He found stability difficult to maintain.

The photograph followed him everywhere — people recognized him, expected him to be the symbol they had seen on the posters and the stamps, and were often confused or disappointed by the quiet, struggling man they found instead.

The drinking continued.

It intensified.

He was arrested for public intoxication multiple times in multiple states.

Newspapers covered the arrests with a consistency they had shown for no other aspect of his post-war life, and the coverage often carried an undercurrent of something close to mockery — the war hero fallen, the symbol reduced.

The racism embedded in some of that coverage was not always subtle.