Given a less traumatic war and an unconditionally positive World War II–style welcome to the returning veteran, this might have been an acceptable system, but in Vietnam what appears to have happened is that many a combatant simply endured traumatic experiences (experiences that might otherwise have been unbearable) by refusing to come to terms with his grief and guilt and turned instead to the escapist therapy of a “short timer’s calendar” and the promise of “only forty-five days and a wake-up.”
