In September 2006, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research published a study on the mental health effects of combat on U.S. military veterans. Its findings were striking. The study reported that of the three hundred thousand soldiers surveyed, one in eight soldiers returning from combat during the first year of the war in Iraq was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or some other mental illness. More than 19 percent of those soldiers returning from Iraq reported experiencing mental problems. By the end of that first year, 35 percent of Iraq veterans had sought mental health care. The study also found that 12 percent of those seeking help were eventually diagnosed with PTSD, depression, or another serious mental health problem. (from the preface to chapter 1)

"The War Comes Home "is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Aaron Glantz, who reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war and has been reporting on the plight of veterans ever since, levels a devastating indictment against the Bush administration for its bald neglect of soldiers and its disingenuous reneging on their benefits. Glantz interviewed more than one hundred recent war veterans, and here he intersperses their haunting first-person accounts with investigations into specific concerns, such as the scandal at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. This timely book does more than provide us with a personal connection to those whose service has cost them so dearly. It compels us to confront how America treats its veterans and to consider what kind of nation deifies its soldiers and then casts them off as damaged goods. (from Google Books)

Philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman explores the psychological and moral burdens borne by soldiers. By illuminating the extent to which wars are fought internally as well as externally, this book expands the national discussion about war and the men and women who fight our nation's battles. With close-up looks at servicemen and --women preparing for, experiencing, and returning home from war, Sherman probes the psyche of today's soldiers--examining how they learn to kill and to leave the killing behind. Bringing to light the moral quandaries soldiers face--torture, the thin line between fighters and civilians, and the anguish of killing even in a just war--Sherman bares the souls of our soldiers and the emotional landscape of soldiering. At the heart of the book are interviews with soldiers, from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from Vietnam and World Wars I and II. (from Google Books)

I was motivated to put pen to paper because there was an aspect of the Vietnam War that I wanted to address, namely the deprivation and stark terror that one experiences in a foxhole. I had four assignments in Vietnam: I served as an infantry platoon leader for three months, then as commanding officer of the division mortar battery for five months during which I commanded about one hundred soldiers, then again as an infantry platoon leader for another three months, then a little more than a month as the S-3 Air for our battalion, a position considered to be nearly as hazardous as that of a platoon leader...In large part, I was prompted to write this book because my nine other classmates at the Naval War College were all young professional Navy officers, about twelve years out of the Naval Academy, who had chosen to serve their country for at least twenty years. They had never before met anyone who had received a notice from his draft board and then become an officer, and certainly not at the young age of twenty. By the time I was twenty-one, I had experienced more combat than most of these officers would experience throughout their entire military careers. They all envied me.... (from the preface)