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The African American Experience During World War II
Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights. It is now widely accepted that these years were crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement through the economic and social impact of the war, as well as the military service itself. Wynn examines the period within the broader context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and the Cold War of the 1950s, concluding that the war years were neither simply a continuation of earlier developments nor a prelude to later change. Rather, this period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. Black self consciousness at a national level found powerful expression in new movements, from the demand for equality in the military service to changes in the shop floor to the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. As the nation played a new world role in the developing Cold War, the tensions between America's stated beliefs and actual practices emphasized these issues and brought new forces into play. More than a half century later, this book presents a much-needed up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship. Accessible to general and student readers, it tells the story without jargon or theory while including the historiography and debate on particular issues.
Afterwar : Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers
2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. With an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. But the moral dimensions of psychological injuries - guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged - still elude much treatment. In Afterwar, philosopher Nancy Sherman turns her focus to that challenge.Trained in both ancient ethics and psychoanalysis, and with twenty years of working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's decade of war. Shermanexplores how veterans can go about reawakening their feelings without becoming re-traumatized; how they can replace resentment with trust; and the changes that need to be made by military courts, VA hospitals, and civilians who have been shielded from the heaviest burdens of war in order for this tohappen. Americans, from politicians on downward, solemnly intone our "sacred obligations" to our veterans. Written with empathy, humanity, and deep insight, Afterwar provides no easy answers for how we can fulfill these obligations, but instead makes the case that the work of healing moral injuries issomething that all of us, not just soldiers and psychologists, must do.
American Indians in World War I : At Home and at War
During World War I, about 10,000 Native Americans either enlisted or were drafted into the American Expeditionary Force. Three related questions are examined in depth for the first time in this book: What were the battlefield experiences of Native Americans? How did racial and cultural stereotypes about Indians affect their duties? Did their wartime contributions lead to changes in federal Indian policy or their standard of living? Many American Indians distinguished themselves fighting on the Western Front. And as compared to black and Mexican American soldiers, Indians enjoyed near universal respect when in uniform. To celebrate their patriotism during and after the war, Indians could even perform a variety of traditional ceremonies otherwise proscribed. Both in combat and in their support roles on the homefront, including volunteer contributions by Indian women, Native Americans hoped their efforts would result in a more vigorous application of democracy. But the Bureau of Indian Affairs continued to cut health and education programs and to suppress Indian cultures. "This is a first-rate book and a significant contribution to twentieth-century Indian history."--Professor Donald L. Parman
Breaking Ranks : Iraq Veterans Speak Out Against the War
Breaking Ranks brings a new and deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Based on extensive interviews with each of the six, the book relates why they enlisted, their experiences in training and in early missions, their tours of combat, and what has happened to them since returning home. The compelling stories of this diverse cross section of the military recount how each journey to Iraq began with the sincere desire to do good. Matthew Gutmann and Catherine Anne Lutz show how each individual's experiences led to new moral and political understandings and ultimately to opposing the war.
Busted : A Vietnam Veteran in Nixon's America
Between March and September of 1974, as Richard Nixon's presidency of the United States unraveled on national television, Bill Ehrhart, a decorated Marine Corps sergeant and anti-war Vietnam veteran fought to retain his merchant seaman's card after being busted for possession of marijuana. He was also held on suspicion of armed robbery in New York City, detained on the Garden State Parkway for looking like a Puerto Rican revolutionary and thrown out of New Jersey by the Maple Shade police. All of this occurred while the House Judiciary Committee conducted hearings on Nixon's impeachment.
Carried to the Wall : American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
On May 9, 1990, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a ring with letter, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, a baseball, a photo album, an ace of spades, and a pie were some of the objects left at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. For Kristin Hass, this eclectic sampling represents an attempt by ordinary Americans to come to terms with a multitude of unnamed losses as well as to take part in the ongoing debate of how this war should be remembered. Hass explores the restless memory of the Vietnam War and an American public still grappling with its commemoration. In doing so it considers the ways Americans have struggled to renegotiate the meanings of national identity, patriotism, community, and the place of the soldier, in the aftermath of a war that ruptured the ways in which all of these things have been traditionally defined. Hass contextualizes her study of this phenomenon within the history of American funerary traditions (in particular non-Anglo traditions in which material offerings are common), the history of war memorials, and the changing symbolic meaning of war. Her evocative analysis of the site itself illustrates and enriches her larger theses regarding the creation of public memory and the problem of remembering war and the resulting causalities--in this case not only 58,000 soldiers, but also conceptions of masculinity, patriotism, and working-class pride and idealism.
