Across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, America’s victorious GIs pack up, tear down, and head home to restart their lives—and their country.

It’s farewell to Europe for these excited GIs making the first stage of their long journey home aboard a French train in Le Havre, France, in May 1945. Among some of the first GIs to accumulate the number of service points required for discharge, many of them have chalked the names of their destinations on the sides of the railroad car. (National Archives)

In the Pacific, with the war weeks from ending, Major General Archibald V. Arnold shakes hands with and bids farewell to those of his men who qualified for discharge under the points system. These men of the 7th Infantry Division had fought through four major campaigns, and many had been overseas for 57 straight months. (National Archives)

President Harry S. Truman poses with the surrender papers signed by the Japanese less than a week earlier on September 2, 1945. With Truman are Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal (left), Secretary of War Henry Stimson (center), and General of the Army George C. Marshall (behind Truman). It was time for the boys to come home. (National Archives)

Private Sidney Rosenfeld, a homebound paratrooper from Des Moines, Iowa, looks ready to jump into a government-funded education program courtesy of the GI Bill. For many vets, the bill meant a college education and a solid start in postwar life. That’s quite a change for Rosenfeld, who distinguished himself landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day with the US 6th Engineer Special Brigade. (National Archives)

Tugboats escort the stately British former ocean liner Queen Mary as she steams into New York Harbor on June 20, 1945, still wearing her ocean-gray camouflage and bringing thousands of veterans home from the war in Europe. Families and the press wait dockside in Manhattan to give the boys a rousing homecoming. (National Archives)

US veterans of the China-Burma-India theater cheer their homecoming on September 27, 1945, aboard the army transport General A.W. Greely. Including veterans of Merrill’s Marauders, the Flying Tigers, and other famous outfits, these CBI men and women were the first from their theater to arrive in New York. (National Archives)

Not every fighting man came home to make his postwar dreams come true. First Lieutenant John W. Madison of the 92nd Infantry Division was killed in Italy. Brigadier General Robert N. Young presents Madison’s daughter, Melba Rose, age 2, and Madison’s widow, Rosie L. Madison, with the Silver Star Lieutenant Madison had earned. (National Archives)

Returning vets were often peppered with the question, “Did you win any medals?” The soldiers’ reactions varied, depending on how quickly they wanted to forget the war. Sergeant Sylvester Eli Barbu of the 82nd Airborne Division had plenty of ribbons to display, including the Bronze Star (top center), but the awards he may have been proudest of were his Combat Infantryman’s Badge (top right) and his paratroopers’ wings (top left), the latter of which featured three stars representing three combat jumps. (Courtesy of the Caba American Heritage Collection)

Like all homecoming troops, returning Americans came back with trophies. This Walther P-38 9mm automatic pistol was a handsome, much-coveted battlefield collectible. (Courtesy of the William S. Jackson Collection)

For many returning vets the uniforms they came home in were the only clothes that fit them after three or four years in the service. The army would send them home from its separation center in a reasonably complete outfit, replacing worn items with new ones. Due to the clothing shortage in the States, a GI was permitted to wear his or her uniform for 30 days as long as he or she displayed the special insignia for discharged servicemen. (National Archives)

The discharged servicemen’s insigna was supposed to be a rampant eagle encircled by a wreath of glory. The boys thought it looked like a waterfowl getting ready to try on a truss and gave it the name "ruptured duck." Most commonly, the insignia was made of cloth and found in a triangle sewn over the right uniform pocket. It told officers, military police, and other officious types that this was a discharged serviceman who was no longer subject to military discipline. (National Archives)

On June 19, 1945, four and a half million people lined lower Broadway, soon to be dubbed the Canyon of Heroes, to welcome home from Europe General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower (the tiny waving figure you can just make out at the apex of the parade) with showers of tickertape and confetti. The grinning supreme commander of the European theater had arguably the most boisterous homecoming of them all. (National Archives)

By August 24,1946, the boys have been home for a year, and things seem to have settled back to normal for a Saturday afternoon on the main drag in Welch, West Virginia–with some postwar extras. The shortage of cars has passed, as has gasoline and tire rationing. The war had definitively ended the Great Depression, and prosperity is back in downtown USA. (National Archives)

On ground where cows grazed before the war, young families now slept in suburbs made of prefabricated materials. These instant neighborhoods and towns sprang up to meet the housing demand of millions of postwar Baby Boom families. Designed to be built at maximum speed and minimum cost, the houses are “little boxes…all made out of ticky-tacky,” as the song went, and they “all look just the same”–as in this 1951 view of the most famous planned community of them all: Levittown, New York. (National Archives)