The aim of the study is to identify the similarities and differences in the Afghan and Vietnam wars veterans’ personal moral experience based on the participants’ memoirs, letters and oral interviews. These military conflicts are considered in the article away from the historical and political discourse of the Cold War. The main focus of the paper is on the soldiers’ and officers’ personal experience. The scientific originality of the work lies in the reconstruction of the moral experience and feelings that specific combatants of the USA and the USSR faced. The article examines the exculpatory mechanisms that combatants resort to in the course of reflection on their existential experience. As a result of the study, it has been proved that a soldier’s personal reflection of responsibility for the committed violence is universal, timeless, despite the difference in the political and cultural discourse of specific wars.