Second, Herman’s (1997) chronicle underscores the importance of subjective assessments (individual cognitions) about traumatic events, especially with regard to social roles, in the development and course of PTSD itself. She shows how, despite huge numbers of valiant men being diverted from the battlefield with combat stress during World Wars I and II, combat stress was thought of as an unfortunate outcome of war and a problem for the government (and culture) primarily during wartime, but not after men returned home. In conjunction with other research (Blank, 1993; McFarlane, 1988; 1997; Yehuda, 2002) suggesting that few people pursue medical or psychological treatment for PTSD, Herman’s depiction of soldiers serving prior to the Vietnam conflict points toward the perhaps mitigating (or perhaps silencing) effects of returning to a culture that ennobled their valor and sacrifices to protect hearth and home. On the other hand, Vietnam veterans received little or no appreciation for their service and, instead, in public were shamed by their peers as ineffective participants in an unjust war. They had no way to contextualize their suffering within the heroic model. Their symptoms—very much like those of women shamed for their apparent passivity in the face of domestic violence—became intolerable rather than subsiding or being silenced. Part of the impetus behind assigning medical meaning to the traumatic effects of combat stress appears then to represent a concerted effort on the parts of Vietnam veterans to denounce publicly the shame inscribed on their service and to reclaim their dignity both as soldiers and as citizens who wanted to live productive lives.