Well Keith you were either lucky or blind.

The young men I speak of, I knew intimately.
I live in what was then a very isolated area and those men went to school with me, grew up with me, chased the girls with me.
They were well adjusted people with the well devoloped sensitivity of country folk.
Almost every face I call to mind was badly affected by his spell in uniform.
Some were almost unrecognisable on their return, many suffered severe pschological problems, all returned harder and less sensitive.

The syndrome is put best in my opinion by Lewis Grassic Gibbon in his famous novel "Sunset Song", where Chris's husband Ewan ..a peasant farmer, returns from France to a horrified Chris, who cannot believe him to be the kind gentle boy who left her a year before.

Everyone should read Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel, it would aid our understanding of the state of our society today...Ake