A relative of mine was a TA Officer in the Beds & Herts in North Africa and was severely wounded in the final advance on Tunis (mortar shrapnel blasted through both legs). He was evacuated and told that his legs would be amputated. He raised so much hell that in the end, the quacks packed him off to UK in a hospital ship with the legs still attached. In hospital in UK, another set of quacks decided they should come off, but he somehow managed to get away with it. It took him a year to start walking again.
Fortunately for him he was a lawyer in civil life (if he'd gone into the family building business he'd have been shagged), and went back to practice in 1946. He walked with two sticks and could drive, but the leg wounds never healed and he was still having the dressings changed twice a week when he died in 1999.
The point? (sorry, just typed "pint". Must be thinking of something) When my dad was a lad, this hard old bastard tried all he could to stop him from learning German. It was only when someone gave him the idea that dad might join the green slime in the event of war with Germany that he shut up.
Despite that, years later, the old fella was a director of a certain football club playing in Europe for the first time. As luck would have it they drew boxhead opposition.
Did it bother him? Did it balls. He spent most of the trip drinking whisky and swapping abuse with the old boys on the other side's board. I hope there's a moral there.