I've been lurking this thread because... hmmm, that's hard to describe. In part, I'm a little wary of your question. Are you somehow concerned that we're turning out maladjusted potentially violent folks into an unsuspecting society? From my point of view, it's the other way around, especially for career soldiers (marines, sailors, airmen - whatever).

I retired from the US Army in 1998. Career spent as a Combat Arms officer, split about 50-50 Infantry and Engineer (I branch transfered during an Engineer shortage). Went home in uniform one night and the next morning began work in civvies running a company. Technically I was on leave for almost the next 3 months (it was legitimate - I had a written legal opinion/"safe harbor" letter), so in a sense I had negative transition time. Other than attending a mandatory one day seminar at some date up to two years before my retirement, that was pretty much it. I do something else now - something I'm more comfortable with.

It was a hell of a rough ride and I don't think there's any good way to smooth that all out. I had a fairly typical delayed culture shock - about 1 1/2 years - and it was the worst time of my life, ever, period. Very indescribable. American society doesn't particularly venerate old soldiers, occasional spasms of guilt aside (Not true of MANY fine people, but that's the flavor of society writ large). Some guys don't make it and some die a few years after retirement of "natural causes", albeit rather before their time. Some guys do just fine. That's just life; deal with it. No pills or shrinks; life's a series of campaigns, so fight the battles and perform the missions.

Enlisted men at that time were getting quite a bit more attention - whether they wanted it or not - but it seemed to me that the entire focus of that attention was the "how to get a job" sort of thing - good, but not perhaps as important as the cultural transition that career military folks really would benefit from. I did not hear anything bad about it from soldiers that I know who attended the training and several told me that it was really helpful to them in a job-preparation sense.

The US Air Force at that time put a huge amount of time and effort into "pre-retirement training" of commissioned officers. Mandatory, to the best of my knowledge. And I heard that it was hugely focused on getting a great job, but that's all anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt. I suspect, but don't know, that the USMC did little transition training then. Don't know what the Navy did.

I don't know first hand what is being done today so I won't comment on that - a recently separated or retired person would know better.

Every day I make a conscious effort to not be a soldier - an officer - out in the world. It took me a long while to be able to do that, and I'll never be good at it. I am who I am. Every day I miss the Army; miss soldiers; miss the culture I spent so many years in, miss pretty much everything about it. <shrug> I'm not sure any of that is a bad thing.

I served in the Army, yet I truly have far more in common with a Marine grunt I've never met than with everyone else that I know and work or socialize with who has not served in the military, if that makes any sense to you. Can't transition that out of a person. And shouldn't.

That's about it. From here on, my story goes: "There I was, knee-deep in grenade pins, when ..." <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
Tom