What month in 1945 did US Soldiers begin coming home from World War 2?

Answer 1

Seriously wounded men, men who would not be able to fight again, had been returning since US forces first got into combat in the latter half of 1942. If a man would be able to fight again once he had recovered from his wounds, he did no get to go home, but had to go back to the front, no matter how many times he had been wounded and returned to duty.

The Marines instituted a policy of allowing a man who had survived three campaigns in the Pacific to return to the states, at least for a while, before being posted back to combat. By the end of the Saipan-Tinian battles in the Mariana Islands Campaign during the summer of 1944, some Marines had made it through three campaigns, and there were more after the Peleliu Campaign ended in November 1944. So some Marines were at home from the war for Christmas 1944.

In Europe the US Army was short of men almost from the start, especially riflemen. These were the foot soldiers, who had to go forward, weapon in hand, seeking the enemy. No one had anticipated how quickly riflemen would be killed or disabled by wounds, once US forces were fully engaged in ground combat with the Germans. There was a "replacement crisis" in late 1944, as the US Army in Europe grew critically short of riflemen. Volunteers were taken from other branches of the army and given a quick course of infantry instruction at bases set up in Europe, and sent to the front. Entire units, such as anti-aircraft battalions, were disbanded and the men retrained as infantrymen, much to the dismay of the soldiers involved, who went from a relatively safe specialty to the most dangerous job in the WWII military. Newly arriving divisions were stripped of their riflemen, who were sent forward as replacements for divisions already engaged. The army never completely solved the problem. As in the Pacific men wounded but not seriously enough to be disabled were retained in theater and sent back to the front, relentlessly, even after numerous wounds. The army ended its ASTP program, which had run throughout the war. This program took men who had scored high on their tests at induction into the service, and who were then sworn into the service, and then sent off to college. They drew military pay, and had all the girls to themselves, since everybody else was in the service. The idea was they'd become officers once they graduated, then go fight. But with the "replacement crisis" dominating the army's thinking this program was brought to a quick end and the flabbergasted former student-soldiers soon found themselves at the front as lowly infantrymen. They're still aggravated about it today. (The Navy never did end its ASTP Program, and had 60,000 happy sailors attending classes and drawing pay when the war ended).

In an effort to be fair the army instituted a "point system" in September 1944. A small percentage of the army had been overseas fighting a long time, since North Africa in November 1942. Such long-serving units as the 1st, 3rd and 9th Infantry divisions and the 1st Armored division had a few lucky men still alive who had been there that long. The general principle was "those who had fought longest and hardest should be returned home for discharge first." A soldier got one point for each month in the service, another point for each month overseas, five points for each medal or campaign battle star, and twelve points for each dependent child under 18. A soldier needed 85 points to get to go home and be discharged. So the "high point" men began to return to the "Zone of the Interior" (the US) in the autumn of 1944. If you had only 82 points, it was just too bad.

Most of the US Army saw no action and did no fighting at all before the D-Day landings in Normandy, in June of 1944. Then divisions and lesser units began to be fed into the front, from where they were in England at first, then directly from the states. Some barely got there before the war was over. The US still had a war to fight with Japan,and the plan was to take the units who had seen the least action and send them right on to the Pacific, for the climactic assault against Japan. Many of these units were sent by ship back to the US, to take a train to the west coast, and then another ship out to the Pacific war. A lot of these were in the states when the A-Bombs were dropped and the Japanese surrendered, and these guys were discharged and out of the army practically right away. Many of these guys had not been drafted into the army until 1943 or 1944. Meanwhile, squatting in Europe were the guys who had fought a long time, and who were going to get a break, and were not slated for immediate redeployment to the Pacific. Ships were scarce. Some of these long time combat vets did not get home until the middle of 1946, and not until after a Congressional investigation was begun, after wives and mothers got loud in wondering why this was so. Some of those guys had probably been drafted into the army in 1940. In retrospect some of these guys who got stranded in Europe thought it worked out all right, because they had a chance to reacclimate and adjust after the intense, soul-searing experience of combat. They could get used to sleeping in beds again, clean clothes, hot showers, warm food.

Combat aircrew, bomber crewmen, had a policy that they got to go home after completing a "tour". At first, in Europe, a tour was 25 missions. In the dangerous early days it was quite a feat to live to finish the tour. The first US bomber crew to make it was the crew of the "Memphis Belle", who finished in May 1943. They returned to the states and went on a tour of the country to sell War Bonds, there was a documentary done about their experience by William Wyler, and a feature movie in the 1990s (with many liberties with the truth). Many men who completed a tour in Europe volunteered to extend their time, or to fly another tour in the Pacific. In other theaters, and depending on the policy of the bomber group, a tour was made to be more missions, usually increasing in increments of five missions, as the war got easier. Fighter pilots' tours were based on hours in combat.