"The presence of a Viet Nam veteran in uniform in his home town was often the occasion for glares and slurs. He was not told that he had fought well; nor was he reassured that he had done only what his country and fellow citizens had asked him to do. Instead of reassurance there was often condemnation- baby killer, murderer- until he too began to question what he had done and, ultimately, his sanity. The result was that at least 500,000- perhaps as many as 1,500,000- returning Viet Nam veterans suffered some degree of psychiatric debilitation, called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, an illness which has become associated in the public mind with an entire generation of soldiers send to war in Vietnam."
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Original Language: English
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Richard Gabriel, as quoted by Dave Grossman in On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (2009), revised edition, p. 279
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
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Vietnam War
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