This passage makes a tremendous impression because it is the first time a crew from the Eighth Air Force fighting against the Luftwaffe over Europe had survived 25 missions and returned home, arriving to a tumultuous celebration and happy people—yet the young men in the ordeal have not left the war behind.

As the young pilot of the Memphis Belle notes, they had exited one incredible world of combat that was virtually unrecognizable to anyone who had not experienced it into another, almost equally strange realm: celebrity. Captain Robert K. Morgan was looking forward to reuniting with his girlfriend, Margaret Polk of Memphis, Tennessee, whose picture taped in the cockpit of the plane had guided him back to her, to home, to safety, and to a new life. But he had not returned to peace.

A reader can immediately sense that the transition ahead of Morgan and his crew will be something for which none of them are really prepared. The American government and press clearly want to promote the story of the Memphis Belle crew, publicize their survival to rally support for the war, sell war bonds, and use their example as proof that progress is being made in the war. These young men will find themselves respected by older men who want to buy drinks for them, respected and envied by young men who want to be them, and they will receive the flattering attention of young women who want to be with them. Propelling the media frenzy to even greater heights will be the film made by Oscar-winning Hollywood director William Wyler, who flew with Morgan and the crew of the Memphis Belle over Europe, and whose footage would give Americans at home a view into the world of combat against which these young men had prevailed.

But just as they had to rely on each other to survive in the skies over Europe, the crew of the Memphis Belle now had to support each other when faced with this new world of celebrity, because between themselves they knew something that their admirers did not: They had survived and come back from violent death, but they carried the war within them, because they have seen the faces of comrades who did not return. They had sat in mess halls with seats empty from the previous morning’s breakfast, drank in bars where faces were missing from the evening before, seen planes filled with crews just like their own fall from the skies, sometimes in sudden, violent explosions and sometimes in long, aching descents that hid the ultimate fate of their comrades from view.

They were not comfortable being called heroes, when they personally knew young men like themselves who had made the ultimate sacrifice. They could not think of themselves as heroes, not when a war was still going on. As Morgan writes, they were ready to lead decent, ordinary lives.

But as Morgan himself would find, they could not—not while a war was still going on. The demands and pressures of publicity would prevent Morgan and Margaret Polk from securing their relationship in marriage. Instead, he would marry another woman, seeking the happiness and normal life that he believed he wanted and had earned. But even at that point, the war was still not yet done with Robert Morgan and millions of other young men like him, and the omnipresence of the war in his life will be the subject of my next post.

This is the second of three posts on Morgan's memoirs. Read Part One. Part Three.