HOME FRONT (1940-1945)
When Trojans were kept under lock and key,
when a frozen Milky Way was contraband,
when old bicycles were reassembled from
used parts to be sold as new, we put up with
the war on display in far-flung THEATERS.
It was also fought on our HOME FRONT,
Uncle Sam reminded us from billboards that
admonished those who could read: "LOOSE
LIPS SINK SHIPS!" and the Brown Bomber
assured us (and reminded the Deity, too) that
"GOD IS ON OUR SIDE." Thus we lived
for THE DURATION while people died in
the Battle of the Bulge, on Monte Casino,
Guadalcanal, Okinawa. And since LIFE
schooled us that "A PICTURE IS WORTH
A THOUSAND WORDS" (but continued to
massage all pix with captions), we caught our
breath with pride at the clutch of Marines
pushing hard to plant OLD GLORY on a rise
in Iwo Jima, sure that the boys would grunt it
out to conclusion (though that part was not in
the picture). Of course, these men made up
the "GREATEST GENERATION" (though
no one knew that then). Then there was the
"Enola Gay," leaving Tinian, with its secret
payload aimed at Tokyo, but diverted else-
where. Yet no matter, of course, for it gave
us peace, with its assurance of untold power.
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George Monteiro is a lifelong student and teacher of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, contributing to the scholarship on numerous writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and Bob Dylan. His latest book is Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil and After: A Poetic Career Transformed (McFarland, 2012).
