Showing that war is messy and people die in it is a hippy message? I guess that means Speilberg and eastwood are hippies too.

I'm not sure that the intent of the film was to have a msg at all. I DO know that the movie was based on the book "the devils brigade" that was written by the forces intelligence officer. it does an alright job of following the book I suppose (though they invented the raid on the town and they completely ignored the aleutian island campaign). I think that "hippy flavor" was there to let people know that although the force was an elite unit, people still died serving in it