The mission of Battle- ‘n Home-Fronts is to increase public awareness of the relationship between America’s wars and its sense of shared meaning, to increase public awareness of the relationship between the nation’s battlefronts and the struggles that have characterized life on the home-front. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are powerful; the myths we live by, though often unexamined, help to shape our relationship to the culture which, in turn, helps to shape each of us. Since before its inception, the United States of America has professed a complex set of inter-related beliefs — about the nation’s purpose and about the responsibility of the citizen to the maintenance and fulfillment of that purpose. Beliefs, ideals, meaning, value — truths we hold to be self-evident — have guided the development of this nation that has struggled, throughout history, to live up to its creed.

Countless individuals and communities have suffered incomprehensibly at the hands of those who exercised a power that did not match their purpose. Despite it all and against all odds, Americans have continued to work, individually and cooperatively, to bring the nation’s actions into closer approximation to its stated beliefs. They have worked, as we work here, to form a more perfect union. Battle- ‘n Home-Fronts provides a robust set of multi-media historical materials that illuminate the development of American ideals through its war eras. Centering the voice of American military service members, we endeavor here to draw public attention to the nation’s moral commitments, to the experience of service in light of those commitments, and to the human cost of war.