Did US troops get leave home in World War 2?

Answer 1

Once US troops were deployed overseas they did not get home leave, in general. This was especially true of men in the Army. The only way home for those guys was through Berlin or Tokyo. Wounded men, providing their wounds were not such as to be disabling for further combat, were sent back to the front with their injuries mostly, but not completely healed. Many men earned a Purple Heart Medal repeatedly. Victory, death, a disabling wound (or frozen feet or "trench foot"), or cracking up from "combat fatigue" were the only ways out for a foot soldier. By 1944 the Marines had instituted a policy that any man who survived three campaigns got to go back to the states for a time - but they were not discharged, and expected to take part in the eventual invasion of Japan. Combat aircrew who completed a tour of a certain number of missions could go home, buy many volunteered for another tour. Some sailors were fortunate enough to be aboard vessels which operated from US ports, such as some of those assigned to convoy escort duties in the Atlantic. Generally though, once a man was in uniform he went for training, and once his training was complete, if he was destined for an overseas deployment (and not all men left the states) he got a brief leave to go home and say goodbye, if he could arrange a way to get there, and then he would not be seen again until the war was over, if he lived through it. Some men who distinguished themselves in action were sent back to go on "Bond Tours", visiting cities and workers in factories to exhort them to buy more War Bonds to finance the war. In the US Army some units had been fighting since 1942, in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. But the vast majority of the US Army did not get into action until after the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. Some of the troops who then finally got into the fighting had been in the UK for up to two years. Some of the troops who got in on the last few months in Europe went directly there from the US, having been in camp in the US for most of the war, with leave as conditions permitted. So the Army had a situation where some men had been overseas for nearly three years, much of it in action, and some only got there in time for a couple of months in the field. In an effort to bring fairness to this the Army instituted a "point system". A soldier got one point for each month in the service, another point for each month overseas, five points for each campaign in which he was credited with participating, five points for each combat decoration (including Purple Hearts), and points for having dependent children. A man needed 85 points to get to go home.