They’ve been called members of the Greatest Generation. Without complaint or protest, young American men by the millions were hurtled into harm’s way overseas to defend this country in the early to mid-1940s. Now, more than six decades later and with Veterans Day 2011 rapidly approaching on Nov. 11, time is running out to honor our American veterans for their sacrifice. A recent trip to Washington, D.C. by two local heroes from the Peninsula has underscored the point. In 2004, nine years after the dedication of the Korean War Memorial and 22 years after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the country finally got around to honoring its World War II veterans with a similar tribute. On Oct. 16, Ken and Howard Harvey, two Ocean Beach brothers, returned from the nation’s capital, part of a group of 30 local veterans honored for their service with an all-expenses-paid weekend to witness the World War II Memorial. The trip was sponsored by the Honor Flight Network, which has provided airfare, meals and lodging for more than 120 veterans here, said Dave Smith, who chairs Honor Flight San Diego. While the number of surviving World War II veterans continues to dwindle, their stories of gutsy determination and wartime horrors — and their ultimate victory against the Axis Forces — abound. Here are the stories of two such heroes: the Harvey brothers of Ocean Beach. Just months after his graduation from Point Loma High School, Ken Harvey was still a teenager when he got his draft notice from the U.S. Army in early 1943. He followed his big brother, Howard, a Pointer from the class of 1940, who had been drafted one month earlier. Ken was assigned to the 75th Infantry Division and slogged a two-man, water-cooled machine gun while defending the northwestern flank during the Battle of the Bulge, one of the largest, most famous and bloodiest battles of World War II, fending off screaming mimis, German burp guns and a bitter winter in the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium toward the end of World War II. “My feet were cold all the time, but I managed to keep my toes wiggling,” Ken reflected before his Washington trip to the World War II Memorial. Howard, meanwhile, put on skis and negotiated the roughest of terrain in the mountains of Italy and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as a member of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, where he joined the likes of Bob Dole, a recipient of two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star with an Oak Cluster, who would later go on to become a senator from Kansas. “We were like a great big ski club. We had some of the greatest skiers in the country in our division,” said Howard, who served as a radio technician before the trip. “Nowadays, you don’t do that in a war.” It was Howard who found out about the Honor Flight Network, which arranges trips monthly as funding allows and takes the veterans on a first-come, first-serve basis. Some 300 local veterans, now mostly in their 80s and 90s, are on a waiting list. One veteran died just a week before a recent trip. “That shows you the urgency,” said Smith, who founded the local chapter last year and hosts the trips. Neither Harvey brother had been to the nation’s capital before. For years, Howard attended reunions for his outfit, held every three years throughout the country and in Europe. “There aren’t many guys left now,” he said Oct. 13, the day before the Honor Flight takeoff last month. Ken Harvey, who uses a walker but still golfs weekly at the age of 87, was so excited about the Washington, D.C. trip he decided to skip the greens the day before takeoff to protect his back. “That wasn’t easy,” he said. The Harveys were told to meet at Lindbergh Field at 5 a.m. sharp on Oct. 14 for the weekend trip. Smith arrived at least a half-hour early, and typically, “half the guys are already there, ready to go,” he said. “I called one guy a week (before) and he was already packed,” Smith said. Fomer Sen. Dole is a big supporter of the Honor Flight Network and often appears at the memorial though he had not confirmed his appearance this particular time, Smith said. But when the veterans arrived, Dole was there with his wife, Elizabeth. And there was one more surprise in store for Howard. “[Dole] asked, ‘Where’s that guy from the 10th Mountain Division?’ Then he made a beeline to my uncle,” said Jim Harvey, Ken’s son. When Ken and Howard flew back to San Diego on Oct. 16, Honor Flight San Diego arranged for active military members in uniform to greet them at the airport. “They were treated like rock stars when they were there and when they came back,” said Jim. “My uncle [Howard] was just beaming.” Of the 16 million who served in World War II, there are only about 2 million who are still alive. Some have estimated that 1,000 are dying every day throughout the world. Sadly, two days after returning from the Honor Flight trip to the World War II Memorial in Washington, Howard suffered a heart attack. He was doing well at first, and was able to get up and walk around the day he was transferred from the hospital to Parkview Hospice in Del Cerro. But when Ken and Jim arrived the next day, the hospice staff informed them Howard’s condition had declined. Ken spent the night in the room with his brother, sharing a bedroom for the first time since boyhood. “That generation, they weren’t brought up to say, ‘I love you’ between men. But they got to talking about how glad they were to have been brothers, how glad they were to have made the trip together,” Jim said. Jim recalled that Howard told him how he would recite the 23rd Psalm for strength during wartime, so he got the idea to lead a prayer. “I started flubbing it up, so Howard, who was going in and out of consciousness, picked it right up where I left off and finished it, all the time squeezing my hand strong and tight,” Jim recalled. Howard died a few hours later. A memorial for Howard Harvey will be held Nov. 4 at 11 a.m. at Point Loma Presbyterian Church, 2128 Chatsworth Blvd.