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Chargement... Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War IIpar Thomas Childers
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One of our great national myths surrounds the men and women who fought in World War II. The Greatest Generation, we're told, fought heroically, then returned to America happy, healthy and well-adjusted. They quickly and cheerfully went on with rebuilding their lives. Here, 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 an entirely new picture of the war's aftermath. Drawing on government documents, interviews, oral histories and diaries, he reveals that 10,000 veterans a month were being diagnosed with psycho-neurotic disorder (now known as PTSD). Alcoholism, homelessness, and unemployment were rampant, leading to 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. This book is a stark reminder that the price of war is unimaginably high.--From publisher description. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)940.531History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War II Social, political, economic history; HolocaustClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Childers chronicles three families in this book. Willis Allen and his crumbling marriage to Grace after he returns from the war with no legs. Mildred and Tom Childers (the author's own parents) who are unable to re-establish trust in each other after recriminations of infidelity and the death of Mildred's beloved brother in Germany. Michael Gold and his long-term PTSD that would cause him to break out in violent rages and jeopardize his medical career. It's a fascinating, intimate and ultimately very revealing book that brings home the fact that when you've lived through a war, for you, it never ends. Even those who succeeded in coming home and starting fresh were haunted by dreams or "temper tantrums" and divorce rates for veterans skyrocketed after the war ended. The men came back angry, the women didn't trust them, and both sides struggled to form deeper connections.
This is not a happy book. The people who populate it are desperately unhappy much of the time, going through the motions of a Norman Rockwell existence that never materialized for them. But it's also a truly beautiful and haunting narrative. None of the characters is perfect, but there is such a depth of humanity in them, and each one deserves your sympathy and empathy. I can't imagine what it would be like to come home after two high-stress years of war abroad, with very little contact during that time, and try to take up the fragile threads of a marriage once more. I don't know how I would react to the realization that the happy, tall and handsome young man you married is now permanently disabled and terrifyingly angry about it. World War II affected the soldiers that fought in it, but as the author says, some of the scars were even deeper for the ones left behind on the home front.
It is difficult to read a book like this, but also very powerful. The Greatest Generation in the next few decades will have completely disappeared from living memory. It is an injustice to them and all their trials and tribulations to remember them only as an idealized group that did everything perfectly and lived a grand life. They struggled and fought every day to overcome the damage the war did to them and Childers' book is an excellent homage to them. Highly recommended. ( )