After so much suffering and personal sacrifice, the returning WWI soldiers got a pretty raw deal, promises of jobs and housing were mostly empty words. Histories of World War One end at 1918, few books go on to show soldiers struggling to adapt and carry on with normal life. Told in the words of the survivors themselves, this is a valuable and engrossing study of what happened when the fighting stopped.
The Road Home: The Aftermath of the Great War Told by the Men and Women Who Survived it Synopsis
11am, 11.11.1918: the war is finally over. After four long years Britain welcomed her heroes home. Wives and mothers were reunited with loved ones they'd feared they'd never see again. Fathers met sons and daughters born during the war years for the very first time. It was a time of great joy - but it was also a time of enormous change. The soldiers and nurses who survived life at the Front faced the reality of rebuilding their lives in a society that had changed beyond recognition. How did the veterans readjust to civilian life? How did they cope with their war wounds, work and memories of lost comrades? And what of the people they returned to - the independent young women who were asked to give up the work they had been enjoying, the wives who had to readjust to life with men who seemed like strangers?
