Best Years of our Lives: when the boys are home again movies

[p51]

Some of these post-War films are quite difficult for me to watch. They have a way of blowing out any pre-conceived notions of America at the time.

Yeah. I get really sick of hearing people talking about the Vietnam generation and how they never got a “victory parade.” Apparently, people must not know that there were next to NO victory parades after WW2. How can you have a parades when almost everyone served? Who’d watch it? The units disbanded after the war ended and people trickled home one at a time. I only know of two actual unit-sized parades in the US after the war, and only one of them was of a decent size, the one in New York City in 1946 where the 82nd marched with Gavin at the head of the column.
The vets got home, had to adjust with no mechanism in place to help them out and NOBODY wanted to hear anything about how traumatized they had been after all that. Back then, you had to suck it up and drive on because that’s what men were supposed to do. Period. I’ve had dozens of WW2 vets over the years tell me how they had to suffer alone with all those horrible memories and nightmares.

 

[cco23i]

The big difference I think is the fellows from WW2 had a month long boat ride back to the U.S and the troops in Viet Nam had a 12 to 16 hour plane ride, seems a longer time to "relax" from the rigors and horrors of combat.

Scott

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Well, I am going to bump this thread. A year later.

I just started watching a movie with Jane Russell in it called Young Widow. It was made in 1946. It shows lots of soldiers and sailors coming home from the war on trains. So far I have not watched much of it, but it may be of interest.