Confederate Chronicle : The Life of a Civil War Survivor
A Confederate Chronicle presents the remarkable life of Thomas L. Wragg, who served in both the Confederate army and navy and endured incarceration as a prisoner of war. After the war, he undertook a series of jobs, eventually becoming a physician. In 1889, he died tragically at the hands of a man who mistakenly thought he was defending his family's honor. Pamela Chase Hain uses Wragg's letters home to his family, friends, and fianc#65533;e, as well as his naval notebook and newspaper articles, to give readers direct insight into his life and the lives of those around him. The son of a respected Savannah physician, Wragg was born into a life of wealth and privilege. A nonconscripted soldier, he left home at eighteen to join the front lines in Virginia. From there, he sent letters home describing the maneuverings of General Joseph E. Johnston's army in and around Harpers Ferry and Winchester, culminating with the Battle of Bull Run. In the fall of 1862, Wragg joined the Confederate Navy and trained on the ironclad CSS Georgia before transferring to the CSS Atlanta. Hain uses the notebook that he kept during his training in ordnance and gunnery to provide a rare glimpse into the naval and artillery practices at the time. This notebook also provides evidence of a fledgling Confederate naval "school" prior to the one established on the James River on the CSS Patrick Henry. The crew of the unfortunate Atlanta was captured on the ship's maiden voyage, and evidence in the Wragg family papers suggests the capture was not the result of bad luck, as has been claimed. Wragg and the other officers were sent to Fort Warren Prison in Boston Harbor for fifteen months. Wragg's POW letters reveal the isolation and sense of abandonment the prisoners felt as they waited in hopes of an exchange. The correspondence between Wragg and his fianc#65533;e, Josie, after the war illustrates not only the mores of nineteenth-century courtship but also the difficulty of adjustment that many Confederate war veterans faced. Sadly, Wragg's life was cut short after he became a successful doctor in Quincy, Florida. Cover-up and intrigue by influential citizens prevented Wragg's wife from bringing the murderer to justice. A Confederate Chronicle offers an unprecedented look at how the Civil War affected the gentry class of the South. It gives readers a personal view into one man's struggle with the chaos of life during and after the war, as well as into the struggles of the general society.
Congress and U.S. Veterans: From the GI Bill to the VA Crisis
Providing a compelling look at veterans' policy, this book describes why the Republican party is considered the party for veterans despite the fact that Congressional Democrats are responsible for a greater number of policy initiatives. * Includes content from nearly 20,000 e-newsletters sent from Congress members to constituents to demonstrate the differences in how Congress discusses and legislates veterans' issues * Provides a detailed description of the key legislative players, proposals, and communication strategies surrounding veterans' policies * Offers advice on providing for the future of veterans' policies and describes the risks and benefits associated with moving veterans' care into private industry * Offers the first in-depth case study on the implementation of the post-9/11 GI bill * Suggests the scandal surrounding the 2010 Phoenix VA hospital is an example of partisan differences in communication tactics
Greatest Generation Comes Home : The Veteran in American Society
At the conclusion of World War II, Americans anxiously contemplated the return to peace. It was an uncertain time, filled with concerns about demobilization, inflation, strikes, and the return of a second Great Depression. Balanced against these challenges was the hope in a future of unparalleled opportunities for a generation raised in hard times and war. One of the remarkable untold stories of postwar America is the successful assimilation of sixteen million veterans back into civilian society after 1945. The G.I. generation returned home filled with the same sense of fear and hope as most citizens at the time. Their transition from conflict to normalcy is one of the greatest chapters in American history. The Greatest Generation Comes Home combines military and social history into a comprehensive narrative of the veteran's experience after World War II. It integrates early impressions of home in 1945 with later stories of medical recovery, education, work, politics, and entertainment, as well as moving accounts of the dislocation, alienation, and discomfort many faced. The book includes the experiences of not only the millions of veterans drawn from mainstream white America, but also the women, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans who served the nation. Perhaps most important, the book also examines the legacy bequeathed by these veterans to later generations who served in uniform on new battlefields around the world.
Lonely Soldier : The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
The Lonely Soldier--the inspiration for the documentary The Invisible War--vividly tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006--and of the challenges they faced while fighting a war painfully alone. More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine." In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L.A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D.C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers-including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful, The Lonely Soldier is a clarion call for change.
Loyalty in Time of Trial : The African American Experience During World War I
In one of the few book-length treatments of the subject, Nina Mjagkij conveys the full range of the African American experience during the "Great War." Prior to World War I, most African Americans did not challenge the racial status quo. But nearly 370,000 black soldiers served in the military during the war, and some 400,000 black civilians migrated from the rural South to the urban North for defense jobs. Following the war, emboldened by their military service and their support of the war on the home front, African Americans were determined to fight for equality. These two factors forced America to confront the impact of segregation and racism.
Outside the Wire : American Soldiers' Voices from Afghanistan
A riveting collection of thirty-eight narratives by American soldiers serving in Afghanistan, Outside the Wire offers a powerful evocation of everyday life in a war zone. Christine Dumaine Leche--a writing instructor who left her home and family to teach at Bagram Air Base and a forward operating base near the volatile Afghan-Pakistani border--encouraged these deeply personal reflections, which demonstrate the power of writing to battle the most traumatic of experiences. The soldiers whose words fill this book often met for class with Leche under extreme circumstances and in challenging conditions, some having just returned from dangerous combat missions, others having spent the day in firefights, endured hours in the bitter cold of an open guard tower, or suffered a difficult phone conversation with a spouse back home. Some choose to record momentous events from childhood or civilian life--events that motivated them to join the military or that haunt them as adults. Others capture the immediacy of the battlefield and the emotional and psychological explosions that followed. These soldiers write through the senses and from the soul, grappling with the impact of moral complexity, fear, homesickness, boredom, and despair. We each, writes Leche, require witnesses to the narratives of our lives. Outside the Wire creates that opportunity for us as readers to bear witness to the men and women who carry the weight of war for us all.
