You never, ever, ever tell someone how bad you have it, because the guy who just passed you on the stretcher was thinking just how good he had it...
God bless your pop for saying something so prudent. I never talked about my war days, and only started( very, very little) after my daughter decided to join the IDF( Israeli Defense Forces) and it all came back to me. She gripes just as much as this kid an I laugh and laugh until she slams down the phone in disgust...calls me back in a half hour and we both laugh, she got out of boot camp the first week of the Hizbollah affair last year. Watched some of her friends march into Lebanon while she manned an ambulance.
Only thing is, this kid from Iraq found a reporter with an agenda to gripe to; in Israel there's censorship for a reason. In the war I was in, there was always someone pulling worse duty and it was generally the indigenous folks in the hots spots. There will never be a time in my life i will speak of what I went thrugh, what I saw, to no one, ever except God because I honor the paper I signed some thirty years ago. War s*cks, and B*tching about it makes you fell better for the amount of time you b*tch, then it's over and you move on. You have to move on.