Seriously... I grew up in a military family and every WW2 vet I've ever had good conversation with usually told me how many whores he banged and how cheap it was.
So my question is this: Were The Greatest Generation a bunch of headstrong moralistic heroes or a drunken bunch of farmboys enjoying a limitless military budget? Or something inbetween?
It is very important to remember that with history, people are people. Your average American soldiers were a bunch of kids far away from home, except that they were also being shot at occasionally. Ultimately, I would say that the best description of The Greatest Generation would be that they were both, and slid around on a spectrum with 'headstrong moralistic heroes' on one end and 'drunken bunch of farmboys enjoying a limitless military budget' on another.
I guess my followup question should be if there are any books, documentaries, etc. that portray the darker side of that experience.
Statistically-speaking, it's hard to imagine hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the middle of a war zone without numerous instances of rape, murder, theft and other shady activities. Vietnam has many official and anecdotal examples, but WW2 seems exempt in the public consciousness.