My grandfather was medically unfit for soldierdom when WWII broke out. Of course, that means those who stay behind get all the nice girls, and so he met and married my grandmother. But, as the war on the Eastern Front proved no Blitzkrieg, the draft was extended to almost every man of working age, and my grandfather pulled in too.

But, he never fired a shot.

He spent almost all of his years in the military being shuffled from barracks to barracks, only to have his unit scattered the first time it was ordered into battle. (He threw away his uniform and made it home, where tragic news awaited him, but that's another story.) His letter exchanges with his wife detailed his time - his time under constant Allied bombing.

How experienced they became with bombing is shown by the following story.

A joint passenger - Hungarian military - German military train was pulling out of Losonc (today Lučenec/Slovakia) when some fighter jets arrived, and began to strafe the train with machine gun fire. When it passed for the second time, the sergeant of my grandfathers' wagon ordered the doors to be pulled wide open, half of the men hiding, the other half outside: to lie in the grass pretending to be dead.

Their car was the only one with zero casualties.

The bombed-out-barracks veterans knew fighter jet pilots don't waste ammo.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}