unbroken-laura-hillenbrand

Many felt lonely and isolated, having endured abuses that
ordinary people couldn’t understand. Their dignity had been
obliterated, replaced with a pervasive sense of shame and
worthlessness. And they had the caustic knowledge that no
one had come between them and tragedy. Coming home
was an experience of profound, perilous aloneness.
For these men, the central struggle of postwar life was to
restore their dignity and find a way to see the world as
something other than menacing blackness. There was no
one right way to peace; every man had to find his own path,
according to his own history. Some succeeded. For others,
the war would never really end. Some retreated into
brooding isolation or lost themselves in escapes. And for
some men, years of swallowed rage, terror, and humiliation
concentrated into what Holocaust survivor Jean Améry
would call “a seething, purifying thirst for revenge.”
——
The honeymoon in the mountains had been Cynthia’s idea.
Louie loved her for being so sporting, and for choosing
something so dear to his heart. “You must look about you
and remember what the trees + hills, streams + lakes look
like,” he wrote to her before their wedding. “… I will see you
among them for life.” Drifting off beside Cynthia each night,
Louie still saw the Bird lurking in his dreams, but the
sergeant hung back as if cowed, or perhaps just waiting. It
was the closest thing to peace that Louie had known since
Green Hornet had hit the water.
The drive back to Los Angeles carried them from the great
wide open to the confines of Harry Read’s mother’s house.
Cynthia was uncomfortable living there, and Louie wanted to
give her the home she dreamed of. He needed to find a
career, but was unprepared to do so. Having left USC a few