A Soldier's Home by Ernest Hemingway

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A “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway is an intriguing story about a man by the name of Krebs who enlists in the Marine Corps during his attendance at a Methodist college in Kansas. After serving for two years at the Rhine, he returned with the second division in 1919 but Krebs wasn’t in the same state of mind as before he left. The reason why Krebs was so distraught when he returned home was not because of the fact that no one wanted to listen to his war stories but because him and other soldiers were without any real benefits such as medical, education, extra remuneration, or anything to help him get back into the real world. This reason stated is the reason that Krebs and soldiers alike came home from war with nothing to show for except for time served and an empty heart.
There are benefits that were not provided that should have been and the most important was the medical benefits. I say this because soldiers were coming home from the war with missing limbs and a life full of misery due the circumstances that were brought upon them during the fight. Soldiers with missing limbs were patched up while at war by the nurses, while the government “intended to repay its debt to soldiers disabled during the war by providing free vocational reeducation” (Gelber). Trout stated “Out of the twenty-nine American combat divisions that saw action on the Western Front (each containing, at full strength, approximately 27,000 men), the Second suffered the highest number of casualties with approximately 18,000 wounded and 5,000 killed. They also received the highest number of replacements, more than 35,000 men.” With these large numbers and all the people that go with it, how will the government fix all of their problems? While the governm...

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... - A "Hard-Boiled Order": The Reeducation of Disabled WWI Veterans in New York City - Journal of Social History 39:1." Project Muse. Oxford University Press, Fall 2005. Web. 05 May 2014.
Hemmingway, Ernest. “Soldier’s Home.” The Beford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 187-193. Print.
Jones, Edgar, and Wessely, Simon. "War Syndromes: The Impact of Culture on Medically Unexplained Symptoms." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 01 Jan. 2005. Web. 10 May 2014.
Mayo Clinic. "Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic, 15 Apr. 2014. Web. 15 May 2014.
Trout, Steven. "'Where Do We Go From Here?': Ernest Hemingway's 'Soldier's Home' and American Veterans of World War I." GALE CENGAGE Learning. The Hemingway Review 20.1, Fall 2000. Web. 04 May 2014.

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