Soldiers, through the ages, have often faced two sorts of battle: one in the field, a physical conflict of bombs and bullets, and a second on returning home and re-adapting to life among civilians. Both require bravery, but the latter struggle is seldom discussed, and often all but invisible.

The trauma of returning home from the violence of the battlefield can be measured, in part, by statistics: homelessness, alcohol and drug addiction, divorce rates, illness, suicide and prison convictions.

Combat Stress, a charity that cares for veterans with mental health problems, has reported a 53 per cent rise in GP referrals, with almost 1,200 cases last year. According to one estimate, a quarter of those sleeping rough in Britain have been in the Forces.

But there is another form of post-traumatic damage that is harder to measure: the social alienation felt by returning soldiers, the sense that the wider public has no real idea of what they have done and, worse still, does not care.

Sometimes this estrangement from wider society hits the headlines, as when several injured and burnt soldiers were forced to leave a swimming pool at a council leisure centre in Surrey after members of the public complained. More often, the discrimination is less bald. A casual slight in the pub, a refusal to admit servicemen into a nightclub, a shrugging lack of interest in hearing what it was like in Afghanistan or Iraq. Sir Richard Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, recently complained that soldiers could feel “devalued”.

Lloyd George promised soldiers returning from the Western Front “homes fit for heroes”, but the betrayal felt by many veterans embittered a generation. But in 1918 and 1945, the experience of war was shared by the British people as a whole. Today, only a minority have served in uniform.

Rudyard Kipling’s poem Tommy reflected the sense of anger and discrimination felt by the homecoming soldier, fêted when needed in battle, but shunned on his return.

“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!”

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