"He Wants Home"

"The Stars & Stripes incident [has] brutally exposed one open sore in the American fighting man," cabled TIME Correspondent Will Lang last week: "He is the most homesick soldier in the world."

The "incident" was a small explosion touched off by the Stars & Stripes in Italy in an editorial entitled: "He Wants Home." Sure, the U.S. doughboy wants to go home, said the editorial, but "there is hardly a thinking man . . . who doesn't admit that it would be foolish to throw away all the battle experience picked up by our veteran troops by sending them home to sit in garrisons."

The reaction was violent. Speak for yourself, soldier letter writers thundered. "Men who are now fighting are tired. . . . An exchange of troops would give those at home an idea as to war."

Said Correspondent Lang: "I have seen the American combat soldier fighting in Tunisia and Italy. When he is hard pressed but skillfully led, he is courageous, tough, resourceful. He is a damn good soldier. But when he is asked why he is fighting he usually has little to say. He doesn't know. All he wants is to finish service and get home as soon as possible.

"Yet the average Tommy, with a Dunkirk and the blitzing of his home behind [him], is doggedly resigned to seeing the war through.* The Russian has certainly hung on as though he understood what a Hitler defeat would mean. [But] to the doughboy all this fighting is only a distasteful prelude to returning home. Nothing else."

*A British soldier cracked: "The rule for the long-suffering British Tommy is six years of service before he goes home. How about that for hardships?"

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