University of Delaware - Blue Hen Yearbook (Newark, DE)

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THE PREFACE A fireplace holds all the meaning of comfort and home, The heat it radiates is not just the heat of a flame but the kindling of a spirita spirit of joy; a feeling that everything is normal. I think that the University tl:lda:,'-lll.,'it like a huge, glowing fireplacereflects that same general atmosphere of narmalitr. The campus is cr.iiang with cnergy. The boys have come back to fan the sparks of activity. At last we no longer need to divide the University into civilians and veterans; into the civilian effort and the war effort. We are once again a complete, smoothly functioning institution, The students can direct their cfforts toward accomplishing an academic goal without wondering if and when the world situation will neces- sitate their IO'iiI:'Ig time, limb, or life in the service of their country, Those students who were fortunate enough to be deferred from service and who pursued their learn- ing with Si.lll'.'Eril::,' can now be rtgardr.'d as a true assct to the welfare of America, for in continuing their education, they formed the connecting link in the educational chain. Had the entire student population been diverted solely to J'H.L wiar E TCII ', we NN UIJJII.'! t'l.'I.Tt' fa'll:,l d an oven morc SErj- ous inlerruplim in the u'f.tnr:,.r of education. Knowing the veteran felt that way adds all the more purpose to the victory. And surely the time spent in waiting could not have been too unbearable with that philosophy in mind. Well, philosophy or not, we did wait a long time to come backand we waited eagerly. People have said that we were so anxious to see home that sometimes we lost sight of the cause for which we were fighting. suppose that's true to a certain extent, but World War II did end victoriously for our side and millions of us young men trudged home on freedom road. Some didn't return; some groped as they walked; many limped or were carried. There was sadness for many but for the vast majority of us there was an uncontrollable feeling of joy and happiness. There was a full, comforting feeling of coming back to what was ours; what we had left behind; what we had thought of and dreamt of and talked about and awaited for so many many months and years. We looked forward only to peace and home. We saw no problems of readjustment ahead, We had no doubts about being able to fit quickly and easily into the society we had once left. It wouldn't be difficult to put the strange interlude of the past several years into the recesses of our memory and remember primarily what had been before. I don't think we felt that there had been a great change in us. We were coming back to the Newark and Wilmington and New York and Main Street of 1941, 1942, 1943 .

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Edwin Golin editor Mark Jacoby business manager

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Ism't it true that when you fellows came back there was the inevitable disillusionment of your expectations not materializing? What I mean isyou built an ideal in your minds but found that you had to deal with reality. The expectations that you created were founded on the good things of the past. That's right. We drew pretty mental pictures of good jobs and a cozy home with a sweet little girl in gingham waiting at the white picket gate. When you get away from a setting for any length of time, you like to remember only the good and the pleasurable things about it. You like to think how nice it was to have the privacy of your own room at home and the freedom of doing whatever you wanted to do at any time. You remem- bered how much fun there was in preparing for an early morning golf match or an afternoon picnic or an evening formal dance. And when you thought of your friends and neighbors and relatives, your mind's eye seemed to squint a little to blur the sharp lines of their small hates, prejudices and bigotries. You erased those blemishes of pettiness with the hopes that they, too, would erase them and then coming home would be as wonderful as the dream itself. But it seems that we people back home, for the most part, looked at this in a different way, We had gotten the notion that your expectations were not those good ireals of the past. In a way, you're right. Twelve million American men came back, eager to fit into a new society which in reality was still an old one. Twelve million veterans, themselves culturally and matenally broadened, came back to a society which had seen an immense change from peace to war and again te peace, yet which, com- pared to their experience, was still essentially the same as they had left it. New men found themselves in an old structure. A person can't see blitzkriegs and air raids and amphibious operations and airborne armies and atom bombs; sweat out D-Days and H-Hours and 88's and be exposed to foreign cultures and different I-lngu.lb't':i n':l.l'ld :ii'rill'lgt' I'J:Uptf;s .ill'ld, not I It,'L J.Ef.l;,ttdl Yes, before the first gangplank was lowered, before the hrst retuming troop touched American soil, pJans of attack and rehabilitation were drawn and redrawn, Books about the psycholngy of the n:durning veteran were writ- ten and read and reread, Everyone became a rehabilita- tion expert and everyone went to experts teaching how to fit the serviceman back into civilian life, All hell broke loose. Newspapers, pamphlets, movies, and radios screamed to the public that the veteran was a booby-trap of pent-up emotions, no inhibitions, saturated with the lust to kill, and no longer knew right from wrong. They told the waiting throngs to be carefulto remove the detonator before handling the explosive, And we watched and waited and wondered. True, we had seen many things and had formulated many ideas. We had seen suffering and human misery. We had learned the meaning of human rights and respect for humanity and freedom, equality, and tolerance. We knew how quickly cities and human life could be de- stroyed. We saw the ravages of warthe empty, bloated stomachs of the starving; the maggot-infested sores of the discased; the bungling of the shell-shocked and neu- rotic; and we heard the sobs of the griefstricken. Maybe it's easier to remember a vision than .ancthing you heard, but it's hard to forget the sobs of human beings for whom all hope has gone. That's how we came to under- stand and fear the meaning of the word WAR and to know that it can't be explained or described just by words, And also we began to realize how insignificant space is, Vast areasoceans, mountains, desert, jungles- were crossed in a matter of hours, The great big Uni- verse suddenly became a small sphere. The big Universe of many worlds became one world. We had to know the meaning of one world because peace was part of the definition. Fundamentally, we hadn't changed. We've matured, we've broadened our outlook, we have begun to think, It seemed that if there had been a change, it was in the immediate but as persons we have remained the same. physical setting of the outside world, It didn't take a great deal of insight for us to notice some of these more obvious changes, Here at the University, just as in every other community, we were soon aware when we returned of the one most obvious changea sad one. Many of our classmates and alumni were missing, 100 672