the one who had enlisted in January 1941 to escape an abusive home life. I met him in 2004; his eyes were blind, but he could still clearly see Penn Station on the day he came back. 'It was the loneliest moment of my life. I absolutely didn't know what to do. Even though I was going home to my family, I had just left my family that had kept each other alive for so long.'

A taxicab left Schwarz outside his house in Newark, and he stood on the nighttime street, watching the silhouette of his mother in a lighted window. He hesitated to knock on the door. The life that lay behind it was unrecognizable to him. It was a foreign country. Schwarz is gone now-- he died in 2006-- but I won't soon forget his sightless eyes projecting this vivid personal landscape."

Hornfischer describes the most powerful interview he ever did:

"[It] lasted about three hours with a man who began by saying that he was not willing to talk to me. James F. "Bud" Comet had harbored bitter grudges for six decades.

He was a 19-year old enlisted sailor on the USS Samuel B. Roberts when it was sunk in battle in 1944-- in the same engagement that claimed Bob Hagen's USS Johnston. Death came for the Roberts in the form of a 1,500-pound shell from a Japanese battleship. It opened a hole in her side large enough to fit a tractor-trailer, and the surviving crew piled into life rafts. Mr. Comet's raft was a few hundred yards from the ship when he turned and saw a surviving crewman stuck in the jagged wreckage of the ship's cavernous open wound.

The young officer who had seniority in the raft refused to return and save the man. But Mr. Comet aggressively pressed his case and prevailed on the group. They paddled back to the sinking ship, and Mr. Comet entered the hold to make the rescue. Heroic though his actions were, they seemed to upset his captain. Mr. Comet, after all, had breached the chain of command. The skipper offered him a medal but declined to acknowledge the dramatic particulars that underlay it. 'We weren't a perfect crew,' he told me, 'but we were a good crew.' Mr. Comet refused the medal. He wanted something more valuable still: simple recognition by his skipper of what had happened. He never got that, and it kept him from attending reunions for years...When Mr. Comet told me he still wondered whether his deceased father, somewhere in the beyond, was pleased with the way he'd conducted himself that day in 1944, I knew he deserved to have the last words in my first book."

The testimonies of these war veterans, as Hornfischer explains, is "like trying to squeeze water from a stone, [but] if you stay with it you can tap something deeply revealing." Bud Comet told him during the interview, "The thing that comes out of it is, if you survive, there's a purpose...You see why you survived. I feel like maybe God had other purposes for me." Hornfischer then concluded, "There was nothing trite in the manner of his expression. This was the considered conclusion of years, the product of the horror of survival at sea."

Another story comes from Hornfischer's interview of Robert Graff, a young officer on the light cruiser USS Atlanta, that sunk in action off Guadalcanal on November 13, 1942. After 65 years of silence, Mr. Graff opened up, and Hornfischer recalled Graff's memories of fellow shipmates:

"The USS Atlanta was a part of a 13-ship task force led by a revered naval hero, Rear Adm. Daniel J. Callaghan. His flagship, the USS San Francisco, was heavily hit in that battle. One of the last veterans still alive who witnessed Callaghan's words and actions is Eugene Tarrant, a black cook who worked virtually invisibly in the San Francisco's wardroom. As Mr. Tarrant told me in a 2007 interview, he heard, through a dumbwaiter door to the galley, Callaghan speaking in low, grave tones about the battle plan he would use that night off Guadalcanal. The task force's prospect against the powerful enemy squadron sounded grim, and Mr. Tarrant ventured to ask Callaghan whether the coming fight really was, as the admiral had said, suicide. 'Yes, it may be that,' replied Callaghan, who would die in action, 'but we are going in.'"

Sharing their memories must be convalescing for some. Across the country, Memorial Day tributes and veteran reunions bring together the men who remember each other as 18-year old sailors and soldiers. And after years of attending such events, Hornfischer reminds us of a sober reality:

"Some time in the far 2030s, when the World War II generation is gone altogether, the veterans will be available to us only at a certain distance-- via the finite record they left in life. Whatever materials the museums and libraries hold will offer a pale semblance of the energy that attended their living presence. At that point, we will all be in the shoes Otto Schwarz, the USS Houston survivor, standing on the curb outside his house at night, looking in. So close, but unable to go home."

Not until I read 1776 by David McCullough did I learn that America's first leaders had the ability to look at the world providentially, ignoring thoughts of self preservation and creeping ascendancy that ruined every other civilization.

How far we've come.

Then news broke that Usama Bin Laden was killed. Instantaneous celebrations broke out around the world. News reports continually confirmed details about the elite special forces, Department of Defense, CIA, and the Obama White House that worked together to end 10 years of dead man walking. This military operation, a shining example of leadership readily celebrated by all Americans, came at a good time.

The Heritage Foundation released a gruesome look at our fiscal situation. Our public education system has been systematically destroyed by socialist ideologues. Our domestic energy policy has gone to rabid dogs determined to undermine principles of energy independence. American culture continues to slide towards moral relativism and away from our intended characteristics of virtue, morality, and good character. We need leadership. Desperately.

But we need a leader in the truest form. We need a leader who can quell a military insurrection with gray hairs and near blindness. In 1775, George Washington accepted the command of America's armed forces (refusing the salary), but led the weary, underpaid and untrained military through a series of divine victories for eight years. As the war began to wind down, congressional neglect of the army increased:

"Washington's troops urged him to seize power from the politicians, but he repudiated every such suggestion. On March 15, 1783, Washington met his unhappy and rebellious officers at Newburgh, New York, to discourage them from marching on Congress over back pay, but the speech he had prepared proved unpersuasive. Washington decided to read a letter that he had received from a congressman. As he reached into his coat for his glasses, he said to his troops, 'Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my country.' In that single moment of sheer vulnerability, Washington's men were deeply moved, even shamed, and many were quickly in tears, now looking with great affection at this aging man who had led them through so much. Washington read the remainder of the letter, then left without saying a word, realizing their sentiments. His officers then cast a unanimous vote, essentially agreeing to the rule of Congress. Thus, the civilian government was preserved and the experiment of America continued."

No consideration for his own well being, Washington preserved the American experiment which has developed into a 235-year, unmatched, undefeated, uncompromising civilization. And last week, our assiduous military demonstrated once again that we are not a country that succumbs to forces pulling at the strings of self-indulgence. As Usama's body dissolves in the salty sea, we can celebrate this victory, thankful for true leadership, determined to bring that same courage and virtue back to the White House next year.