"You feel like you're letting your fellow soldiers down, not participating."
Not an uncommon attitude in the military.
I was with a group of about half a dozen patients at the US Navy hospital in Da Nang who went AWOL from the hospital during Tet ’68. We were not yet classed as “fit for duty”, but felt OK – we all had both legs and both arms, even if one of mine was in a sling. We hitched rides back to our units dressed in hospital blues.
It was considered a major problem by the hospital. They had even posted guards to keep it from happening – but too few guards, too many men trying to rejoin their units.