From welcome home to goodbye kisses, or victory kisses... these 20 romantic vintage photos below will take your breath away.
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| This sailor, pictured in 1941, kisses his girl goodbye as he returns to his post after the shocking Pearl Harbor attack on December 7. |
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| Servicemen and downtown workers embrace and kiss on the streets of downtown as word of the surrender flashed through the nation. Soldiers at Jefferson Barracks were restricted to the base until President Harry Truman confirmed the surrender at 5 p.m. local time. Many of them headed straight downtown. May 8, 1945. (Post-Dispatch) |
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| Jean Ann, 1943. |
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| A sailor leans over a picket fence and lifts his girlfriend up for a kiss, 1945.(Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
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| Returning Korean War. Soldier Sgt. 1st Class Owen Marsh of North Hollywood leans out a bus window to kiss his wife, Evelyn. The bus was departing Los Angeles International Airport for Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, where Marsh would be discharged. Marsh was one of 50 members of the U.S. Army 40th Division – California National Guard troops – to return home that day from Korea. April 27, 1952 |
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| In a poignant embrace, Vietnam War veteran Perron Leroy "Perry" Shinneman reunites with his wife Shirley upon his return home to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The image clearly shows that one of Perry’s legs is missing, with his crutch fallen to the airport tarmac. As a lance corporal in the U.S. Marines, in action against Viet Cong in April 1966, his limb was destroyed when stepping on an enemy booby trap seven miles south of DaNang. (Photo: Ray Mews) |
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| A US soldier is welcomed home by his wife and baby, ca. 1940s. |
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| Couple in Penn Station sharing farewell kiss before he ships off to war during WWII, April 1943. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt) |
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| An American soldier kisses an English woman on VJ Day in 1945. |
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| Goodbye;s kiss, ca. 1940s. |
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| American soldier kissing a French girl as they embrace on the hood of a half-track, 1944. (Photo by Ralph Morse) |
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| Shipping Out: In this and dozens of other, similar pictures made at New York's Penn Station, LIFE's Alfred Eisenstaedt captured a private moment repeated in public millions of times over the course of the war: a guy, a girl, a goodbye -- and no assurance that he'll make it back. By war's end, more than 400,000 American troops had been killed. |
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| A soldier kissing his bride after their wedding. El Paso, Texas, USA, 1942. (Photo by Eliot Elisofon) |
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| 12/7/1941-New York, NY: A soldier's girl "Kisses the boy goodbye" in a 34th Street bus terminal, while another soldier cooperates by holding her up to reach him. Picture taken just before bus load of Army men left, Dec. 7, when their leaves were terminated by the worsening situation in the Pacific, where Japanese planes bombed U.S. defense bases. (Photo: © Bettmann/CORBIS) |
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| A loved one is swept off her feet by a returning GI in the aptly named town of New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1945. |
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| A soldier comes home from war, ca. 1940s. |
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| "Kiss of Liberation" - An American soldier kissing a little Italian girl. August 15, 1944. (Photo by Tony Vaccaro) |
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| Departure of the Italian training ship the 'Amerigo Vespucci', Egypt 1963. |
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| An American soldier leans over the side of an army vehicle as he kisses a French woman on a bicycle during the liberation of Paris, ca. 1940s. |
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| 1944. A youngster, clutching his soldier father, gazes upward while the latter lifts his wife from the ground to wish her a `Merry Christmas.' The serviceman is one of those fortunate enough to be able to get home for the holidays. |
