Quote Originally Posted by goesh View Post
When units come and go together, it helps with the PTSD. I think cohesion and moral support stays intact and greatly facilitates integration back into civilization. In Nam, we rotated in individually though in the early years, divisions/brigades etc entered as whole units. We left individually and psychologically alone. when I got on the freedom bird home, I didn't know a man on the plane. We were all about 14 hours from civilization thinking life would be so great and wonderful once out Viet Nam. We had visions of hamburgers, cold beer and round-eyed women - we had lost all contact with civilization and were going home. The guy I sat beside told me he was being dishcharged and would be a civilian the next day. when the plane took off, he got a blanket, covered his head and sat and talked to himself all the way to Okinawa. Nobody had a clue what was really coming back to the States from Nam. The fact that a fallen comrade who wasn't KIA in Iraq or Afghanistan can be eulogized, honored and remembered and the word spread, says a great deal about not only his unit but the whole approach the military takes towards PTSD these days.
This has been something that's been lurking in the back of many minds for some time, Goesh. There was a fair amount of discussion that the extended voyages home on troopships after WW2 actually allowed the vets on board to decompress and work some things out with others who'd been through the same things. Actually, I'd say that we've seen a PTSD-type situation that is similar to Iraq and Afghanistan before...but it's hard to document due to the elapsed time. It's always been one of my personal theories that many of the waves of western expansion in the US were fueled by folks who had a hard time adjusting after the Civil War and simply "moved on" in the literal sense. A large number of men were demobilized very quickly after that conflict (state volunteer units) and depending on location not all of them had time to "decompress" with others. Also I think the fact that units were so geographically-based would have made losses harder to bear for some of them. It's always been a matter of interest that so many of the "gunslinging lawmen and outlaws" of the post-Civil War period were former military men from the war.