Just to ensure both of us get severely downvoted and not just you, I have a parallel way of looking at it. Most people appear to be more... let's say, optimistic than I am. I tend to take a very conservative engineer or economist way of assessing the risks.
About 3% of American astronauts have died in space, and about 4.5% have died during missions (which includes takeoffs).
"Only" 15% of smokers get lung cancer.
These numbers don't work for me. Yet plenty of smart people are willing to take those odds. I can only conclude that if people smarter than I am are good to go with those stats, then it means they have some kind of built-in optimism that I lack.
Your notion of the military being "soul crushing" is not shared by all people in the military. Starting around the sergeant level there are tons of very interesting problems to solve. Some find it super fulfilling, and certainly many dudes who have been in combat felt it was the only time in their experience to feel really alive.
So for different reasons I come to the same conclusion as you. They aren't really heroes, just people doing something they find compelling. And they measure risk and reward very differently from me.
> Killing tons of people isn't really a thing I respect.
Well, context matters, doesn't it? Sometimes violence is required to solve problems. The US had to kill 700,000 of its own to eliminate slavery. And while Europe lost tens of millions, the US sacrificed over 400,000 helping them out in WWII. Once the Germans attacked Poland and the Japanese attacked us, how would you have solve these problems without violence? Ask Neville Chamberlain how that worked out.