A soldier in the past and the present

In The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West depicts one of the lasting horrible consequences of war to the immediate family and the ex-lover(?) of the soldier from the point of view of the cousin, not the soldier himself. Chris, after his return to home, goes back to 15 years ago and lives in that time. He is present in this current moment but lives in past. It's so fascinating to see how he deals with this issue. It’s weird for the family because they must have heard about disability or physical wounds of the soldiers not about the “crippled mind”. Chris suffers uniquely and this makes him to be alone, like attack moments in the trenches, among his family. In some moments, he forgets that he is not living in 15 years ago and acts based on that. Jenny, the cousin, tries to remind him of that. Jenny is compassionate toward Kitty, “who had somehow become a decorative presence” (133) in the house and Margaret and tries to help them all not to suffer. This story is similar to other war literary works in the sense that it depicts suffering of a soldier but it differes at the same time in the way it deal with time.