[user104658]

It's tragic and a lot more support needs to be available, and a lot more focus and awareness right from the point of entry that it's normal and perhaps even crucial to understand that you WILL be affected by some of the things you do and see and that help will be available.

It is effectively impossible for anyone to see active combat/war and NOT have some degree of PTSD without significant debriefing work being done. The levels of functional alcoholism in those who fought in WW2 (and survived it) was massive. It was a generation where people "just got on with it", "stiff upper lip" and all that but that doesn't mean they just carried on unaffected. My maternal-side grandparents were both in France for most of WW2 (my grandad saw years of active duty, my grandmother was a field nurse and honestly, the unimaginable horrors in some journals she wrote...) and they went on to have great, successful, functional lives ... BUT ... old letters etc. I found when my mum died makes it very clear that her dad (who died before I was born) had a significant problems with alcohol and depression, and my gran who was a lovely little old lady, had a decades-long diazepam prescription "for her nerves" (i.e. PTSD) and in hindsight drank a LOT of sherry.

The message needs to be that "military aftercare" is an expected part of service, not something that only some will need, because like this poor man himself said - that leads to an idea that there will be a stigma if they admit to struggling.