My dad, his brother, My Mother's all Viet Nam Vets, My grandfatherand all of my grand mothers brothers ww2 vets, my Gret grandfather and his brothers ww1 vets. Some of my earliest gear was their souveneiers.
That was me!
As to recruits, I work on a big project to do with military technical training and, like with anything, there are good people and bad people across the training colleges. In general, recruits are motivated and intelligent. I think a lot of the problem is that the older ones amongst us measure 'intelligence' against different criteria than the younger people. Many of us would be surprised at how technically competent many recruits are before they join up.
I was trying to work out how old Spamel and PJMCBear were!