Philosophers were routinely posted to weather stations in both world wars

Evidence

Sartre knew that he would not be posted to the front because of his eye problems. As a young man he had done his standard military service in a weather station, which meant he would be deployed in similar work now — the same thing Heidegger had done in the First World War. (Raymond Aron too would be posted to a weather station that year; it seems to have been the philosophers’ posting.) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 439

Categorization

• CANDY: That the philosophers’ military posting was the weather station — Heidegger, Sartre, and Aron all did it — is a fun, tweetable coincidence.
• SHARE: This is a wonderfully narrow detail for anyone nerdy about either military history or philosophy biography.