I served in Iraq and saw my share of bodies. Never had an urge to cut a finger off of one of them. And I have known plenty of Vietnam veterans. Hard to imagine the old grandpa type as a guy with a necklace of human ears.

But it seems that whenever you read a work set in Vietnam, there's always someone collecting ears, raping villagers, or fragging their commanders. Obviously these things are heightened for dramatic purposes, but the perception remains. I know that atrocities in war are as old as war itself, so I'm not naive enough to believe it NEVER happened (Mai Lai happened, after all)...but was it as widespread as depicted?

Edit: I'm referring to smaller scale "personal" atrocity, not policy decisions like bombing the shit out of Cambodia. Not that these types of things aren't atrocities or war crimes, but I'm talking about the actions of individual soldiers and platoons, not upper level campaign decisions.