Coming Home: A History of War Veterans [rebroadcast]
This episode of BackStory with the American History Guys is a revised and updated version. You can listen to the original episode here.
“Facing the Future: Uncle Sam offers training to every man disabled in the service/See that your man takes it/Ask the Red Cross (1919 poster by C.F. Chambers”
This year, the number of suicides among active-duty military personnel hit an all-time high — an average of one per day. It’s another reminder of the psychological toll of war fighting, and of the challenges that all veterans confront when they return home. Has it always been so?
On today’s episode, the History Guys consider the treatment of war veterans from America’s previous wars. How much depends on the politics of the war – are vets only as popular as the wars they’ve fought in?
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Guests Include:
- Frank Earnest, past Commander of the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans
- Rebecca Jo Plant, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego
- Ed Tick, Director of Soldier’s Heart
Further Reading
Want to learn more about the history of war veterans? Check out a comprehensive list of sources that the History Guys put together to learn more.
Even Further
See the listener discussion that helped shape this show.
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Coming Home: Show Segments | BackStory with the American History Guys :
[...] The following are individual show segments that appeared in the BackStory episode “Coming Home: A History of War Veterans,” broadcast in November 2012. You can listen to the entire episode here. [...]
Quote -- November 12, 2012 @ 1:18 pm
Having access to the internet with Skype, email, texting and twitter it is hard to keep the home front and war front separated in a soldier’s mind today. Psychologically the two may become a blended reality reinforced by our real-time coverage of war. We need to help our soldiers learn to leave the war front and return to the home front.
QuoteThis was an excellent show. I was very interested in the topic, being a historian and a veteran of the war in Vietnam–and a big fan of your show, which I listen to virtually every Sunday morning from 6:00 to 7:00 on WAMU in Washington, D.C.
I have one correction and one clarification about what Brian Balogh said about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It is not “commonly referred to” as a “black gash.” That term was used by an opponent of Mia Lin’s design in 1982 and has seldom been heard since, as virtually all opposition to the memorial’s design evaporated after The Wall was built and people saw what a powerful and meaningful achievement the memorial is.
Secondly, it is not a memorial to the Vietnam War, as Prof. Balogh inferred. As its name implies, the memorial honors those who served in the war–both those who died there and those who survived and came home. It may sound like a trivial difference, but it is not.
So please remember, it’s not the “Vietnam Memorial” or the “Vietnam War Memorial.” It’s the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and was designed from the first to honor those who served in the war–not the war itself.
QuoteMy father, Albert Marshall, was in the Coast Guard in the early 1940s. Your discussion of African Americans’ treatment in the service during World War II reminded me of his sharing about his role on his ship. He was a library director at Winston-Salem Teachers College in NC when he went to war. While most of his fellow Black sailors served in jobs as cooks, janitors, laundrymen, etc., he was assigned to the ship newspaper. He vividly remembers his also writing letters for Black and white sailors who did not know how to write. In addition he wrote the letters and reports for the captain. Yet he suffered the same discriminatory remarks and treatment of all Black sailors at the time, and thus never publicly celebrated his veteran experiences. He returned, I believe using the GI bill for graduate study, and went on to become a leader in the American Library Association, library leadership at Lincoln University (MO) and Eastern Michigan University, and community historian and author before his death as a respected resisdent in MIchigan.
QuoteThank you so much for this story. It was amazingly touching and I am sending it off to my Dad.
QuoteAs ever, a terrific show. There was one thing, though, that admitted of qualification. Regarding the point that the term ‘antebellum’ is less historically useful, and makes less innate sense generally, than ‘postbellum,’ it’s hard to disagree. Except in reference to the period that inspired the word in the first place. The Civil War was a textbook case of an exception that proves the rule. After all, people saw it coming for over a generation. For the parties who were desperately trying to hold the Union together, the Compromises of 1820 and 1850 must have felt like dodging a bullet, on a scale that would make the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ look like a playground slide. From here, the moral would look to be that ‘antebellum’ is appropriate –uniquely, in its original context.
QuoteI’ve had this program sitting on my computer for about a year. Today i finally decided to listen to it. One thing i thought was missing (and i will re-listen to see if i missed it) was a description of 18th and early 19th century veterans. Are there no memoirs from veterans of French-Indian through 1812 Wars that tell us about “Soldier’s Heart”?
At some future point, i’d like to hear about the Bonus Army and its effects on the country, on the military, on the presidency, on our treatment of veterans.
My uncle, now dead, served with the Buffalo Soldiers in northern Italy during World War II. His mother and my mother said he’d never shown any symptoms of combat fatigue, and he scoffed about the possibility…. until he helped me drive to my son’s graduation from Basic Training at Ft. Benning in 1987. Shortened long story: When he returned home, he tore up and erased from his computer all copies of his memoir. Originally he had planned to give it one last reading before sending it to his publisher. Now he had to re-write everything after his receipt of his draft notice. The brief re-acquaintance with the military taught him, as Mr. Heilman said, it was “An interruption that lasted a lifetime.”
QuoteEnjoy your show but please do not waste my time interviewing guys convinced of the Margaret Mitchell version of US history. You discredit your show.
QuoteEnjoy your show but please do not waste my time interviewing guys convinced of the Margaret Mitchell version of the 19th century. Perhaps save that interview for a show on the psychology of historical denial. Actually a good idea. Why do some historical myths (the Civil War was not about slavery) last so long and others (German rationales for WW2) die so quickly?
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