The heroics of the war to end all wars left a swath of heroes in its wake. Men who fought for half a decade and walked away from a war that killed millions. Men who took home uniforms laced with medals, ribbons, and the faint scent of gunpowder. You were born from this, raised in the aftermath of something your parents talked about in hushed tones. 'Oh lad, those troubles are far behind us, the peace will last us a hundred years.' Diplomats claimed peaceful horizons, plentiful bounties from domestic markets, a wartime respite that would allow the ravaged world a time to heal, a generation of men a time to rebuild... They were wrong.
The drums that stopped beating two decades past have been silenced, but the unexpected echoes of the war have resonated in a desperate European economy, and now the echo will prove to be far louder than the drums that made them. The drone of guns and artillery, the spray of mud and mustard replaced. Now the cold screams of rolling steel tanks, the shattering rings of mighty planes, and the silent terror of the sea, ring in your ears. You were too young, and the officials not yet desperate enough to let you slip through the age restrictions of recruiting. Time has come however, England has succeeded in its endeavor to sturdy itself against the Fascist titan across the channel, its manpower, and willpower now robust and ready to prove that this generation of young men, will far supersede the past. The United States, finally pouring its own youth into the fray, with the burning of Pearl Harbor, the time has come for America to prove to those across the sea's both Pacific and Atlantic that the country will not stand for the Tyranny festering in the old world.
Perhaps misplaced in its ideals, it is still unwise to disregard the Communist dominion of the USSR/CCCP. Freedom of a kind much different from the estranged allies most consider the two Allied forces, but all of Mother Russia's sons and even some of her daughters will be needed before the end, if any were to escape the dark reign of the Third Reich.
It's January 1st, 1942. A red-letter year, but for which side of the struggle, much like the war a quarter century ago, is undetermined. From your humble beginnings, you are now thrust into the flames of war.
