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Show When the Boys Come Home Bv Ruth Taylor When the boys come home" is ,,e of our popular songs. In every ,r or ng',zine one picks up. fhere is an 1,rtide drlUing wlth onc should treat the veteran. Let me tell you how one. sold- . jeeis about it. He had been the Far East for twenty-six months, and back here for six when he talked to me, so he had chance to talk to his buddies !.hen they came back from leave. This Is what he said: "I wish, Hllth you'd write an article to tell pePle now WE fce1, Ma'be they wouldn't like it but we ould. We want other boys that conie back to have it more the way we wanted it to be and as it wasn't. "Now you know how close I am to my family. I'd thought about coming home all those months in the jungle. I'd been terrified of every flight at the end of my stay for fear I'd be shot down before I could get there. But the first week home I thought I'd go mad. "You see they tried to do too ! much for me. They were with me j constantly. If I went for a walk, someone went with me. I wasn't 1 allowed to do any of the chores that had been expected of me I ever since I was a little shaver, j People came and called and gave j parties for me. I didn't feel as j though I was at home at all. The other boys in my unit had the same experience. We were actually ac-tually glad when we had to go back to camp. "It was such a disappointment to us. All those months we'd gone over every detil of the life we'd lived. The little things became incredibly in-credibly dear. ' What we wanted was for things to be the way we remembered them, to be AT HOME, not to be COMPANY. We wanted, to do the things we'd always al-ways done in the way we'd always al-ways done them. We wanted to potter over the chores we'd always al-ways shirked. We want to go downtown alone for a coke. I guess we just wanted to turn back time until the world stopped stop-ped spinning around us.," He said it better than I could because he was speaking for all boys like him. I told this to a wise man, who said: "I know . nrhat he means. I felt the same way after tfie last war. So when we heard our boy was coming home, my wife and I made engagements en-gagements for ourselves. It took courage to go out and leave him with a book and a bowl of apples as we'd done before but the rested, glad look on his face when we came home was worth it. And it wasn't long before he and his mother slipped out to the monies together and until he asked me if I could get off to play golf with him. Home means more to bpys than we realize. HOME is what they want." j Remember that on the glad day ; fhen your boy comes home. |