Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(1)
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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.

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.

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.

I grew up in Freehold and am just 2 years older than Kevin. I read his book with great anticipation. I was generally impressed by the book in the coverage of the war years and the next 25 years after the war.

However, the history from 1965 on leaves something out. I moved to Freehold in 1959 and attended St. Rose of Lima School. I left Freehold, essentially, in 1979 when I graduated college.

I was disappointed in his lack of coverage of the St. Rose parochial school since this, I believe, was one of the major factors in Freehold. I believe that St. Rose took over the Freehold Military Institute properties, but since there was no discussion of this, I found this to be a hole in the history.

His discussion of the racial tensions fails to portray Freehold in a balanced way. It seems he focused on 1/2 of the town and forgot about my half. On my side of town, we had great neighborhoods, all densely packed on 1/8 acre lots. I lived behind two black familes (a husband/wife teacher team and a blue collar family like my own). There was some initial consternation, but we found them to be just like us. One of them was a good friend of mine and we were both NY Mets fans, he more than I.

They were just as distressed during the riots because they felt they could be subject to attack from people on the "other side of town".

Also, there was much more chaos than portrayed including the famous "Shoot to kill" order given by the mayor at that time, which I still remember so vivdly.

The book fails in it description of this period and I know this from personal recollections.

You should read this book and appreciate the history up until 1965, but should not form a negative opinion of Freehold based on his description of the Freehold of the late 1960s and 1970s. It was more than he related and a lot better than that, at least from my perspective.