I'm not saying life is perfect but then when has it ever been? Was it really so different twenty or thirty years ago? Was everybody completely happy?
Iam still serving after 35 years so am qualified for an opinion. As late as 1990 the green wailing minis would wake you up at unearthly hours on frequent occasion for yet another war game.
War games for me included arriving at work unshaved and climbing atop the nearest unmanned helicopter to BF it whilst groundcrew opened hangar doors and ensured F700 were good to go. Once a crew (2 persons) had been constituted, you loaded the cab and flew to a briefed forward site (farmyard). On more than one occasion I have been the first person on site with no GC support.
You then spent however long it took in freezing conditions living in a rat infested barn and packing up daily as you were unlikely to end the day were you started.
No comms with home and initially you had no idea whether it was a game or the real thing. Toilets were a spade and a luxury item was a bowl filled with hot water from a lazy something or other that provided hot water.
Morale and comeraderie were sky high. Budgets did not feature in the MoD dictionary and if one of lifes dramas came your way, it was rapidly deleted by in house suport. The only fear by military aviators (families) then was the arrival of a staff car, female officer, padre and exec in No 1s for aircraft did fall out if the sky far too often.
Work hard, play hard was a way of life, not a cheesy quotation. Few if anybody in todays military can say that and nobody has a key ingrediant of a military career: Job Security. It has changed - significantly- and whilst the new generation know no different, that does not make the support you receive from Govt morally right.