I hate to say 'I nailed it' but I nailed it.

In A Line Through the Desert, Sgt. Jake Bloom returns home from Desert Storm a lost man. The home in which he grew up no longer seems right. His old bed, his old likes, his old diner, his old friends, nothing feels comfortable anymore:

“I was laying here, looking up at the sky and I realized the last time I did that I was in the middle of a battle, my tank was on fire, my crew was dead, and I thought I was about to die.”
            “Jesus.” Devon lit a cigarette and looked Jake square in the eyes. “You sorry you joined?”
            “No.” For a few moments they listened as everyone laughed over a dumb Joke Mathew told, then. “You remember what I was like in high school? I spent four years wondering from class to class without a fucking clue. I mean, Earth Science, Algebra? Who gives a shit?”
Devon laughed. “My mother did.”
            “It’s different in the army, you know? The shit I do makes sense. We boresight the 125mm so it can hit a target. We change the air filter so the engine doesn’t flame out.” Jake held a clenched fist in front of him. “And I’m good at it.”
            “Sounds like it.”
            “You know, in the desert, we were out in the middle of fucking nowhere, way out on limb. But I could look around, and see my squadron. I knew why I was there, I knew what I was doing.”
            “So what are you doing here?
“What am I doing here?” Jake let out and ironic laugh. “I thought I’d come back  and tell Patricia what an idiot I was for the things I wrote. Tell her I love her.” He shrugged. “Instead, when I saw her, I got mad. Started yelling. That’s not how I figured it’d go.”
“You thought the moment Patricia saw you she’d fall to her knees, beg you to take her back, spend the next week in bed?”
            Jake smirked. “Yeah.” He took a big gulp from the Tullimore.
            “Hey take it easy on that would you?”
            Devon reached for the bottle, Jake jerked it away.
“Fine, keep it.” Devon stood up.
            “Where’re you going?”
            “Get a couple of hits in before my brother smokes it all. You coming?”
            “No thanks.”
            “Probably better that way, you would’ve been a buzz kill .”
            “What do you mean, I’d be a buzz-kill?”
            Devon stopped and turned around. “That crap you pulled at the diner, sitting here by yourself listening to imaginary helicopters...”
            “So?”
            “So? It’s like sitting through the Deer Hunter.”
Devon turned around and walked over to where everyone else was sitting.  Jake took another swig of Tullimore, and watched as his childhood friends became enveloped in an ever growing cloud of purple haze...

 I was watching The Pacific, just excellent. As with most war tales, the homecoming is the most telling part. Below, for me is the most poignant scene.

Eugene Sledge, who left for the Marine Corps a virgin and came back a virgin, returns home to Mobile a jaded, cynical pipe smoking combat veteran. Here he is registering for college:

'They taught me how to kill Japs. I got pretty damn good at it.'

He seems ridiculous, doesn't he, in his hunting clothes, probably the same clothes he had before the war. Carrying a shotgun after hauling a mortar and carbine across the Pacific seems obscene. How can he carry a weapon once again?

One of the nice threads going though Eugene's homecoming is his father's compassion:

The old man, a doctor, was in the Great War, and understand what Eugene is going through.

Some things are universal, I guess.