Barrett Tillman

“Yes, we are on the way back. Back to wives, sweethearts, children, parents, and friends. Back to the ways of peace. Yet we can never go back, only forward. We will not find conditions just as we left them. The buildings, the land, the trees will still be there, but we cannot exp ect to find people unchanged. Those with whom we worked and played, many will not be there, others will have developed new friends, new interests, different habits. Even we ourselves will not be quite the same. Men who have had to face the probability of death day after day, week after week, will always look at life through different eyes. The normal man will have a keener appreciation of the values that contribute to life. He will appreciate many kindly, true, and beautiful influences we had, before the war, taken for granted. The near-neurotics will try to make the world give them a living, will more and more tend to live in the past, nursing their grievances, pathetic creatures who won a war and lost their souls. Shipmates, we cannot go back, only forward. All of us having a lot of living yet to do. We can make the years ahead great in accomplishment, rich, satisfaction. We had what it takes to win a tough war, we cannot fail to win our personal victory when we return to the ways of peace. May you all be blessed with that inner strength and peace which the world can neither give nor take away.32”
― Barrett Tillman, When the Shooting Stopped: August 1945