Beagle - you are talking about a long time ago when people 'followed the flag' far more and did not have stability as a promise. They did not own their own houses as much, they were not on ops and were not at the thin edge of the wedge.
You have rose-tinted on - I remember your 'this is terrible, I'm leaving and don't regret it' rants of old. You were a Cold War Warrior and I respect you for that, but people are different, families are different, society is different and the military is different. Some is better, much is not. We do far more than the military ever did with far less. I have sympathy. Can you imagine the volume of whining if BZZ were moved a few hundred miles? I can't.