Some years later...

It was late summer of 1945 when I arrived back at the states after the war. I had seen some horrible sights. The concentration camp had been the worse, I'd been deployed to the women's camp with Doc Kemp and I will never forget the horror of been passed malnourished babies from dying babies, they'd been weary of us but they trusted me a woman, one of their own, to take care of their most prized possessions. The biggest scare was when Lewis lost his battle with alcohol one night after he jumped from a plane and was the only one who survived, he scared me that night. The most shocking was when a replacement shot Charles Grant in the head, I'm not inclined to be violent anymore since that incident, and I punched that replacement enough to live my life in peace.

I did get to Aldbourne and I did meet Bill back in England, we stayed with my Grandparents who were now frail and old. Arriving back at New York had been the best thing that I could have ever experienced seeing most of my boys arrive home but also wistfully thinking of those who hadn't and you could tell the others felt it too. Since arriving back in the US I've been bombarded with offers of interviews but I refuse to make a profit of my experiences, nobody needed to know. I never went back to Atlanta but I did see Holly again, my parents made it explicitly clear that they never wanted to see me again. Holly and I grieved for Annie properly for a few weeks but as Annie would want us to we carried on like everybody else.

I liked Philadelphia much more than I expected and Bill's family were very pleased to meet me. His mother doted upon me after hearing many tales from Bill about me, most I'm sure were exaggerated. I found work as a secretary at a local contracting firm but I longed to be out helping, the war had changed me and I couldn't sit on my bottom for the rest of my life. Bill and I looked for work elsewhere, he got a job as a light labourer and nobody bothered him about his leg. People could see that he was wounded but as I later found out I was mentally wounded but in time I would heal. I did odd jobs for people but being a housewife was proving to be nice, especially with a farm to manage, I started to love my life and I was happy for the first time in years. It was in winter 1949 that Bill proposed again properly on December 17th, the day we'd entered Bastogne five years earlier, we married in January.

Of course my answer had not changed, I'd grown to love Bill more and more, on home turf with no regulations it was like meeting him again and I'm glad to say that I met him. In 1950 I gave birth to my first daughter, I loved her unconditionally but she died at age two from Cystic Fibrosis and it was heart breaking to lose something I had begun to cherish. In the aftermath of that I began to wonder if my life was worth living, everything I seemed to touch had trouble or was hurt until Bill being the man he is suggested we adopted. In 1952 we adopted a young baby boy who we named George Warren Alex Guarnere-Marshall. And to this day he is my world along with his younger brother Frank Lewis Guarnere-Marshall.

In early 2000 Bill and I were approached by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg to give information about the war. It was my first time speaking about the war publically but I was happy to do it and the actors that played Bill and I were far too kind, and the men who played my good friends Buck, Lew and Dick. To play Bill they chose Frank John Hughes and he is wonderful and myself I was played by the far too good looking Jessica Biel.

Rosemary Elaine Marshall

A summary of my diary from 1945-2001

Rose died on the 7th April 2006 aged 83 surrounded by her family and friends from the war and later life