Kings Point is the only service academy to send its undergraduates into battle. In the half century since WWII ended, there have been some half steps toward fairness. In l988, the Secretary of the Air Force, who administers the G.I. Bill Improvement Act, ruled that merchant mariners who could document 180 days of service between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day would be deemed veterans. That's an improvement, but it still leaves out thousands or merchant mariners. The American Battle Monuments Commission the agency with the duty to memorialize all of America's war dead, refuses to place the names of some 9,000 merchant mariners killed or missing in action on any of its monuments.
Time passes, bureaucracy obfuscates, damn few care.
B.D. Hammer, who lives in Brooklyn, is executive director of the Battle of the Atlantic Historical Society.