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Our Fathers' War: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation

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America's young men and women who grew up quickly during the 1940s became known as the Greatest Generation for their willingness to sacrifice for their country and families. Many were born into immigrant households; their parents came to this country for myriad reasons, whether to escape religious or political persecution or simply to make a better economic life.

These "children" answered the call to duty, often at a terrible price. Even those who were fortunate enough to return from the battlefields did so as damaged goods, carrying scars both physical and psychic from their ordeals, problems that did not always end when they reached the safety of their home shores.

Tom Mathews was a son of one of these veterans. He relates his awkward experiences, and those of his contemporaries, in OUR FATHERS' WAR: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation.

The long-time Newsweek writer and editor reports on ten families for which those aforementioned scars never completely faded. The fathers returned home, still young men, to their own children born in their absence. Their need to feel control, after years when much was out of their control, impacted on these children. They were demanding, with little patience for what they perceived as weakness or cowardice in their progeny.

Grace under fire did not come easily to the older generation of Mathews's work. Despite accomplishing extraordinary things, many cursed themselves for self-imposed failures to act like Audie Murphy, one of WWII's most legendary figures.

Mathews writes of Murphy's own account of the action that won him the Congressional Medal of Honor, in which the All-American hero admitted to being scared.

"Manically, I hauled down the Oxford English Dictionary's giant Volume C. First I looked up courage: 'that quality of mind which shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking.'

'I was scared' [Murphy had written].

"Then I checked out coward: 'one who displays ignoble fear or want of courage in the face of danger.'

'I was scared' [Murphy had written].

"What was this? Either Audie Murphy was yellow or the accepted definition was full of s---. You didn't have to be a genius to cipher it out.... Without fear there could be no courage."

The theme of fear under wartime conditions, and the determination not to show such weakness back home, is a main component of each chapter.

Many veterans refused to talk about their experiences, perhaps believing that if you weren't there, there was no way you could understand. They passed their physic scars on to their children who grew up confused, at once desirous of the love and approval of their fathers, but at the same time repelled by the inexplicable hostility --- even physical abuse --- they received. In some cases the need for approval manifested itself when it was the younger generation's turn to fight in Vietnam, some of the sons acting heroically if recklessly, as if that would finally win their old man over.

As the book concludes with Mathews's reconciliation with his own father, readers might come to think that this book was a purgative for the author's troubled soul. He finds comfort in others like him (and it's amazing how many others there are).

A truly touching story, told with an aching longing for acceptance, understanding and love, OUR FATHERS' WAR is one that could carry over to present-day fathers and sons stuck in the quagmire of mis- or incommunications.

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

The effects of war on those who fight and on their families is complicated. Tom Mathews' father fought in World War II and the son's relationship to his father after the war is the foundation for this book, OUR FATHERS' WAR.
Mathews' own memories of growing up and his efforts, as an adult, to understand his father are widened by accounts of other sons whose fathers were also veterans of the Second World War, a cohort now known as "the greatest generation." The father/son dynamics in this book are as moving as they are difficult. Though the narrative follows what happened after that particular war, it could hardly be more timely and significant than it is today as we try to understand new generation of men and women now returning from war and their children.
Mathews' book is profound and valuable.

Wow - what a book!

If I had read such a book 45 years ago,I would have known that my family wans't the only "lunatic bin" on Long Island. Then to see the lunacy continue from "My Father's War" through my war, gave me insight how to break the cycle for my grandson.

I sent a copy to my younger brother and he too saw clearly we were not alone. A book like this could bring financial ruin to the revenue stream of L.I. shrinks.

I really enjoyed it and learned so very much from it about why my father was the way he was and that the problem wasn't me.

My dad was an L4 pilot in WWII, and came home. He wouldn't talk much about his experiences, and even when I went into the service (Cold War), he only let out bits and pieces. I was lucky, he was a great dad (not perfect, but still great to me despite our differences). But I met, over the years, many brats (a term we children of the military adopted) whose fathers (and even a few mothers) came back very changed from war. As a veteran myself, who has many vet friends from WWII to the Gulf, I've seen those changes, obvious and subtle. I've seen those who appear to have been changed little. A close friend works with vets at a VA hospital (a vet herself). War is hell, and how you respond to it and result from it is very individual, though some patterns can be recognized. And with the usual peacetime "out of sight, out of mind" treatment most vets get from the civilian public, this book helps even us "brat/vets" understand a little more of why our fathers became the way they are, and even why we are what we became as a result. No deep psych studies, no boring technical recitations, this book is one person trying to show another why things are the way they are. It can be very personal, and very public. It gave me more insights (after a lifetime of my own review from layman training) into my dad, and to some extent my "military wife" mom, and their lives. I doubt the general public would give a darn about these people, but for those of us who are brats, and the few public who want to understand why people (especially veterans) do what they do, I found this book insightful, useful, and revealing. I recommend it as a human story(s).

Written from the viewpoint of the innocent sons who were mistreated by fathers who had served in WWII, it attempts to explain that the abuse was not personal but generalized. Those vetrans who survived atrocities, which left internal war wounds, took out their suppressed aggression on their own sons by bullying and browbeating them. My dad was physically abusive to his two son so much so that the elder got married at the age of seventeen just to get away from home. He would chase them up the highway in a wild tantrum hitting them with anything he was able to lay his hands on. The younger took his revenge fifty years later by putting him in a barren room at a nursing home to die.

Dubbed a secret history, it echoes down through the years and generations, from sons to grandsons. It's a sad history of evolving manhood. Could be that's why the baby boomers of today still talk like boys instead of men -- their masculine growth was stunted in childhood.

Men refuse to talk openly about their deepest feelings. War changes men's lives as combat shapes the soldier to survive at all odds. After the War, those feelings don't just vanish. The fear and harshness they endured is taken out on their own sons on the homefront, as they continue to fight their internal devils.

No anonymity here; they believed that candor offers the surest approach to the mystery of their military fathers and why they acted as they did with the guilt they could not dissipate. It's true -- you always hurt the one you love by saying and doing the wrong things.

Tom Matthews is the author of STANDING FREE about Roy Wilkes during the Civil Rights upheaval.

this book is just another example of the blame game... nobody takes responsibility for their own actions... couldn't it be your father was a jerk before he went to the war... i don't doubt that the war had a profound effect on them, but so did the depression in which most of them grew up... my father was in the war, saw allot of combat, was at the liberation of a concentration camp, and came home and raised his family with love and kindness. he didn't feel like he needed to psychoanalyze the whole experience... he shielded his kid's from the war because it was ugly and talked about it only with his fellow soldiers... what's so wrong with that...

I thought this book was well written and thought out. I am 50 years old and the son of a deceased WWII veteran. While it did not answer all my questions it helped me a great deal in attempting to understand my father and the way he was. God Bless Tom Mathews for his poignant and touching tale.

A must for any child or spouse of a combat veteran (any war).

This book is very good at getting to the core of why so many sons of "The Greatest Generation" didn't have good relationships with their fathers after they returned from war.
Sons reminisce about their struggles with fathers'spirits that were "killed by the war", leaving them empty and ill- equipped to raise sons after their horrifying ordeals. They wanted their sons to be without cowardise, "like little soldiers" leaving no room for what they thought were mistakes.
This book arrived in A-1 condition.