I never deployed to a wartime zone either but, despite this, we both truly are veterans. I am sorry about the trauma you experienced.

For a very short while (a couple of months), I served in an F-15 squadron (then the Maintenance Group commander who outranked the squadron commander "rescued" me). At that time (that was around 1990), the Air Force pilots had the culture of --if you are a bad *$$ (a really good) pilot then party hard including cheating on their wives while deployed (not the majority of course but the problem was that even the people who did not condone that sort of thing looked the other way). The squadron actually had a bar in their workplace. My office was right next to it and it even had at least one picture of a scantily dressed sexy woman. This kind of thing did not go on in other specialties, it is just that when I was in the service--the pilots were treated differently than everyone else. There were no bars in any of the workplaces that had no pilots. It was not a very comfortable place for a woman to work and if I had been single, I think it could have been an even worse situation.

I was unable to get VA health care until recently but now that I finally have--it has been a lifesaver. I am finding the mental health care services much better in the VA than they were for me in the civilian world. Judging from the news, this may be because of improvements that have been made after so many service members suffering. I am sorry that you experienced trauma during your service. You didn't deserve that.

I also enjoyed the teamwork and socializing but, also, the military teaches good leadership skills. Many of the men and women I served with were better leaders than most of the supervisors I have had in the many civilian jobs I have had. When you serve on active duty, most military supervisors take care of their people from helping them with personal problems to teaching them to also become leaders and help them get promoted. I have had military supervisors invite me to come over for Thanksgiving and New Years and they came to our place when we invited them on a couple of occasions. This has never happened to me in the civilian world even though I got out of the service more than 26 years ago.