This is excellent Tom.  When I served in Vietnam, I dreamed of writing the great Vietnam war novel. There is one scene (based 100% on truth) I always was going to use to frame the surrealism, absurdity, disconnect, gaps, disillusionment,  sickness, and  sadness of the Middle-Class Catholic Baby Boomer Vietnam Era experience.  

I had in-country training with the  First Cav, a renowned and tested infantry division. After the training, they gathered us by religion to hear from respective chaplains. I stood with infantrymen who--within days, maybe hours--were going to kill a fellow human being or be killed by a fellow human being. I gathered with frightened boys-to-men about to be maimed or to maim. I stood with virginal kids who never would make love to a woman. 

The profound moral questions of our time confronted us.

And the Catholic chaplain recognized a moral drama in a surrealistic way no novelist could invent: With stern fervor, he warned us of the danger before us: self abuse!