” ‘Imagine my surprise when my own son mentioned that sometimes he feels more comfortable hanging out with veterans two or three times his age than with civilians!’
Yes, and does God want that? I doubt it, it is not healthy.”
You may know better than I, but I can not purport to know what God wants for my son, but I pray daily that His will be done, beautifully stated in one of the verses of The Navy Hymn:
Eternal Father, grant, we pray
To all Marines, both night and day,
The courage, honor, strength, and skill
Their land to serve, thy law fulfill;
Be thou the shield forevermore
From every peril to the Corps.
My son’s sentiments, after spending 4 demanding years at Annapolis and 7-1/2 years (so far) as a Marine is quite normal: by the time I finished 4 years of medical school, three years of residency and 3 years of fellowship, I was so accustomed to being around other doctors that I had almost completely lost the ability to even make small talk with non-medical people. I was so immersed in learning my profession that I had almost no familiarity with the popular culture or current events for the previous 10 years.
So, it took awhile for me to relate comfortably to “civilians” outside of my professional capacity and to stop being fixated on their moles, speech impediments and gait abnormalities.
To his credit, my son has never lost his deep love and concern for his family, once commenting after what I feared would be a boring (for him) post-Christmas gathering with the old-fogey cousins, “You know Dad, the only thing I regret about my career decision is that it takes me away from my family.”
From what I have heard, one of the hardest things for many combat veterans to get over is the fact that people who haven't been in combat simply cannot relate to their experiences, as unknowable as they are to people who haven't experienced them. The loneliness, unpredictability, tension, fear, anger, excitement, horror, smells, proximity to death, and imagery meld together into a mashup that only people who have experienced it can truly understand. People like me can read about it, watch it in movies, talk about it and hear people talk about it, but we cannot experience it through those things, and a good thing too, that is.
It is a gulf to many of them between themselves and the rest of large parts of their family and society. They understand that many people are well-meaning, but to them, that really isn't the same as understanding.
I thought that was one of the more powerful messages of his life, that he used his celebrity, knowledge, and experience of war to try to help other men get over the gap.
I read something one time, said by a Vietnam veteran, decades after his time in combat, that tugged at my heart. He said (and I must paraphrase): "As much as I hated that place and everything about it, I sometimes wish desperately that I could go back to that time, just to remember again, even for a minute, just how badly I wanted to come back to my country and loved ones, and how much I missed being home."
Something about that statement just made me understand for a fleeting instant something about the loneliness and longing, coupled with the confusing disappointment many feel when they finally DO come home, and something just isn't right and that there are many who long to be back "there" where things counted, and life meant something to them. A very strange thing, to be sure. How many of those men are twisted by that odd combination of feelings?
So, no. I don't think it is unhealthy in any way for a young man to feel more comfortable in the presence of older veterans who must be able to understand these things.