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@atz
Just as a counterpoint, my uncle and cousin both were conscripted and thought it had made their lives better overall. For my uncle he spent a year scuba diving mostly (he was a gendarme search diver) and for my cousin he learned a trade which has supported him and then his family after being spectacularly unsuccessful at school.
That said, France wasn't sending conscripts to fight in wars at either time (although my other, older uncle served on a submarine during the Algerian war and classed it as the worst part of his entire life) so their experience wasn't the same as those thinking they're off to fight.
Being pressganged into the army to fight in a war you probably know is bullshit being "managed" by politicians living thousands of km away is, I am sure, a hugely different experience.