Ok nice question
. However, depending on countries the answer might well mean very different things
. I took the second choice but my experience will be very limited in regard to others: a few long walk and I became quite good with a MAT-49 (FAMAS had not been delivered to all air force units at the time).
For my part, I did 10 month in the regular french military service (air force; as liaison between the "direction general" of the national weather cast agency and the GHQ of the french air force). Lets put it clear (may be), I spent 9 month hopping for some 20 miles walk that never came just to get rid of the director's secretary preparing her continuous walking weekends
. I did that two years before France chose to rely on a professional army. Ok, I could have volunteer for a longer time or for the officer corps but I had a sexy girl waiting at home and I rather make love (take it as it should) than war
.
On the other hand, I liked the month field training that I did before that, especially as we had a squadron of F-15 on our base (nice birds) and as I could get close to Mirage F-1C and Mirage 2000C.
Nevertheless, that experience was enough to fully understand what my grandfather was saying about armies in general: "Armies are great when you have a war to fight but, otherwise, it is useless, meaningless and expensive. Armies are great for destruction and war is only about that, people saying otherwise are jerks". I fully buy what he was saying (he had a five year long world war to make his point) and as I already said to some, I have great respect for soldiers but hate wars, all wars.
In the meantime I did all my history studies on the military (especially cavalry and cossak under the soviets) but that's another story
.