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challenging and alienating after repatriation. This sense of estrangement resurfaces in accounts of British and American Veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (Ahern et al., 2015; Brewin, Garnett, & Andrews, 2011; Orazem et al., 2017) as it has been for Veterans of the World Wars (Schuetz, 1945; Waller, 1944), the Vietnam War (Figley & Leventman, 1980; Shatan, 1973; Shay, 2002), and Israeli Veterans of multiple conflicts (Stein & Tuval-Mashiach, 2015a). Veterans’ sense of belonging often shifts dramatically from the family to the military, thus rendering them alien in their own homes. In their investigation of the challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans’ transition from military to civilian life, for instance, Ahern et al. (2015) identified three dominant themes in American Veterans’ accounts: a) the military environment as a “family” that took care of them and provided structure; b) the notion that normal is now alien to them; and c) the search for a new normal as a strategy to reconnect. As one Veteran in the study noted, “I can tell stories all night long and [my family] probably won’t really grasp what’s going on” (p. 5). Similarly, in a study with British Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (Brewin et al., 2011) one Veteran lamented “our lives are completely alien to civilian lives. I think it always will be a them-and-us situation’ while another noted that “it’s hard to fit back into Civvy Street. I’ve been out 18 years now. I’ll never do it. It’s just, y’know, I talk like a squaddie, I act like a squaddie” (p. 1737). Thus, the first fundamental need that may be critically compromised for returning Veterans and thus give rise to their loneliness is the human need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). As Hynes (2001) notes of war:
if it makes men, it also isolates them from other men — cuts off the men who fought from older and younger men who did not share that shaping experience, and intensifies the feeling every modern generation has anyway, that it is separate, a kind of secret society in a world of others. (p. 6)
1. It is important to note that identity issues may differ between individuals, and more so between armies. In conscript armies (e.g., in Israel), wherein a large percentage of the population serves for a predetermined period of time, the “warrior” identity may be less