A Tough War?

A touring British journalist looked at the U.S., noted the contrast between the America of 1943 and the England of the Blitz. To the London News Chronicle, Correspondent Philip Jordan cabled after a thoughtful five-week trip:

"Because the physical impact of the war is so gentle, people here do not find it easy ... to realize . . . that what they call 'normalcy' has gone forever from the world. . . .

"Peace is being sold as a commodity just like electricity or fountain pens or perfume. High-pressure salesmanship presents victory as the gateway to new iceboxes, new automobiles. . . . Peace will be when you can build a new home, cash your war bonds and have nothing further to worry about. . . ."

In a summer of quick and seemingly easy victories, the whole nation seemed to be smiling. The soldiers at the front, 5,000 miles away, might be oppressed by loneliness and fear, might suffer pain and weariness, but few citizens at home could not help being optimistic.

In the first week of the Sicilian invasion, American troops had met with spectacular success: the weapons and men of the Axis seemed to be no match for the full weight of the vast new Allied military machine. The worried American fathers and mothers took heart; first reports of U.S. casualties sounded wonderfully small. In the first week of the invasion, the Associated Press reported, fewer than 100 men were wounded so badly they had to be flown back to North Africa.

The press covered the invasion with the dash and color it once used on championship prize fights. With the ache and strain filtered out, the war began to look like a movie: brave Americans dashing across the blue Mediterranean and up golden Sicilian beaches to plant the Stars & Stripes amid a grateful populace.

But Correspondent Jordan did not see the homes where the gold stars hung, nor the homes where wives and fathers and mothers waited and said their prayers. He did not see the young men who had already come back wounded, with limbs missing or eyes shot away.

There were thousands of such homes, and hundreds of such young men, and most Americans had seen some. The nation, in the exhilaration of its war boom and its joy in victories, had not yet forgotten the warning that 1943 would be the year of crisis and sacrifice.

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