Innocence Lost

“It was on the radio! They bombed Pearl Harbor! It will be another world war. God help all of us.” With those words from her distraught father, Lissa’s world collapsed. She had never paid much attention to the talk about war. It was all so far away, and unreal. At 19, she and her friend Georgie were busy with swimming or skating parties, the dances they helped organize, falling in love, and dreaming about marriage. What would happen to them now? Their whole world was disrupted. All the men would enlist. Would they come back? What about Lissa and her friends, left behind to wait, and worry? What of their dreams, of weddings and children? It would be five long years before she would have the answers to these questions; before the men, who would make it back, returned, hurt and damaged, but forever changed. And the women will have changed as well!