WWII: A Chronicle of Soldiering by James Jones

Author:James Jones [Jones, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 1975-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE HOME FRONT

The New York Times on Christmas Day, 1943, a Saturday, carried headlines that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had been named as Commander for the European invasion, and from that time on, every American began to wait for it to start.

We Americans had always known we were going to win the war for the Europeans. Now there wasn’t any question. If there had ever been any doubts (and no one believed now that there ever had been) these were dispelled by the news that the invasion was on the way. American production was winning—had already won—the war. (Encased in its gold wreath, the coveted army-navy “E” for Efficiency proved that, didn’t it?) Hadn’t old Joe Stalin himself toasted American production at Teheran as the winner?

To the overseas men who returned—the wounded, injured, sick—perhaps nothing was quite the slap in the face as the vast and sanguine confidence of the home “front” after mid-1943. It was a little like the battered dogface, who, hearing “Blood & Guts” Georgie Patton being extolled muttered into his beer: “Yeah, his guts and our blood.” It was a little like that with the “E” award: “Yeah. Their ‘E’ and our ‘B.’” It did not give him any great charge to see large color photos of pretty but unfuckable-looking young ladies sewing up huge flags and recruitment posters at the Quartermaster Depot in Philadelphia.

Another thing that shocked, and even rankled, was the richness of everybody. True, we overseas men had read all about it in the home papers that got up to us, but even the hyperbole of newsprint had not done it justice. True that the thirties had been lean years, and that everybody was happy to be back at work full swing, and that everybody was belaboring it for all they were worth. Who could blame anybody for making everything he could out of such a good thing? (After all, who knew how long it would last?) But the sheer magnitude of it shocked. And there were moments when it seemed they were truly making it off our red meat and bone. Rankled or not, the old crippled veteran was not above taking advantage of it every chance he got. But in the end, about all he could do was to cadge free drinks by telling gory made-up war stories to businessmen and their mistresses in bars, and that soon palled.

We retreads upset everybody. Retread was one of those words and phrases like Kilroy which swept like wildfire across the globe into every theater. It was a term originally coined by some soldier in World War II, when retread auto tires came into usage, to designate the used-up combat soldier who was sent back through the mill again. Later, in the Korean war, it came to mean reservists called back to service. But we had it first. And at home, the retread was like a man who has survived some epidemic, and been shipped out of the disaster area to a care center.

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