Milt Caniff on war nostalgia

SABA: ...All of the characters in Steve Canyon had a tremendous nostalgia for the War. I feel it must have been you feeling how much easier it was to write this strip during those years. You kept looking backward as well.
CANIFF: That's what war could do-you could always have an explosion upstairs, and boom! you're into another story.
SABA: But I think that you must have unconsciously, or consciously, been looking back and feeling a sort of nostalgia.
CANIFF: I was, I'm sure. But everybody around me was. Every guy who came back from the war was so glad to get home, but after a while it was, "Gee whiz, we had a pretty good time out there." You forget the pain. You forget the stench. You only remember the time you went into London and did the town.