Combat operations are tougher and more stressful than your protected bubble world can imagine. You want to understand what combat is like? Read Eugene B. Sledge's “With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa” or Robert Leckie’s “Helmet For My pillow” or his “Strong Men Armed.”
Both of these men fought in the Pacific War and suffered from PTSD from the time they got home until they died. Sledge had recurring nightmares nearly all his life. His wife said that the only way to wake him without Eugene becoming violent was to whisper his name in his ear. He would be instantly awake and be coherent. If you shook him to wake him, Sledge would awake fighting. Sledge died from cancer in 2001.
Bob Leckie died of Alzheimer's in 2001. A writer of 40 books and articles and a military historian, he served at Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu. Wounded at Peleliu, he was evacuated back to the US and discharged in 1946. As his Alzheimer's progressed, he forgot his wife and children, but he never forgot the Marines (living and dead) he served with. Leckie had a pond on his property dedicated to his best friends in the Corps. On several occasions he was convinced that the Japanese were attacking him across the pond, such was the power of the things he'd experienced.
People who live a protected civilian existence can no more understand the sights, sounds, smells, and sheer trauma of combat operations than the other side of the moon. In combat, real people, your friends, die in the most degrading and horrible of ways imaginable. No . . . hell no . . . would I ever wish some young woman do the things I have done or see the things I have seen. Hell no.
“Both of these men fought in the Pacific War and suffered from PTSD from the time they got home until they died.”
I’ve read that Isreali troops couldn’t deal with the sight of female casualties in combat; what kind of man could?