Veteran Plunges to His Death. Page 7.
https://progressivehistorians.wordpress.com/2007/10/06/ptsd-and-the-myth-of-ww-ii/
I had an uncle who was a paraplegic from Iwo Jima. He did everything, wheel chair basketball, hunting and fishing, worked jobs, invented a system so he could drive. Life was hard both before and after the war for him, but he was a hero to all the nephews.
As I get holder I experience some of the symptoms though I was never in the service. Life is hard sometimes but there is no doubt the war had an effect.
It is a COMPLEX thing. Some got stronger because of battle. In some, battle brought out what existed in their personality. In some cases battle caused it.
The reference says that only 35% saw battle.
In WWI many officers behind the line got shell shock. Interesting that in WWI it was thought that exploding shells caused a concussion in the brain, thus the confusion as to cause.
There are many reports that say that suicide among the military is no different than the rate in civilian population. But because it is military, it gets more attention?
I do not want to discount this. Reading the above and the images and experiences imprinted on young developing men had to leave a life time effect.
This doesn't necessarily mean the other 65% didn't "see" what the 35% "saw." Y'all remember my father was a radio mechanic working on the Superforts on Guam, so he was never in any of the battles. But the things he experienced--the Japanese soldiers who were still fighting on the island while he was there and what they did, the conditions of the bombers and those who flew in them, along with the soldiers coming back from the battles, and finally the trepidation on realizing his likely part in the seemingly inevitable invasion--all combined to affect his approach to postwar life, so that I could see it in him, a generation later.