I saw a long interview with Harold(?) Moore - General in Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam about the “We were soldiers” movie. He and his wife pleaded with the director to redo the taxi cab scenes (bringing the telegraphs to the homes). In the movie the taxi, and then later the wives, go to the wives’ nice homes on base.
Moore said that as soon as the men were deployed, the wives had to find their own housing off base. Usually some run-down rental home, dark apartment, etc. And he wanted that to be shown - that was how these hero's families were actually living.
What was interesting, later, was after we were out in the civilian world. I was contract engineering for DoD, and the wife and I would be driving past on-base housing, say at Tinker AFB, or Hill AFB, or Charleston AFB, and you could only tell the housing was military because of the chain link fence. Actual houses, with car ports, green grass, swing sets...
The wife was just short of screaming fury. I never knew if she was angrier at me , for being a Marine, or the Corps for their attitudes about families.
What was not put in the movie is that mostly BRASS had the base housing back then, not much different today.
We just watched the 40th Anv. Documentary on the fall of Saigon, it was all focused on the inept Amb, and some flights of the friendly’s out. Not a lot was shown of the support from ships like the USS Midway. Frequent Wind was not even mentioned. Hubby was on the USS Midway when they were pulling the Amb out and they shoved Jolly Greens over the side to make room for a small plane to land with a friendly high ranker family aboard. Hubby is now a Ret. SCPO with 20 yrs, and another 20 yrs teaching Jr. College.