I agree. There are something like 400,000 veterans currently receiving disability payments for "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome" at a cost of over four billion dollars to the tax payers. The number of veterans applying for this has quadrupled in the last few years. I don't mean to denigrate anyone's service.....but I don't recall anyone from my father's generation belly-aching to the point where they were unable to hold a job.
Medical and psychiatric science have made light-years of progress into the mental health and treatment of men and women who've experienced the necessary and unavoidable trauma of close-in combat. The personal consequences of fighting a war through a rifle sight and house-to-house is far, far different than for many of us who carried on the fight from thousands of feet over where the effect of their war fighting skills was being felt during the day or at night where the only thing seen is a flash (and, if lucky, a secondary explosion. Even being involved in a CAS (close air support--for ground forces) operation happens so fast that being informed of the results of one's effort by radio, by follow-on recce (reconnaissance) photos or later by someone's eye witness report is just about the only knowledge the aviator has. Of course, often seeing the target burning is possible, but the actual scene of the effect on the gound to humans is impossible unless someone has really clear camera footage.
Grunts belly-aching? A truly incredible, thoughtless and uninformed comment.
"but I don't recall anyone from my father's generation belly-aching to the point where they were unable to hold a job."
Right on, they came home and moved on with their lives. They are "The Greatest Generation"
Don't think that PTSS hasn't been a problem from the very first war. Good men cannot easily forget the horrors they saw.