As an armchair General, what I can vouch is that the strength of the US soldier lies in what makes America strong: the ability to take command and control of the situation, even in the absence of commanders.
The average US Corporal has more leeway and authority than the average Colonel of any other armed forces in the world.
And this is not something that you can teach in Basic. It has to be inculcated from birth...
I was there for a year (1966). There may have been heavy drug use, but I never saw it. It would have been difficult to obtain in the field and, unlike the experience of a previous poster, NCOs and junior officers were always around. I never heard the word “fragged” until I was back in the states and out of the Army. Perhaps things changed as the war dragged on and the culture and the Army which it reflects also changed. The poster with a friend who says he opted to go out on operations without water should take that friend’s story with a huge grain of salt.
I’ve always found one urban legend that is now received truth about the war particularly annoying: the fact that returning GIs were spit upon and reviled. In January 1967, when I went into the bar of Seattle’s airport to await a civilian flight after having landed and “processed”, I could not buy a drink—I was wearing a light summer uniform and the decorations and very dark skin made it clear where I was coming from. Bar patrons competed to buy drinks for me and three or four other GIs. When I finally boarded the flight to Chicago, a pretty stewardess moved me to first class and offered food and drink. It was a red-eye and , with most of the cabin asleep, I wined and dined across the dark American homeland. Only the desire to be clean and sober for mom and dad kept me from getting completely snockered. In the weeks that followed, as I readjusted to the “world”, I don’t think I ever met one person who was hostile. Curious yes. Too much so. I wanted to get on and forget it. And the persistent “what was it like?” questions were annoying. But that’s all. Once again, that may have changed in subsequent years as the media and public turned against the war.