"Wartorn," HBO's depressing yet revealing Veterans Day exploration of post-traumatic stress disorders as experienced by American soldiers throughout history, carries a telling subtitle: "1861-2010."

Sending men and women off to war has been a consistent way of derailing our national mental well-being over generations. In the name of winning our freedoms -- to use the patriotic parlance -- we get back a lot of messed-up people and then almost cruelly ignore their despair.

In fact, when it comes to the shock of war and the residual madness it can cause, "Wartorn" dials all the way back to Homer's "Odyssey" for its opening note: "Must you carry the bloody horror of combat in your heart forever?"...