I just read an article with an accompanying interview on a reporter who really seems to "get it" with regard to why soldiers miss war: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/newsmakers/sebastian-junger-why-soldiers-miss-war-122426898.html.
It's not a morbid love of combat or trauma, but more a sense of moral purpose, especially as it pertains to the "band of brothers" that serve together.
Though not a soldier himself, Junger has a heart-deep understanding of this principle through his year embedded in a remote outpost in Afghanistan, his injuries due to an IED blast, and the loss of his fellow reporter, Tim Hetherington, in Libya (the two of them had teamed up on the hit documentary, Restrepo).
Junger's link between survivor's guilt and PTSD is particularly insightful.
Speaking of Band of Brothers, I just watched the whole series for the first time. Certainly wouldn't have appreciated it a few years ago like I do now. It's the psychological portraits that particularly grab me.
There was one lieutenant during the battle for Bastogne, who watched from his foxhole as two of his soldiers and closest friends were both maimed in a bombardment. While the lieutenant wasn't physically injured and had served valiantly since D-Day, that experience broke him and ended the war for him.
Toward the end of the war, another lieutenant almost broke when he received news that his wife was not only divorcing him, but was even taking his dog.
And there was the pervasive sense in the closing days of the campaign in Europe that every soldier must be kept from harm. They were close to going home! And every time a soldier died thereafter, often from stupid things like car accidents, it was an unmitigated tragedy.
Finally, the emotions of the war were stretched upon the withered faces of the veterans who in their old age introduced each episode. A half century after the fact, they still wept for their friends and the war that forever changed them.
The wounds of war heal, but the scars never fade.
