When they come home...

Pondering today's veterans' issues, I've always wondered what was different about those who came home from a horrific world war whose carnage claimed the lives of over 400,000 Americans and millions upon millions more around the world. They were my father's generation so I knew many of them well; and looking back, all I remember was folks working, doing business, teaching, treating, leading, preaching, farming, ranching, making things, and all the rest. They carried scars, but it didn't marginalize them. Veterans? Heck, they were ALL veterans, who had work to do, families to raise, a nation to build. Society expected that of them. We are witnessing a malady not of veterans, but of the society into which they return. Making veterans a special separate and pitied class is a mistake that harms them and the world around them.