the things they carried

I started this new novel called the things they carried which is about this one mans story about how he felt about the Vietnam war. In the begining chapters he begins to discuss how he wanted to jump the boarder to Canada to avoid being drafted but he was drafted anyways. But what sticks in my mind is the fact that he had a girlfriend in the states but he could not connect with her because they were living in two different worlds. With soldiers coming home from the Iraq was do you think they feel excluded from our society? Why or why not?