Took me ten years of gentle coaxing to get my uncles(2) to talk about WWII. Both were infantry in Europe. My uncle that served in the Pacific just started talking about it in 2005. A historian from the Smithsonian broke the dam with him. None of them had PTSD, they just didn’t want to talk about. it was a past chapter of their full lives.
I have a female friend who’s father was Infantry in the 34th, whenever he and her mother would visit her out here from Ohio, I would prod him to talk about his time in the Army in WWII.
One night he followed me out to my garage and told me about how he got the scar on his face, he was on night patrol when something hit him in the face, it was a German soldier stabbing him, the Germans had been on patrol as well.
This little old man who everyone loved as such a gentle, and nice Ohioan small town guy, killed the German in that hand to hand fight, my girlfriend had never known the story.