Remembering The Good War: Minnesota's Greatest Generation

War’s Legacy: Coming Back, Going Back, Reflecting Back

In 1945, American society sped ahead after nearly four years of war. Prosperity and conformism became benchmarks of the s, and difficult memories from the World War II years could drift into the past. After all, the U.S. mainland suffered no tangible destruction during the war, and its physical and psychological casualties remained largely out of the public eye. Hollywood motion pictures provide an excellent window onto cultural values of the period. Films such as Sands of Iwo Jima (), starring John Wayne, and To Hell and Back (), featuring decorated combat veteran–turned–actor Audie Murphy, were highgrossing movies in their respective years. One reason for their success at the box office was that each presented World War II as a heroic and worthwhile crusade, demanding sacrifices but resulting in bloodless wounds and, the audience knew, assured victory. The troubling costs of seared landscapes and broken lives remained out of camera range. The myth of the Good War had taken hold, to be further developed through the mid-s in such Hollywood epics as The Longest Day (). But, as the memories collected here make evident, individual lives are more complex than those of characters in an epic film. Veterans 267 War’s Legacy Coming Back, Going Back, Reflecting Back [7] and civilians faced difficulties, some serious, but also found reasons to celebrate. As time passed and this generation aged, some veterans were seized by a desire to revisit those places where they had been soldiers; their motivations varied, as did their experiences upon returning to former battlefields. Finally, all members of this generation sought to put the war into perspective, to try to express what it meant—and what it still means. Coming Back: Lifetimes of Adjustment While men and women, veterans and civilians, faced an array of immediate postwar adjustments, the long-term realities could be equally as daunting. The war was over, but it was not something easily boxed up or forgotten—even though some attempted to do just that. For many combat veterans, images of war recurred in dreams or nightmares, inescapable and troubling episodes from war’s reality. Disquieting adjustments for both civilians and military personnel could include a veteran’s ongoing search for the answer as to why he was alive when those around him had been killed, a war widow’s struggle to move on and make a new life, and a medically deferred man’s lifelong guilt over not being able to serve. Such stories generated few if any headlines, were certainly not Hollywood fare, were easily overlooked as the war receded further and further into the past. But not all was bleak: far from it. A distinct sense of excitement and opportunity came with war’s end and discharge from service. Many described an energy, an impatience to move ahead; one veteran who spent three years in the Coast Guard summed up these shared feelings when he remarked, “there weren’t enough hours in each day to get done all that I wanted to do.” Businesses were started, money was made, careers put in motion. For couples, home life moved toward a sense of normalcy as men returned after long periods away. A St. Paul homemaker and mother put it simply: “We were both so happy to be back, you know, be together. . . . We were just living for that.” One might suspect this account to be romanticized, but scores of recollections display a remarkable consistency; only the particulars change. R e m e m b e r i n g t h e G o o d W a r 268 ✦ ✦ ✦ Frederick Branham of Cloquet was an army infantryman with the 70th Infantry Division; he saw combat in France and Germany in 1945. My wife says I left as an eighteen-year-old and came home a fifty-five-year-old. [pauses three seconds] That’s pretty sobering, you know. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of my time in service, one facet or the other of it. I also think how fortunate I am. . . . I’ve grown more mellow, I guess; I don’t fly off the handle like I used to. The first two years I was home must have been terrible for my wife, Dorothy, and my children. I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t function real well. I just, well, I just can’t explain it...