There are a lot of disappointing homecomings that veterans talk about. I remember reading Claude Anshin Thomas' in "At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace," about how uneventful and dissatisfying and not like he thought it would be, when he came back injured from Vietnam. Then I remember reading Pat, the protagonist here of "Eyewitness to Combat" share about his in the same way, in the piece called "Winners Go to Harvard, Losers Go to Vietnam," linked here. But Eddie's is the one that currently rips my heart out. Listen to the plainness and the plaintiveness of his language, and think about a man who went from being a teenage paratrooper from Alabama, jumping with the 82nd Airborne, to being a veteran with an astounding seven Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars, a Distinguished Service Cross, and two Presidential Unit citations after his five European campaigns and year as a prisoner of war. Read his remarkable retelling of his own homecoming. Sad to say, it only got worse.
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"My homecoming was understandably sad. All the real friends I ever had were the Jokers; all dead now at Anzio, and dozens of other bloody battlefields.
My first night in the states I was in Washington, D.C. It was a rainy night. The rain was a thick mist really, with just enough breeze to give it life and the myriad of lights did many beautiful things to the mist. If Washington had ever looked prettier it must have been very long ago.
The unaccustomed lights dazzled me with an awesome foreboding. I was sure the bombers would come. I thought peace was all a gigantic hoax! And that war like some evil spirit was lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to pounce on me again. I walked the streets with a sad loneliness that was as absolute as creation's first dawn. Loneliness and peace was breaking my heart into little pieces. I had not the capability to cope with my loneliness, nor the ability to cope with or comprehend peace -- an incredible, awesome thing to me.
As I walked I instinctively surveyed my surroundings with the practical curiosity of the combat infantryman. Manholes became foxholes, unobstructed streets would afford good fields of fire, car parks became tank parks, etc.
As I walked, lonely and broken-hearted for my comrades forever lost to me, every awesome noise of war just echoed, reechoed in my mind and heart. I cried, wept. Every once in a while I would lift my head and catch a full face of rain to hid the fact that I was crying." -- Eddie Livingston, decorated war hero, World War II veteran, former P.O.W. The illustration is by his niece, Pam Baker, with whom he went to live, shortly before he died.
