1This book began many years ago with a question prompted by footage of a Bob Hope camp show—What did World War II soldiers mean when they said they were fighting for women? That question turned into a research paper for the women's history seminar led by Kathleen Brown and Phyllis Mack at Rutgers University. With guidance from my wonderful committee—Alice Kessler-Harris, Beth Bailey, John Chambers, and Ginny Yans—the paper became a dissertation. Along the way, many friends, classmates, colleagues, mentors, and reviewers have significantly improved my thinking and prose. Notable among these are Karen Balcom, Michael Birkner, Ed Blum, David Cohen, Petra Goedde, Chuck Grench, Susan Hartmann, Lou Moore, George Roeder, Heather Schell, and Stacy Sewell. I wish to thank Jim Sparrow and Alison Lefkovitz for sharing with me their research on wartime marriages and veteran readjustment in Chicago and Morris, Illinois. Robert Townsend provided me with several useful sources and allowed me to cite his unpublished essay on postwar readjustment. J. Robert Lilly was kind to fax page proofs of his book on sex crimes by World War II GIs just before my manuscript was due to press. John Elliott helped me record the "Orphan Ann" broadcast included in chapter 5. For other illustrations, I am indebted to the Stars and Stripes, the American Airpower Heritage Museum, and Chuck Greening and his family. I am also grateful to the many archivists and librarians who helped me at Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives, the Rutgers Oral History Archives, the Harry S. Truman Library, the Gerald R. Ford Library, the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center, and the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and in San Bruno, California. A Gutenberg-e award from the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press provided a deadline and generous funds to support completion of this manuscript.

2Finally, I wish to thank my supportive family, particularly my parents Susan and Daniel Pfau and my brother Mark, for respecting my need to work and offering well-timed distractions. More than anyone, though, my brilliant and loving husband Dave Hochfelder is responsible for seeing this book to press. We met as I began my dissertation research; since then, he has read every word of this manuscript several times over and challenged me to turn it into a much better book.