Before witnessing the cruel reality of combat and suffering the horror of modern war in his own flesh, Schwarzschild had found the camaraderie of the army rejuvenating. When his unit was first deployed, he discovered a system for perfecting the sights on the tanks—without anyone having requested that he do so—tinkering with them in his free time with the same eagerness with which he had built his first telescope, as if the drills and simulations of his months of training had rekindled in him the boundless curiosity he had known during childhood.
