This 1920 article reported that it didn't take very long for hundreds upon hundreds of repatriated Doughboys to recognize that they had an empty hole deep within them - an emptiness that could only be filled by returning to France. Shortly after they landed on American shores, many turned right around - some employed as salesmen, some with commercial ambitions, some in pursuit of women while others simply felt they had to see the place again. An American Red Cross woman working at their N.Y. offices was interviewed for this article:
"Her impression is that the former A.E.F. is impelled to go back by powerful memories - in other words, it is homesick for France."
"'It is amazing,' she said. 'Dozens of men come in here with only the vaguest reasons for wishing to go back. They only know they do wish to go over. They now picture an idealistic France - a sort of dream France. They think of the old days, of the hospitality of the people, of the lighter things of their military lives, the leaves to Paris and the show places, of the wine. And they think they can go back to it all. They do not realize that they can never see the things they once saw, or feel again as they felt during the stirring days when France was a country exalted by wartime emotions. I am afraid that they will find all the glamour gone and only the sober reality of an impoverished country struggling to pay for food and taxes and to get back to the peacetime life of before the war. It won't be thrilling at all.'"
- from Amazon:
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