Yeah. The humor in the military back then and now is best described as “It’s not gay if you say no homo!” And yet somehow also very homophobic. (Less so now than when I was in the army) It wouldn’t be hard at all to find a private flirting as a joke.

I turned 18 in basic training. You can ship to basic while you’re 17. And then go to a unit. You are not deployable to a contingency zone (the widest definition of “place you could be injured by enemy fire”) until you’re 18.

Later on we got a private who actually made it all the way to the unit and had to wait until his 18th birthday to join us on deployment.

Ironically that’s a good recruiter. Anything that looks like fraternizing with potential recruits outside official activities is a huge no no.

If you’d have joined then you’d realize your mistake. They just assumed you already had the same sense of humor somehow.

The recruiter lied. We believe you. But they lied to you.