I thought it was interesting that The Greatest Generation Comes Home discussed the men from wars such as the Revolutionary War.  I’ve come to discover from this class that each generation of soldiers had significant effects on each other.  They set presidents on expectable treatment, medical services, and war tactics.  History was truly relevant and important to them.  When it was ignored, the same mistakes were made.  For example, the men of the Revolutionary War  made it clear that pensions were vital to keep the peace of the veterans.  A few wars down the line the government started to honor their services with money, but progress was slow.

I was impressed by the bravery these women had. Even though they were in different wars and had different duties in those wars, they carried the same courage. As Rhonda Cornum described her capture and imprisonment in a POW camp she told her interviewer, matter-of-factly, that her plane had been shot down, and only two others onboard survived. She was only the second woman POW in the Persian Gulf War, yet she didn’t blink an eye as she described the lack of medical attention her broken limbs were given and the food they were given. Regina H. Schiffman was an army nurse, not a combat soldier, but like Ms. Cornum, she was an officer. While Cornum fought in the front lines, Schiffman cared for the heavy casualties that were brought in. Not only did this army nurse help soldiers in Korea, but she also was sent to Vietnam. This was dedication I did not see from the men we read about.

I think the cold war is one of the most interesting of American conflicts because it is so different from others. People who lived during this time feared for nuclear war. Their fears were fueled by politicians and the media. It must have been a uncertain era to grow up in. The thought of Nuclear War is certianly scary. In a way we still face the same fears today with countries in the middle east and Asia having weapons of mass destruction.

I found an interesting irony with the Korean and Vietnam wars. I wonder if it is a conscience that we aren’t taught about the wars were didn’t win. It was frustrating to me in middle and high school that my history classes taught me nothing about these two conflicts even though they were important to American history. I also wonder if there is a correlation between the tombstones of fallen Korean War soldiers reading “Korean Conflict” and the fact that we never won this war. I’ve noticed also that tombstones of soldiers of fought in Vietnam read “Vietnam Conflict” rather than Vietnam War. I think that “conflict” is too light of word for what the Vietnam and Korean conflicts were, which were wars.

More knowledge about Agent Orange would have prevented many deaths and defects to American Veterans and Vietnamese. The fact that the government used clearly bias sources for their research of Agent Orange and tried to deny for years any negative effects would have outraged me as an effected veteran. I can better understand now why veterans felt so isolated. They were not given a warm homecoming, denied proper medical care, and later stood by and watched the American government welcome home prisoners from Iran years later with the compassion they should have received.

I gasped out loud as I read the atrocities of the Veterans Administration hospital. Kovic wrote that his nurse told him he was crazy, his doctor always called him by the wrong name, and he was left lying in his own excrement for hours. “I asked for a bath. I asked for vomit to be wiped up from the floor. I asked to be treated like a human being.” The hostility that Kovic and his fellow veterans faced from the police sickened me. To be beaten and have his metals ripped from his chest my the force that is supposed to protect and serve him is simply atrocious.

I noticed that there were a number of religious references that might be useful to examine. The opening scene in the book is the chaos of a battle. The men are crying for Jesus and their mothers. On pages 39 Kovic says that he stayed in the hospital in Vietnam for “seven days and seven nights,” a common length of time repeatedly used in the bible. The author also describes his Catholic upbringing and how influences his childhood. He said that when he was a kid that he “loved God more than anything else in the world and [that he] prayed to Him and the Virgin Mary and Jesus and all the saints to be a good boy and a good American.”

The characters all had difficulties returning to their families. Fred was bothered that his new wife identified him as a soldier. When he first put on civilian clothes she said he didn’t look like himself without his uniform on. Al felt somewhat isolated from his children because when he returned they had grown up. Homer was bothered by this families awkwardness about his hooks. His little sister staring and the guilt his father felt from cleaning his pipe were just a few things that bothered Homer.

The presence that blacks had in the military was much more substantial in WWII compared to the other wars we’ve discussed so far. Their involvement led to greater respect and opportunities they had never been offered before. The Greatest Generation Comes Home cited that the 761st Tank Destroyer Battalion, made up of all African American men, preformed impressively against “heated” opposition in France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. He black airmen of the 99th Fighter Squadron racked up eighty-eight Distinguished Flying Crosses (116). After the war black college enrollment and the registration of black voters rose dramatically. Black veterans such as Medger Evers and Amzie Moore became advocates of civil rights for African Americans. The story of Dorie Miller as told in Wages Of War was another example of black heroism. Although it was not glorified in the 1940s the 2001 film “Pearl Harbor”, respected actor Cuba Gooding Jr. portrays the heroic Miller.