Can you describe how you felt coming home from a deployment or combat?

Happy to be home, unhappy with the reception. Within a month wished I was back there.

I came home on a litter.

Holy Shit! Since coming home from Nam I can only count on one hand how many people asked me thi s question, and Ive been home for 55 years. This is why I have PTSD and have a brick wall up most of the time.
After we came home we were assigned to Fleet Week in NYC (my home town at that point). At that time I was 19 yrs old and was proud to show off our ship and shipmates to my family. BAD CHOICE! When we arrived at the ship protesters were throwing bottles, rocks, tomatoes, etc at us. I picked one up and threw it back in hopes of hitting one of them but don't know if I did because I almost got locked up. Hope I did!
Later that year I was discharged and as I left the Boston Navy Yard was told by the Marine Guards that a protest was going on past the front gate and to use the back gate and also change into civies and they will call for a cab.
Now home and looking for a job, forget about that because your labeled a baby killer....Thanks to Jane Fonda and her Northern friends. I have no regrets helping out to the boots on the ground with our 5 inch guns and shore power and would do it all over again if I could help!
Do I/we have a problem? you bet we do! its trusting people and our government. The only ones I trust is God, family, Nam vets and the Hells Angels. No Appoligies!
Sorry this is so long but venting helps dealing with the assholes out their!
Tks, Ray

Arriving home form deployment to the Persian Gulf War in 1991, walking in queue off of the airplane, while in gear at Hunter Army Airfield, I got a hand shake from a flag officer and a few rehearsed words, a small paper cup of war flat soda, and a stale oatmeal raisin cookie. End of welcome back ceremony, And nothing else since...

I came back from Germany after an assignment at command and control for all the Nike sites in Europe. I did not come home to any accolades. I didn't come home to a heros welcome. I came back being vilified and treated like a second class citizen. I didn't fight in Vietnam so I did fit in with combat veterans and the public at us like we were damaged goods. It took years for me to even acknowledge I was a veteran. It was so bad that after 3 years I went back in to the only family that accepted me for what I was. When I got out after the second hitch I was still not honored by anyone,I never expected a heros welcome. I never expected a parade. But I also didn't expect to be treated like someone to be who was damaged

Military service members, like my father, served during the Vietnam era, and spent time over there, as a combat infantryman, in the 1st Cavalry. He came back home to nothing but hate and had very little support. He had been spit on, had rocks thrown at him, etc. I can't even imagine having to put up with that, when you are already suffering from a total of four years in the jungle (he volunteered 4 tours). What was my father doing that much? When the Vietnam war started my grandfather was bit abusive and told my dad that he was a coward and would never join, so my dad decided to prove his dad wrong, and signed up for the Army, immediately. He wanted to rub it in his father's face, by serving more tours than his father served, during WWII, along with being on the front lines. He definitely earned my grandfather's respect because not only did my father serve overseas but he earned one award that my grandfather never did.. a CIB. When I came back it was complete opposite for me. People truly showed their appreciation for what I had done because 9/11 was the one date that brought the entire country together. There were no political opposites, or anything like that. Everybody was patriotic. People treated me almost like a celebrity and although it felt great I also felt like it was undeserved. I never considered myself a hero. I was just a normal guy who wanted to serve his country, since I signed up before the attack on America.

Coming home to a civilian world was depressing. The attitude of the civilians was not appealing. I wanted to reenlist, but I would have to take a rank reduction, so I sucked in and about 10 years later I joined the Reserves. That comradeship really helped. The soldiers that stayed in the military, had the military family to act as a buffer to the civilian world.

My home was in Southern Illinois close to St. Louis. I was numb. From the airport in St. Louis, Missouri. Took a taxi to downtown St. Louis Grey Hound Station. I was cheered up for a while because wouldn't charge me because I was coming home from Vietnam. The bus left from the Greyhound station to Sparta, Illinois, my hometown. It just seemed like I was coming home from a vacation in Chicago. My duffel bag and I walk the six blocks to my home. Mom was outside in the front yard. Seeing my mother really made me feel good. I just sat and relaxed for a few hours. Word had gotten out to my friends that I was home. I was really coming down to earth when I saw my friends. Only when I was alone I would think about Vietnam.
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Returning home from my first 3 deployments were exciting and a great relief after being gone for so long. My first two were Med cruises, and both were extended by 1 - 2 months due to happenings going on at the time in that part of the world, I got great stories but it was a relief to finally get back to home port and be able to take leave and visit my family, by my second one I was married and had a wife waiting for me so that was especially delightful. My 3rd was a West Pac as was my 4th but both were during the Eagle Watch / Desert Storm Era of the Gulf and we were mostly on patrol in the Gulf where I was stationed on 25mm cannons instead of in the Sonar Room. We were constantly in the smoke coming off of the oil wells and we had no idea of the dangers that it was to produce for us, we returned home on time, but we were rushed through our RefTra to get back over into the Gulf to be able to fire our missiles at the start of the 30 day bomb blitz of the Gulf War. This 4th deployment was the hardest for me, because I was already starting to feel some of the effects of having breathed in the irritants and whatever else was in the smoke from the last deployment. I was no longer myself and was becoming dissatisfied with everything around me, unaware that I was not myself really anymore. I was honorably discharged in January after we got back through a early out program but I understand now that I was not thinking correctly when I applied for it and should have stayed in.

I felt great and relieved , spent 3 or 4 days in Oki , and flew hone, wonderfull feeling that I was alive.