Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?

I became more aware of all the trivial complaints of Americans. Hearing someone's diatribe on why the grocery store is out of almond milk or the conundrum they faced in deciding what fast food to hork down is likely not going to sit well with me. Likewise you wont find me bitching about things.

Only an automaton could serve, especially in time of war, and not be influenced. I well-remember all who served in Vietnam looking around and commenting aloud, "I wish my wife/mother/sister could see this." They were marveling at the comparison between the lives of the Vietnamese as contrasted to their own back home. Watching a family squatting around a cooking pot is nothing like an American family at its dinner table. Watching a mama-san sweeping the packed dirt floor of her home with a palm frond is nothing like mother vacuuming the living room carpet. Watching refugees fleeing in terror as two opposing forces collide has no comparison to anything in America. Yes, the old African proverb is true: "When two bulls fight it is the grass that suffers."

Going to Iraq and Afghanistan made me much, much more serious about the content and quality of the training my unit conducted.
When I got to theater, first contact put in stark relief how woefully unprepared we were. Two weeks in, we were dealing with our second destroyed vehicle and the loss of two KIA and five WIA. I vowed that when I got a company, it would never be that way.