The Best Years Of Our Lives

The Best Years of Our Lives is an interesting story of how three veterans of World War II find it difficult to adjust to their normal civilian lives, after the war gets over.

The three men, Al, Fred and Horner, meet on their way back home from their war deployments. While Al was an infantry platoon sergeant, Fred was an Air Force Captain and bombardier. Horner, on the other hand, served in the navy and lost both his arms during the war. As the three of them get back to their normal routines, they still keep getting nightmares of their turbulent times on the war front. Al joins back at his job of a loan officer at the local bank. He turns to the drink, whenever he feels like a misfit. He surprises his boss when he comes up with a plan to give easy loans to all war veterans, without any cosigners even! Horner was a quarterback of a football team, before he dedicated himself to fight the war for his country. Now that he is physically handicapped, he has difficulty in living with his disability. Although his family and his fiancée Wilma are quite supportive, he is frustrated by the idea of being a burden on them for life. Fred pursued a very boring profession of being an unskilled soda jerk at a drugstore as that is the only job, he could have with his level of skill.

His new wife, Marie, is not at all thrilled to know about her husband’s meager job as she was more proud to see him as an officer in the army. The three men are fighting a different war altogether, even after having returned from the real war!