You forgot to mention, some of us were air traffic controllers. We moved tons of aluminum around the sky 🤪 I didn’t like working heavies much. I preferred working fighters, because they always responded immediately to control instructions. I was in 7th heaven, when I had a gaggle of F-15s in the pattern. My son has a deep appreciation for us, since he is a USAF pilot. I gave him a lot of aviation information, which helped him in pilot training.
Maybe today it's all changed but in the early 60s those of us in the Army ate from metal pans, slept in barracks {I've been in better jails} and slept on the ground at 20 below.
It wasn't our choice and we didn't do it to prove how tough we were, we didn't get a vote.
Combat troops are in a different category and any one that's served in a war zone gets a pass, because there is nothing to compare that terror to in civilian life.
Anyone who has witnessed a fellow vet get killed, regardless of how it happened, is never the same and as an ex-pill roller, I saw my fellow Army Vets, shot and blown into pieces and that never completely goes away { and I was not in direct combat}.