My father died of stomach cancer in his mid 40's. He did share stories from the war but they were mostly about things like poisonous snakes falling from trees.
My mother ended up part of a class action suit related to agent orange that netted her like $100 in the end. My father died in 1991 and this seems crazy but it's true: She has been paying off his hospital bills $10 a month for 20+ years.
I know my family was hammered by the recession in the early 80's. The timing of that had to be brutal for vets with young families. It's interesting how many people from that era are staunch conservatives who don't support government programs.
It was very different for the previous generation. My dad joined the Navy a few months before the bomb was dropped. He lied about his age to enlist, which was not unusual back then. He went to college on the GI bill, and lived the dream for the next 25+ years. He ended up dying too young (too much Don Draper-esque lifestyle takes its toll on the body), but his entire post war experience was very different from that of the Vietnam generation. The economy was great for most of his life, and the opportunities for someone with a college degree, courtesy of the GI Bill, were outstanding.
I have other family members that were members of the resistance in occupied Europe and another that was a POW of the Japanese for 3.5 years. Their service was honored by their countrymen for the rest of their lives, and I think it made a big difference in how they adjusted to the post-war world. American's treatment of returning Vietnam war veterans was unforgivable in many ways, and I hope and expect that it will never be repeated.
