Stéphanie Vincent Lyk-Jensen is Senior Researcher at VIVE - The Danish Center for Social Science Research, Copenhagen, Denmark. Peder J. Pedersen is Professor Emeritus at Aarhus University, Denmark. Currently he is consultant at VIVE - The Danish Center for Social Science Research and Research Fellow at IZA, the Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany.

• Chapter 1. Summary of Contents Chapter 2. Overview of Data and Methods Chapter 3. Soldiers Before and During Deployments Chapter 4. Returning Home from an International Military Mission: An Investigation Based on Qualitative Interviews Chapter 5. Mission Experiences and Subsequent Careers: Survey-Based Analyses Chapter 6. Homecoming Soldiers: A 'Before-And-After' Analysis of Motivations, Financial Situation, and Criminality Chapter 7. Soldiers on International Missions: Mental Health Profile Before and After Deployment Chapter 8. Perspectives

The authors examine the experiences of Danish soldiers deployed on international missions, focusing on the characteristics of those who choose to be deployed; why they choose to be deployed; challenges they face before, during, and after returning home from a mission; and the impact of deployment on their lives. They use data from administrative registers, following 26,000 deployed soldiers over 18 years, from their pre-deployment lives to their experiences after returning home, as well as surveys and interviews. They describe statistics on the soldiers before their deployment, their path into and out of the military, social relationships and self-assessed health, and experiences during missions; whether the deployment has an independent effect on soldiers' motivation to volunteer for missions, their financial situation, and their criminal behavior; and key elements in their health profile before and after deployment, focusing on psychiatric diagnosis, the use of medication for psychological problems, work-related injuries, and mortality.