Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 70 to 85 million people died in the deadliest conflict in human history. For the men who shipped out, the moment of goodbye was often the last photograph ever taken of them. On platforms and harbour docks all around the world, men in uniform held their wives one last time before boarding trains and ships bound for places most of them had never heard of.
Nobody knew how long it would last. Nobody knew who was coming back. Some of these men had been married weeks. Some had children they would never meet. Some knew they weren’t coming back and said nothing. The ones who made it home came back different. The ones who didn’t left behind a generation of women who never fully moved on.
