Vietnam and the tour of duty the soldiers must endure in it have two levels of meaning. One is the surface meaning of a simple military obligation they must serve, and the other is a spiritual level. In the opening scene…
… we can hear the following lines:
Soldier1:You dudes gonna love the ‘Nam… for fucking ever.
Soldier2:365 and a wake up. Oh,Lord.
The first line confirms what Chris realizes in the end speech, that the war experience will be with him for the rest of his life. Even when the soldiers leave war and come home they still carry the emotional scars with them.
The second line with its mentioning of the Lord further shows that the war experience is a spiritual journey that the soldiers must endure. 365 days or one full year is what they must serve in the hell that is Vietnam before they are allowed to go home.
Returning home is also mentioned by King and Crawford:
The world King refers to isn’t just his home back in USA but also a place in the world outside the war zone hell.
The subtitle has a mistake. It should be “DEROS” instead of “heroes”. DEROS refers to the date the soldiers are able to return home from overseas duty. This date is the day of salvation for the soldiers.
Just like so many things in “Platoon” Chris’s coming and leaving Vietnam have both similarities and opposites in them.
He arrives to a dusty airbase…
… then flies over a dark jungle to get to his company…
He leaves a dusty battlefield…
… and flies over a sunlit jungle.
I am not sure about this, but I believe the stream we see in the sunlit jungle is the same stream seen at the beginning of the movie. Chris has made a full circle.
THE OTHER SCENE 
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