She's ugly enough, she wins

In the movie Dogfight, starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor, the soldiers on the night before their deployment all get together at a bar. Upon entering the bar each soldier has to have a date. The catch is they have to be ugly and each soldier is being judged on which one of them has the ugliest date. During Eddie Birdlace's quest to find his date he meets Rose, a young girl working at her mom's coffee shop. Eddie talks her into going to the bar with him. While there Rose finds out about the competition and is crushed. Eddie tries his hardest to make it up to her. Along the way they fall in love. When Eddie returns from Vietnam he goes back to Rose.
Throughout the movie you get to see a young soldier’s mentality. When the soldiers get a chance to leave the base they let loose. All they want to do is get laid and drink till morning. The soldiers haven't been around a woman in a long time so that is the only thing they can think about. The dogfight is only encourages drinking and sex. The soldiers look for women who are most likely to sleep with them by the end of the night. Their whole training is to stay focused and complete their mission. When they are let loose in the real world the focus they had is on other things besides drills and how to stay alive.
On the other hand their womanizing and drinking is a way for them to get their minds off the horrors that await them on the battlefield. When they are in battle they see their friends get shot and blown up. Those are things that civilians will hopefully never have to see. So that brief escape might be the only way that the soldiers can keep sane.