A Perfect Picture of Hell : Eyewitness Accounts by Civil War Prisoners From the 12th Iowa
From the shooting of an unarmed prisoner at Montgomery, Alabama, to a successful escape from Belle Isle, from the swelling floodwaters overtaking Cahaba Prison to the inferno that finally engulfed Andersonville, A Perfect Picture of Hell is a collection of harrowing narratives by soldiers from the 12th Iowa Infantry who survived imprisonment in the South during the Civil War. Editors Ted Genoways and Hugh Genoways have collected the soldiers'startling accounts from diaries, letters, speeches, newspaper articles, and remembrances. Arranged chronologically, the eyewitness descriptions of the battles of Shiloh, Corinth, Jackson, and Tupelo, together with accompanying accounts of nearly every famous Confederate prison, create a shared vision
Sing Not War : The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America
After the Civil War, white Confederate and Union army veterans reentered--or struggled to reenter--the lives and communities they had left behind. In Sing Not War, James Marten explores how the nineteenth century's "Greatest Generation" attempted to blend back into society and how their experiences were treated by nonveterans. Many soldiers, Marten reveals, had a much harder time reintegrating into their communities and returning to their civilian lives than has been previously understood. Although Civil War veterans were generally well taken care of during the Gilded Age, Marten argues that veterans lost control of their legacies, becoming best remembered as others wanted to remember them--for their service in the war and their postwar political activities. Marten finds that while southern veterans were venerated for their service to the Confederacy, Union veterans often encountered resentment and even outright hostility as they aged and made greater demands on the public purse. Drawing on letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources, Sing Not War illustrates that during the Gilded Age "veteran" conjured up several conflicting images and invoked contradicting reactions. Deeply researched and vividly narrated, Marten's book counters the romanticized vision of the lives of Civil War veterans, bringing forth new information about how white veterans were treated and how they lived out their lives.
The View From the Ground : Experiences of Civil War Soldiers
The View from the Ground reveals the beliefs of ordinary men and women on topics ranging from slavery and racism to faith and identity and represents a significant development in historical scholarship -- the use of Civil War soldiers'personal accounts to address larger questions about America's past.
Voices of Civil War America
Provides primary documents to highlight daily life among Americans, Union and Confederate, black and white, soldier and civilian, during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Voices of the Iraq War
This book examines the ongoing importance of this war for the Middle East and the world today through first-person accounts of the war and primary source documents.
Voices of World War II
This book collects a wide variety of primary-source documents drawn from across the United States, Europe, and Asia that illuminate the events and experiences of World War II, the most devastating war in human history.
The Warrior Image : Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era
Images of war saturated American culture between the 1940s and the 1970s, as U.S. troops marched off to battle in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Exploring representations of servicemen in the popular press, government propaganda, museum exhibits, literature, film, and television, Andrew Huebner traces the evolution of a storied American icon--the combat soldier. Huebner challenges the pervasive assumption that Vietnam brought drastic changes in portrayals of the American warrior, with the jaded serviceman of the 1960s and 1970s shown in stark contrast to the patriotic citizen-soldier of World War II. In fact, Huebner shows, cracks began to appear in sentimental images of the military late in World War II and were particularly apparent during the Korean conflict. Journalists, filmmakers, novelists, and poets increasingly portrayed the steep costs of combat, depicting soldiers who were harmed rather than hardened by war, isolated from rather than supported by their military leadership and American society. Across all three wars, Huebner argues, the warrior image conveyed a growing cynicism about armed conflict, the federal government, and Cold War militarization.
When War Becomes Personal : Soldiers' Accounts from the Civil War to Iraq
Donald Anderson, a former U.S. Air Force officer, has compiled a haunting anthology of personal essays and short memoirs that span more than 100 years of warfare. Alvord White Clements himself a veteran of the Second World War introduces his grandfather Isaac N. Clements s Civil War memoir; the novelist Paul West writes of his father, a British veteran of World War I, as well as of his own boyhood recollections of the London Blitz. John Wolfe details the life-changing and life-threatening injuries he sustained in Vietnam and the hallucinations he experienced afterward. Second Gulf War veteran Jason Armagost traces his journey to Iraq through the history of literature and the books he brought with him to the war zone. The thirteen essays in "When War Becomes Personal "tell the enduring truths of battle, stripping away much of the romance, myth, and fantasy. Soldiers more than anyone know what they are capable of destroying; when they write about war, they are trying to preserve the world. "
Women at War : Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Conflicts
Wise and Baron relate the compelling war experiences of thirty American female soldiers in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, highlighting their extraordinary display of dedication to their mission and to the soldiers and sailors with whom they served. While the book's focus is on today's women in combat, it also reaches back to Korea, Vietnam and World War II to offer stories of inspiring women who served at the "cusp of the spear" as they fought and died for their country.