Binecon, like you, I never refer to that generation as 'the greatest', simply because the genuine hardships they endured were not by real choice.
That doesn't diminish their accomplishments though.
And I too feel that the conscientious objectors - not the draft dodgers who got daddy to keep them at college - but the folks who went to jail or fled to Canada for their beliefs, were the true heroes of the Vietnam conflict.
The pacifist Lytton Strachey is one of my personal heroes.

And Sore, like you it troubles me that there is so little acknowledgement of the Soviet Union's decisive contribution to defeating the Nazis and the mind-staggering losses they endured in repulsing the invaders. 20 million Russians killed.