As a young teen aged girl who had a pretty sheltered life, it was an eye opener.
After that night, I would never be able to look at my Uncle in the same way.
That’s understandable. There are, no doubt, people who come home from being mobilized, who don’t leave fears or reactions to deadly threats behind.
Different people deal with difficult situations in different ways. Most of the combat veterans I’ve known (many) tended to talk and think about funny situations that happened when they were in the service. Many of them even found humor in terrible situations of the past.
There was one friend of mine who did a tour with many firefights on combat patrols and ambush patrols in Vietnam as an infantryman. He talked about the most morbid details of those fights: really gory, nasty stuff. But he was fine. Others who did the same kinds of tours or similar tours told me about combat experiences without such morbid details, but they talked about those experiences. There was a man in the motor pool platoon of my Guard unit, who had done a tour as an infantry soldier in Viet Nam. Another was a combat engineer who did three tours, the last two in admin. duties (nice, he was single back then). Two others were combat medics in Viet Nam (many patrols), and they were attached to my unit during field training exercises. They were super cool.
Most of the veterans with long overseas tours for hazardous duty realized that they weren’t in danger any more. They were chatting with someone on a nice day. The past was past.
Stereotypes about men and women who’ve been through dangerous times overseas are common from the big media companies, but there are many different kinds of people out there. Most of them adjust and move on. The same applies to most former bouncers who worked in large, country dance hall type night clubs in redneck areas, police, medical workers, people who lived in rough neighborhoods for years,...
We who live in civilized societies now are really not living as naturally as generations long before us. We’re sheltered from seeing the many terrible incidents (e.g., vehicle accidents) and the inevitable end of all who are around us. Sorry, if that creeps you out. But it’s true. Most people in our contemporary society don’t even see animals as they really are. Most see animals as the human-like characters portrayed in the media.
Human beings reason and think about the future, and at best, don’t dwell much on thoughts of negative events of the past. Animals think about the here and now and don’t need to reason.