"You have to love to hit"
When I was in high school, I tried to play football. I did not succeed, principally because I had not grown up playing the game on organized teams as almost every other player had. Compared to them I lacked the developed skills, instinctive knowledge and trained abilities that seemed so easy for them to display.

I remember clearly the week at football camp before school began. Coach Keaton got the team together and told us bluntly, "This is a violent game. To play football you have to endure pain and play through the hurt. To win this game you have to love to hit, and hit harder than the other guy. That's what this game is about."

I hope that the commanders and NCOs who take raw kids from high school and turn them into soldiers, sailors and airmen are as frank and blunt about the military trade as Coach Keaton was about football. By the time basic training is over, every member of the military should have fully internalized the raw and repellant truth about military service:

"War is killing and being killed. You don't have to love it, but you do have to do it."

Sadly, it appears that such is not the case, else Sgt. Mom, US Air Force, would not have had to pen as essay to "Certain Junior Troops" called, "What It Really Is Which You Have Joined."

... I would like to make certain matters transparently plain; to whit---

You have freely chosen to join the military, which offers many generous benefits, training in useful skills, experience, travel, support for your families, camaraderie with your peers, educational advantages, all of which should not blind you to one key aspect. The benefits in the military are great, because the demands are greater.

The core purpose of the military is to kill those designated by properly constituted authorities as our enemies, and to do so neatly, efficiently, without malice, utilizing whatever suitable technology at our disposal, and minimizing the harm done to noncombatants as well as ourselves. If you are not one of those at the pointy end of the spear, then you are supporting those who are: maintaining their equipment, facilitating the necessary logistics, bandaging their wounds, keeping up their pay records and their morale, transporting them and their weapons systems to where these goals may best be accomplished. If this is a problem for you, then you do not belong in the military. I would suggest something like the Peace Corps, instead.

Once enlisted, please realize that your participation in any upcoming war is obligatory. Discovering your inner contentious objector is something that should be done before Basic Training, not after. This is not the Scouts, with grander camping equipment.

3. Please also realize that putting on the uniform of your country makes you a suitable target for those designated as our enemies. ...

The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marines to go to war.