Nineteen years ago (i.e., about a month after the Bitburg fiasco) at a party in Germany, a classmate tried that "elite soldier" line about his father, a member of the Waffen-SS. I immediately nailed him on the Battle of the Bulge. I didn't (and still don't) know the German phrase for "Battle of the Bulge," but I knew the German for, "The Waffen-SS murdered hundreds of our POWs in the Ardennes."
I have to add, that I've always believed that Reagan would never have screwed up like that, had he been a real soldier, like Jimmy Stewart or Glenn Ford or Ted Williams, instead of a member of the propaganda film unit.
When you're a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine, you go where you are ordered to go. It made perfectly good sense to put Ronald Reagan in the film unit. Wasn't Glenn Ford also in a film unit, although more of a combat camera kind of thing? Oh, and I though RR made mostly training films, rather than "propaganda", in fact the films Ford made come closer to "Propaganda" than those Reagan made. Reagan was of course an actor, while Ford was a filmmaker/producer. Different roles.
Stewart and Williams did of course serve on the front lines, (in the air in both cases) Stewart eventually retired as an Air Force Reserve general.