Salute!
TNX for nice words, "GUY".
I did not include many things about the military lifestyle and especially the fighter community that changed drastically starting in the 70's.
Last base I saw with a stag bar was Nellis in early 80's. My old haunt at Myrtle Beach had "sanitized" their O-club, even with an A-10 wing there ( 1983 or so). The clubs went "smokeless" and no more Friday afternoon happy hours and the beat goes on. Eglin hung in there until mid-90's after being the "World's Largest Distributor of Mig Parts" during Desert Storm. USAF finally made the wing take down the sign and the constant rotation got old. And we also had Khobar Towers, where one of our squads lost over a dozen folks from a truck bomb.
The health system changed, but was still cheaper than anything you could get for a reasonable price downtown. The system got better in the 90's after some scandals at VA and a successful lawsuit against DoD that re-instated our coverage we had for so many years.
All that aside, the basic ops tempo is still the driver. I know many airline folks, and the ones on the long haul routes prolly spend 10 - 15 days per month on the road. They get a good number of days off between the missions, but in the whole they prolly spend as many days away from home as I ever did. 'course, they are not getting shot at, and no Taliban is blowing up their HQ. These days our warriors are at some campground for three or four months at a time. And most places these days are not vacation venues.
I had a super career. I flew really neat jets, got shot at, shot up and shot down once. Except for getting shot at, it was great, and my wife went thru the whole thing with me from day one. We still have great friends and the men covered each other's back in combat on two or three tours.
It's just not fun anymore.
Gums opines...