Emotional numbing of combat

The article by Mark Van Ells (click on post title for link) published in VFW magazine in 2002 demonstrates how for a small number of WWII vets the war never ended. According to the author, only about 6% of the 16 million servicemen actually saw sustained combat. Maybe that's why the myth of the well-adjusted WWII vet began. So many had not seen combat and therefore had not experienced the trauma of war. My dad, a paratrooper, told me that when he came home, nobody wanted hear about that side of war. So they were left silent with no outlet or support.