Great reading all of your family stories. Always wondered why most soldiers dont talk of their wars much, then it occurred to me that combat is usually pure hell. You have to be in a "special" mental space to actually enjoy it. WW2 was a little bit refined from WW1, but both were human meat grinders for any combat soldiers. Men HAD to block their visions from their minds or lose their minds and they needed to hold their shiznit together for their families.
I always wonder how that changed in modern combat and why PTSD became so prevalent; where WW2 soldiers simply went silent, kept their heads up for the most part and pressed on until they died (or die, 66K WW2 vets are still alive). It obviously always existed, but why was the greatest generation able to hold it together? The gore never leaves your mind. What happened to us as people that we can no longer cope like that?
I worked in a job that people cant imagine. Dealt with travel and bieng away from home, some human remains (not combat), etc., and I can attest that it's weird when you come home and the world was still turning while you were gone. Your own family can barely fathom what you might try to describe, and in reality, they are just living their day to day life, whether you're there or not. It's almost like what you did doesn't matter...at least to anyone who wasn't there with you. It must be the weirdest thing for combat veterans.
