At age 18, I was battling my high school principal for the inalienable American right to be a teenage jerk. When Bob Farst was 18, he was flying 40 missions in a B-24 in the South Pacific.

I met him recently at a monthly gathering of Air Force veterans. Just a few years ago, their group filled the top deck of Mike Fink's riverboat restaurant in Covington. These days they barely fill four tables. There were 15 on the day we had lunch.

Let me introduce them:

Landon Robinson flew 35 missions over Germany in a B-24, then served in Korea and Vietnam.

Tony Fasano flew a C-47, dropping paratroopers and towing gliders into France on D-Day.

Ed Amann saved pilots on an air-sea rescue team in the Pacific.

Hike Bogosian was an MP in WWII and Korea.

Jim Pragar was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and other medals in WWII, then came home to serve his city as a Cincinnati cop.

John Klette, well into his 80s now, still practices law, but his close friends know he's one of the real heroes of WWII.

Bill Whitson was a pilot and then lead navigator in a B-24 that was shot down by a German ME-262 jet. Nine were killed, three got out. He served out the war in a prison camp.

And then there's Frank "Half A Mission'' Heekin, who was shot down in his first mission in a B-17 and spent the next 11 months as a POW.

There were more. But you get the idea. Today, they're nearly as rare as one of those vintage B-17s we sometimes hear rumbling overhead on its way to an air show. They're the greatest warriors of the 20th century. But they are steadily fading away - and so is the moral clarity they brought to our country.

At lunch, they joked and told war stories and passed around pictures. I never heard a word of complaint or even a single grumble of grievance.

They get choked up when they talk about the friends they made and lost 60 years ago, as if it were just yesterday.

But their war was an adventure, and they make no apologies about the thrill of being young, alive, right in the middle of the modern world's greatest showdown between good and evil.

Klette said they "even enjoyed flying under war conditions.''

As I listened, I wondered how we could so easily forget their sacrifice and the price paid for our freedom. Today, people who are not even asked to sacrifice more than a dime per gallon more at the gas pumps are ready to wave the white flag in the war on terrorism. They are itching to give up and leave this rematch between good and evil to someone else. Meaning our children.

During WWII, news of the war was censored with a sharp pair of scissors. The only stories that came home were tales of heroism, valor and perseverance.

The news is still censored. But now the bravery is filtered out and we hear only about the crimes, mistakes and failures.

"I don't like what the papers say,'' said Amann, who was one of the first soldiers into Japan. "It burns me up.''

Others said they're fed up with the media's "liberal daily pounding'' on the president and the war on terrorism.

Their generation went off to war without an "exit strategy'' and grew up fast.

It looks like the anti-war crowd I ran with in high school is still stuck in the teenage jerk stage.

We will miss the WWII veterans. Maybe more than we know.

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.