Oh yeah? I’ll add it to my list. I’ve served and I was thinking of passing on it.

Luckily I was well versed before I showed up to Uncle Sam’s doorstep. Catch-22 paints paints a good picture. And had a high counselor who was a Vietnam vet and said Apocalypse Now was the most realistic Vietnam movie he’d. And I can’t say that my experiences in were too far from my expectations.

I think the thing people don’t get about the military, at least speaking of my experience in the US’s, is even in places like special operations units and doing the stuff that reads great in a newspaper, often enough there’s an absolute, epic, comedic shitshow going on inside with a cast of characters that you couldn’t even do justice to in a goofball comedy. Suppose that might apply to lots of things. Luckily, no military really has to have their shit together, they just gotta be better than the other side.

One of Napoleon's cavalry generals said his average trooper's horsemanship was mediocre at best, yet they still made the tour of Europe. (Later, in the time of Napoleon III, the Prussians would outdo the French in utilizing mediocrity, providing yet another example that for a conscripted military, quantity is its own quality)