Soldier From the War Returning, by Thomas Childers

Soldier From the Ear Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming From World War II, by Thomas Childers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009
294 pages, plus 8 pages of B&W photos, Acknowledgments, Selected Primary Sources, Notes, Index
Library: 940.53 CHI

Description
One of our most enduring national myths involves the men and women who fought in World War II, the so-called Good War. The Greatest Generation, we're told, fought heroically, then returned to America happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. They married in droves, ramped up the economy, drank their cocktails, and quickly and cheerfully went about the business of rebuilding their lives.

In this shocking and hauntingly beautiful book, the historian Thomas Childers shatters that myth. He interweaves the intimate story of three families - including his own - with a decade's worth of research to paint a dramatically different picture of the war's aftermath.

Drawing on government documents, interviews, oral histories, and diaries, he reveals the true cost of the Second World War. In 1946, ten thousand veterans a month were diagnosed with psychoneurotic disorder (now known as PTSD). Alcoholism, homelessness, and unemployment were rampant, leading to domestic violence, abuse, and a skyrocketing divorce rate.

Many veterans bounced back, but their struggle has been lost in a wave of nostalgia that threatens to undermine a new generation of returning soldiers.

Novelistic in its telling and impeccably researched, Childer's book is a stark reminder that the price of war is unimaginably high. The consequences are human, not just political, and the toll can stretch across generations.

Table of Contents
Part I: "When This Bloody War is Over"
1. Anticipation
2. Shock
3. Anxiety

Part II: "Soldiers from the War Returning"
4. As if Nothing Had Ever Happened
5. Open Wounds
6. "It's Been a Long, Long Time"

Part III: Echoes of War
7. "The War's Over, Soldier"
8. Aftershocks
9. Picking up the Pieces

Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Selected Primary Sources
Notes
Index

The three soldiers profiled:
Michael Gold
Tom Childers [author's father]
Willis Allen

Photos
Michael as an air cadet, 1942
Michael in training in Texas, 1942
Michael on his first trip to London, Dec 1943
MIchael's mug shots at Dulag Luft, Jan 1944
MIchael after his liberation in 1945
Michael and Linda Gold today
Mildred and Tom during their courtship, 1940
Tom in London, 1943
Mildred and Tom on his return, Aug 1945
Mildred, Tom and baby 1947
Mildred, Tom and son at Fort Benning 1950
Tom, Mildred, unidentified man and 2 unidentified women in Boca Raton, 1970
Willis in Naples, 1944
Jusy and Willis (now legless) in front of Atlantic City apartment, July 1946
Willis, Grace, with Eileen and Ed Fannon, 1946
Willis Grace, Willis' brother Alvin and his wife, 1951
Willis, and children Gary and Judy, 1949
Willis, Grace, Gary and Judy 1956