Geriaviator,
There is a matter which Jack Stafford raises, which touched a chord with me, and I would think, with many others old enough to remember the War (the underlining is mine, but it is the crux of it):
...But I could hardly believe the gulf that had opened between me and most of the people with whom I had been so close only 12 months earlier.
My single-minded devotion to the Air Force was beyond them; they could not understand my experiences in the air. At first I was keen to discuss my flying in great detail, but I could not get through to them. Our lives had taken very different paths, and nothing was the same. I found it very hard to accept that their interests were still centred on the weather, the stock,
the fragile old fence on the back boundary, who would be at the dance on Saturday night, and so on.
Christ! Didn't they realise what an exciting world it was? If I spoke about life in the Air Force people would listen politely but before long their disinterest became obvious and they would remember that the ewes had to be shifted in the top paddock or business had to be done in town...
This is very true, and it held good even after the war, and I believe it is at the bottom of the very common: "Why Dad/Grandad didn't ever want to talk about his time in the war". It was almost as if we had been living on separate planets in those years.
Danny.