I get annoyed at work when I hear the term from ex-military personnel talking about serving your country. If you commit to twenty years, this is a career and not service per se. If you were called up for national service, or the draft for Americans then you are serving your country; this is because you did not sign up voluntarily.

Many nations have compulsory military service, normally for a period of two years full-time with intermittent training for shorter periods thereafter. I understand many people sign up voluntarily for active service and get sent overseas to fight and there are many reasons for that. After 9/11, Americans signed up in droves because their country was attacked. I suggest this is significantly different to joining the military in Australia because the Americans knew they were to be sent overseas to fight in Afghanistan and later Iraq. 

I work with a bunch of ex-army guys who have done their twenty years and are now eligible for a military pension. They made a conscious decision to join the military and to stay for twenty years collecting their pension when their time was completed. I attended a less than academically orientated high school with a cadet corps attached, I like others attended cadet training with many of my class mates moving into the army.

This was in the mid to late 1980s with Australia slowly recovering from the 1982/83 recession. Youth unemployment was high and there wasn’t many opportunities available to school leavers. I was lucky enough to gain an apprenticeship, many were not as lucky as me and many of my school mates signed up to four years army duty because they were getting paid.