When Johny Comes Marching Home

The Hollywood image of heroic adventures about warfare has little in connection with reality.  In a book review of David Finkel's "Thank You For Your Service" we read the following about the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. 'The numbers Finkel presents are sobering enough. Of the nearly 2m service personnel who have performed active duty in those conflicts, the author writes that between 20% and 30% will suffer either from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury (TBI). By his estimation, that is around half a million Americans.' (Sunday Times, 3 November) Instead of heroes marching home to cheering crowds we are more likely to get them crawling off to a mental health clinic. RD