Marching Home: To War and Back with the Men of One AmericanTown [Paperback]

Kevin Coyne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2004

Of the sixteen million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, not quite a thousand were from Freehold, New Jersey—a bustling courthouse town home to a diverse populace that reflected the varied faces and aspirations of the nation. Award-winning author Kevin Coyne’s chronicle follows six young men from Freehold through the war and back home again—to a town and a nation on the brink of changes larger than any of them could have imagined. Their story is the story of millions of other veterans, thousands of other towns, and it is the great epic of the last century—the story of what America was then, in its hardest hours, and how it became what it is now.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This distinctive "Greatest Generation" chronicle portrays men from the author's hometown of Freehold, N.J., as they left for war and returned to face the often mundane but still very real difficulties of postwar life. Coyne (Domers: A Year at Notre Dame) recounts this panoramic story in superior journalistic prose, free of hyper-patriotic guff or pop-psych jargon. Stu Bunton was a naval radio operator who later entered the Freehold police force. Walter Denise returned to the family apple orchard after a distinguished career as an infantryman in northern Europe. Jake Erickson was a radio-intercept operator in the southwest Pacific who married an Australian woman and rose to foreman at the local rug factory. Undertaker Jim Higgins was in air force intelligence in England, while Jewish immigrant Bud Lopatin, a home builder, flew 72 missions in B-26s. The youngest of the six, Bigerton "Buddy" Lewis endured the gross discrimination that was the lot of the army's African-Americans, but came home to rise in county government. Eventually, Jake's rug factory went out of business, and Walter's orchard was reduced to housing-development oblivion as Freehold turned into a New York City bedroom community. A fire destroyed much of downtown, and rebuilding set off arguments over urban renewal; the civil rights and antiwar movements provoked much tension but little bloodshed and led to real progress; and while prayers were banned in schools, other prayers were answered by the building of a new hospital. While this book does not break new ground, it is head and shoulders above much of the near competition, with graceful storytelling and enough social commentary to appeal to fans of Studs Terkel.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Six members of Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation" here escape from collective anonymity, thanks to Coyne's rare investigative and narrative gifts. Though all are from Coyne's hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, these six men diverged widely in their military assignments in World War II (dividing up into infantry and engineering units in the army, cruiser and bombardment detachments in the navy and air corps) and in their deployments (serving from London to Reims in Europe, from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines in the Pacific). No headline winners, these ordinary soldiers faced the common--yet harrowing--rigors of war, their combined experiences coalescing into a compelling microcosm of global conflict. Coyne's synthetic vision likewise fuses the postwar lives of these six veterans, giving readers a fully detailed small-town mosaic, suffused with the nation's buoyant peacetime hopes--and fractured by its peacetime economic and social tensions. No segments will disquiet readers more than those reflecting the postwar travails of the one African American soldier in this small band, a soldier who valiantly defended America against Nazi Germany only to subsequently run a gauntlet of racial prejudice in his hometown. Coyne's volume preserves the richest--and most unsettling--kind of history. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142003867
• ISBN-13: 978-0142003862
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,397,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary View of Ordinary Lives, February 12, 2003

By 

Veronica Atwood "Doctor Lady" (Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marching Home: To War and Back with the Men of One American Town (Hardcover)

In Marching Home, Kevin Coyne offers a touchingly intimate and unsparing look at the lives of six small-town WWII vets. The men are presented as complete human beings, with strengths and weaknesses intact. The author avoids the cloying sentimentality and overreaching generalizations that characterize many recent works about the "greatest generation", allowing the reader to form his or her own opinions and attachments to the central characters. The affection we feel for these men and their town grows naturally as we share their struggles and triumphs. The six men are drawn with such tender honesty that we will know them as we know our own fathers, grandfathers, and uncles - many of whom we will understand more fully after reading this extraordinary book.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Way We Were, July 9, 2011

By 

Roger W. Brown Jr. "16boat" (San Diego, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Marching Home: To War and Back with the Men of One American Town (Hardcover)

Fine read and loaded with memories for those living 1940 - post war era.
A story of ordinary men that on average performed better than their German or Japanese counterparts.
Citizen soldiers that were forced to become combat veterans the hard and deadly way just as their predecessors in every war back to the Revolution.
We owe them rememberance and gratitude for their sacrifice.
The cover picture is circa 1947/48 Oct. early Nov. as the first car is a 1938 Ford Tudor,$665 price and with mechanical brakes.
The two other cars are a 1946 Buick Series 40 sedan, $1580, followed by a 1947/48 Buick. The body style was cropped.
It was a very big deal to be able to buy a Buick post war and prices were list plus markup and dealer customer.
I used Google Earth to reference streets and scenes. I could not locate the pictured buildings but believe they were on Main just east of the RR track crossing.

5.0 out of 5 stars We've lost one of our heroes, February 3, 2010

By 

R. Brandeisky "RItaB64" (Howell, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Marching Home: To War and Back with the Men of One AmericanTown (Paperback)

I enjoyed reading this book as I am from the area. History can get boring when you have to memorize facts. This history is more than facts, these are real people and their real experiences. Sadly, one of the men portrayed in the book passed away this passed Saturday, January 31, 2010. Jim Higgins was well known in Freehold and he will be missed. Another from the greatest generation.