1. So one of my birthday gifts appeared due to pure chance, and it's of enough historical significance to be something really special. This is a postcard sent by a French soldier to his loved one in 1916.
The lifer pension rate in the Soviet armed forces is honestly not the worst. From what I translated so far, 25 years of service it is a flat 50% of salary for NCOs with every year after that giving an additional 3% and gets capped at 75%.