Chapter Fourteen: Antigo and Chapter Fifteen: Coming Home Summary and Analysis

When Jack Bradley returned to the states, he eventually married Elizabeth Van Gorp, became a funeral director and bought his own funeral home in Antigo. His children only knew that he was in a famous wartime photo. Jack wouldn't talk about it and refused any interviews with the press. The children always wondered why he wouldn't talk about his experiences during the war and on Iwo Jima. After he died, their mother told them that although their father wouldn't talk about it, he had cried in his sleep for four years after they were married. Perhaps his silence was due in part to Iggy's death. James learned that his father didn't like being called a hero. He felt the heroes were the guys that didn't make it...