When I got sober in '92 - once my mind cleared I thought: "what the hell have I been sleeping through"?
By '95 I was fully engaged in the fight.
As a Maintenance Officer, I started my tenure with stringent inspections of our vehicles, leading to a 4 page deadline report, earning me the enmity of battalion maintenance NCO's. One vehicle had so many things wrong with it, I inserted a simple notation, "MFB", Mother F-----'s Broke. My wry annotation was not well received...lol.
The Octobers of 77 and 78 were greeted by government shutdowns, and a two week delay in our paychecks. It hit my soldiers especially hard, particularly those with families.
When you're put in charge of 20-40 men (I was a Platoon Leader for both Chaparral platoons for much of 77), your life changes...mine certainly did.
As the Platoon Leader, I was responsible for everything my platoons did, or failed to do. You can't make excuses like our politicians and Pentagon generals do.