Art:

I know many Vietnam vets, who have managed their lives successfully. One for example is a now-retired international sales executive, who made millions by hard, smart work. He had been exposed to the most brutal faces of war, was captured in hand-to-hand combat and actually broke out of POW cage and killed his guards by hand, and made his way back to his own side through the jungle, barefoot. But he was an excellent sales exec, highly competitive, acquisitive, intelligent, social.

On two occasions, however, he "touched off" under conditions of stress and antagonism with strangers; one time he flattened the guy with a board, and the other time he broke the guy's arm in three places.

My sense is that the extremes of violence any warrior has been through are never too far from re-activation; what happens next depends on the character, I guess.

A