During the WWII years Norman Rockwell created a character named Willie Gillis -- an ordinary guy from a small town who joined the army. Rockwell chronicled his experiences in the war in a series of Saturday Evening Post covers. After the war, he showed us Gillis returned to civilian life -- above you see him in college, on the G. I. Bill, having survived and put on a little weight.
It's a poignant image, for all it doesn't say. Gillis is preparing himself for a "normal" life in post-war America, with his pipe and his golf clubs -- but the war souvenirs hanging over his head suggest that he will always be haunted by memories out of place in a "normal" world.
One of the virtues of Ken Burns' newest documentary The War is that it addresses the sort of post-traumatic stress disorder that returning vets, and the whole civilized world on some level, suffered in the wake of WWII. For the vets it was peculiarly disorienting, with feelings of triumph, guilt and shame all mixed up together. It was not something that could be talked about in the world Willie Gillis was trying to become a part of.
All of this I think reinforces my notion that it was in art, in film noir particularly, that such disorientation could be engaged in a safe way, a socially acceptable way. You can read more thoughts on the subject here.