I think most of us knew WWII Vets while growing up, I knew many... I even know a few today. I'm not sure they liked me around or not because I was terrible about questioning them.
In all my conversations with them I'd have to say the #1 thing I heard was "It wasn't really like that".
Some things worse, some not as bad as the 'myths'.
I suppose the most in depth conversations I had with WWII vets involved aviation... until not really that long ago the Doolittle Raiders had a yearly reunion in Fresno... well, now that I think about it I guess it has been a long time back.... and I went yearly, meeting with them, got to know a few of them. Our Priest here in my hometown was lifelong friends with the man himself, Jimmy Doolittle. I never got to 'know' him but I met him several times.
One of the things most amazing to me is that the old movie "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" was very much praised as being quite accurate, (not perfectly so), by the Raiders themselves... I never spoke to Jimmy about it but I did with some of the others and they were very proud of that movie.