I hear you, Mike. My own father and uncles are a fine microcosm.....somehow, though, they all served in the Pacific, and none of them were infantry.
My father’s army engineer battalion built airfields across the pacific, from Hawaii starting in Jan 1942 through VJ day on Okinawa. McArthur asked for the battalion for Japanese occupation duty, but didn’t get them, as they had the longest term of overseas duty of any army construction battalion.
My uncles service included a navy fighter pilot, aircraft mechanic, a sailor type, a marine officer (don’t recall his speciality) who received a great deal of ribbing because his name is McArathur.
Then, I had a school teacher who appears in a famous photo from the Korean War. Four marines crouching in the ruins of Seoul after the landing at Inchon, one shooting back at a sniper with an M1 carbine. He said that he was so terrified, could hardly even remember his own name, but kept fighting and advancing because he was a Marine.
Most of the sons of the WW2 and Korea generation in my family have served our own terms in the military. I did 6 years in the USAF. A nephew is currently a foreign service officer, with an office in the US Embassy in Kabul. He, of course, is serving his own time in a war zone. He hears bombs detonating somewhere in town most weeks.
My father and all five of his brothers served, Army and Navy. Uncle Gene also served in Korea. Uncles Chuck and Robert made the Army a career. I served 22 years in the AF.