I first read Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War as a teenager. It was one of my father’s favorite novels and a salient work of military science fiction for the Vietnam generation. He was glad the U.S. government never called up his draft number and sent him into that nightmare. My uncle volunteered, served in the U.S. Army infantry and lived a troubled life. I don’t know the war had anything to do with that last fact.
It’s too neat and tidy to say combat causes post-traumatic stress. There is something to be said for the alienation which ex-soldiers experience in an atomized, individualistic society after leaving a tightly-knit group of warriors — who share deep bonds and loyalties between them borne from shared experiences. Civilian life is decidedly lacking in this area. This, more than far-flung technology, is what The Forever War is about.
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