Since people are telling war stories, here's one from the other side:
Back in 1998 I was working for a foreign-language satelite TV company. One Sunday morning I took a call from a gentleman asking about getting German TV. For some reason he started talking about his wartime experiences. He said his name was Fred Schmid (he was very particular about the spelling, no "Shcmidt"). He said he joined the German army at age 16 after his older brother was killed in a train wreck on the way to boot camp. He was put into the tank corps, and ended up on the Russian front. At age 17 he was his tank's driver, and his poor commander died in a funny way: he was outside in the woods "taking a dump" (as he put it) when a Russian bomber attacked them. The tank wasn't hit, but the commander bought it. Herr Shcmid said the rest of the crew elected him to be their new commander as he was the only one who could read and write.
He was 72 then; if he's still around he's now 80.
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“Never do anything you can't take back.”
—Rocky Russo
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