In Those Days by Jehudah Steinberg, Fiction

"Have you ever seen such a cry-baby?" said Samuel as his wife lamented their son's draft. "Five times in her life she filled the world with a hue and cry, when she bore me a child, and every time it was but an empty bubble: five girls she brought me! Then, beginning with the sixth birth, she was fortunate enough to get boys, the real thing. Three sons she gave me as my old age was approaching. And now, when she ought to thank Heaven for having been found worthy of raising a soldier for the army, she cries! Think of it -- your son enters the army a free man; but I, in my time, -- well, well, I was taken by force when a mere youngster!"