have you tried to

imagine he had missed the shot…

So, a small anecdote from me, although from within the German Bundeswehr:

Back when I left school, Germany still had a mandatory 9 month military service (you could refuse military service in exchange for a civil service). The first three months were basic training and fairly strict, in that we had to salute higher ranking personell when we were in uniform. Our group had the luck of getting a private as a substitute group leader, someone who just finished their first 3 months. Since we were technically the same rank, we didn’t have to salute the first three months.

After our three months, everyone was transfered to different barracks, I was transfered to a military airport, specifically a helicopter sqaudron. So when I entered the hangars, I came across the first officer and saluted them, according to military conduct. They saluted back but immediately followed up, asking me to never do that again.

Air force pilots and their crew are almost exclusively officers and up, so when I was in the barracks, I would have to constantly salute, and they would have to salute back, and no one wanted that. So we were told not to salute, a friendly “good morning/day” would be enough.

There was only one person in the entire barracks that we were supposed to salute, and that was the barracks’ commander. Who, at their first visit to our squadron, told our squadron leader beforehand to have us not to salute him, either, so we didn’t.

Tl;dr: In my entire 9 months of military service, I only saluted once and was immediately told to never do that again.