It was nice to read the article. My dad died last year. He was an infantryman in 1944 & 1945 in the 3rd army. He lost a lot of friends and my uncles told me that the war fucked him up. He became an alcoholic and never could fully shake the demons. He could never watch a war movie or anything depicting war. He also never could talk about what he experienced. I've realized that the ones who talk usually didn't see any combat. My dad hated war and hated patriotic fervor.
I wonder if it was harder on the American or the European soldiers. Going home to a land where nobody knows what you've been through.. My grandfather fought in WW2 and he talked about it all the time. But I feel like he got over it, psychologically. Everyone here did it together.. I think.
That's a great comment. I have a thought that a few American civilians were killed (Pearl Harbour and some kind of hot air balloon bombs from Japan I seem to recall), but having the majority of the population have no idea what you experienced has got to make it harder.
You can counter that with European soldiers coming home to dead families and destroyed cities. The US was prosperous and had unmatched conditions to help returning soldiers.
