My maternal grandfather was in the Navy. One night, he was walking across the carrier deck and as happened sometimes in the age of prop planes he got spattered with some oil — or so he thought. Since he was going off shift he just went to the head and wiped it off and then hit his rack.

The next morning, he found out someone had accidentally walked into the prop of a plane about to be launched and been killed. The “oil” that had dappled his face was blood thrown off the prop from a few hundred feet away.

The military is often a violent business even when you’re not fighting a war.