During the summer of 1944, after two-and-a-half years of war, American citizens on the home front were still caught up in a surge of patriotic fervor, making any sacrifice necessary to help the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen that were engaged in combat. These people were the generation that endured the Great Depression only to be plunged into World War II. We meet four boys who are too young to be in uniform and want to do something to help the war effort. The focus is also on a young man who goes off to war and the girl he leaves behind who worries that he will perish in combat or will be maimed or crippled or will return a different man from the one she loved when he went off to war. We begin to understand what it was like to experience rationing, wartime anxieties, and the optimism and spirit of shared purpose that were central to life on America
