My father-in-law was drafted during the Vietnam War and was in the Army's 25th Infantry Division, aka the Tropic Lightning. I've known him for nearly ten years and he rarely speaks about his military service. Most of the stories he has told about his time in the Army are not about his combat experiences. Mostly they're about how he learned to fly in Hawaii during his leave time and the bizarre food he ate in Vietnam. I can only recall one instance of when he talked about actual fighting, which was very brief and conveyed more to me about what it was like to be there than any war film injected with narrative from a member of the Sheen family can. I know from other family members how much the war affected him for years after he came back.
