A misconception of the baby boomer generation is adults raised us.

A misconception of the baby boomer generation is that adults raised us. When I say adults I mean responsible people that made good decisions with the concerns of all of us in mind. They drove the cars in which we arrived safely at our destination. They were willing to hold their tempers if needed, they worked jobs in which bills were paid for food and housing.

 I beg to differ. We were raised by damaged souls that had lived through the Great Depression in which twenty-five percent of all workers lost their jobs, at the same time, wages were cut by fifty percent. The possibility of another world war bubbled to the surface when Japan attacked Manchuria in 1931 and Mussolini’s Fascist Party invaded Ethiopia in 1935.  Both occurred in the deepest crevasse of the global depression.

Rumblings of Hitler and the building of his perfect Germanic race were used to eradicate entire sections of the population. They committed the crime of disagreeing with the Fuhrer, or they didn’t measure up to his standards. The world began its descent into WWII in 1939 when Germany attacked Poland. Six long war years later the war ended and an entire generation that knew only struggle, and death was free. The lucky ones returned uninjured. But this was before the lingering effects of PTSD were understood; to say nothing of the naive parents, spouses, and coworkers that welcomed them home.

Imagine you are a soldier welcomed home by a grateful mother, wife, or girlfriend. They want to know what it was like, but you don’t speak or won’t speak about it in concrete terms. What would you tell them? Of the constant smell of death permeating the countryside of France or entwined within the jungles of Burma? The faces of suffering and despair in every citizen? So funny stories of driverless jeeps catching on fire, or gambling tents that caught on fire because of a fist fight that overturned the kerosene lantern. It was all to keep the haunting fears at bay.

The urge to settle down and have a bunch of kids and fill a bottomless pit of uncertainty was to be the answer. And in a flash, you have fathered four babies in as many years. It is a strain of patience and temperament but thankfully your mother lives close and helps out. But both wives and children can’t understand why the number of nightmares has doubled, not gone away. The mattress is too soft and is the complaint and reason for disturbed sleep. Some men move out to the den and sleep on the cot that is tucked in the space behind the couch during the daytime.

The war is over, why does it haunt these soldiers, nurses, and medics that returned?

As a child of a WWII vet who landed on D-Day 3, fought to free pairs and guarded 250,000 German prisoners on a march to Marseille, only to be scooped up in December of ’44 to fight in the Battle of the Bulge; a doomed suicide strategy to retake control of France. As I grew older he’d tell me of some of the horrors he faced. I never wanted anyone to face that again. Thus began my anti-war activity.

A second misconception: there was little or no crime.