After the war & coming home
Adjustment back to civilian life was no easy thing after the war. All soldiers were weary of the fighting and most dealt with “combat fatigue” -- what we know today as PTSD. Many lost their friends and brothers, and life without them was an unbearable thought. Shortly after the jubilant return home, problems such as addiction, depression, and violence quickly arose for many veterans.
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Other soldiers were discharged even before the war ended because of their PTSD. These veterans were often incorrectly viewed as weak by society, and “the prevailing attitude [was] that once a soldier was removed from combat and provided with time for rest and relaxation, his war trauma would disappear” (Vento). The medical opinion of the time was that their mental illness was preexisting and “the horror of combat was not... a major independent cause of psychological problems” (Vento). Treatment of these “invisible” injuries was much more complicated, and in many cases, never helped in time. The return home was rarely the rosy perfection that it seems to be in history books.
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Congress designed to make the transition as easy as possible with the passing of the GI Bill, which gave returning veterans benefits ranging from home loans to money for a college education to unemployment checks. FDR and other politicians pressed hard for the bill before the war’s end because of “the missteps following World War I, when discharged veterans got little more than a $60 allowance and a train ticket home” (“The GI Bill’s History”). When the program ended in 1956, “7.8 million of 16 million World War II veterans had participated in an education or training program” and the VA had “backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans” (“The GI Bill’s History”). The bill also extended towards the financial dependants of the veterans and was a huge reason for the postwar boom. Similar bills have been passed after every one of America's following wars.
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