I just looked up John Monk Saunders, the scriptwriter and author of the original novel, and it sounds as though he wasn't far off from his own characters, or perhaps in some way he felt ashamed for *not* being them -- he'd been in the air force but hadn't been deployed, and the article I found on his 1940 suicide speculates he'd gone into a downward spiral of guilt after having thrown a punch at Herbert Marshall (who'd lost his leg in battle) at a Hollywood party.