G'day Glom,
He said that I'd adapted to my condition in everyday life because I know that a red light is above a green light, but I'd be in trouble on an airfield if I couldn't recognise the difference between a red and a green flare.
I always had to chuckle at that analogy too. How then do they explain the fact that at night from lets say 500m or even greater distances that we can still tell the red from the green light without the visual cue of the light pole to see whether the light is eminating from the top, middle or bottom apature.
I too was very restriced in the Army (Australian) on what I could and couldn't do. Fortunately for me during the 80s and 90s you could get waivers for quite a number of activities but now they have clamped right down to the point where I would not even be allowed to perform my primary trade which I did for 20 years without incident.
In fact, now I cannot even hold a military licence to drive a Landrover but I can jump into a Baron and exercies my MECIR priviledges... What a joke. However, to be fair to the military CASA explained to me that at least in aviation, in many cases there are redundancies built into many colour dependant systems whereas in the military there is not.
If you haven't already done so, read the article by Dr Arthur Pape who all us colour defectives in Oz have to thank for being able to fly beyond day pvt VFR ops.
Good luck with your endeavours.