Paratrooper over Normandy
get shot down, lose your squad, single-handedly defeat 7 ss infantry, blow up a power station
Become a POW, get tortured, escape, sent to Stalag III-C POW camp in the east
Escape again, run all the way to the front, joined GUARDS CAPTAIN ALEKSANDRA MOTHERFUCKIN’ SAMUSENKO’S BATALLION IN THE 1ST GUARDS TANK ARMY
Fight in advance to Berlin, get wounded
In a Soviet hospital, get a personal visit by Marshall of the Soviet Union Zhukov
Return to US, reunite with your family a couple days after they held your funeral
Get married in the same church by the same priest that held your funeral
Encountering a Soviet tank brigade in the middle of January, he raised his hands, holding a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and shouted in Russian, ‘Amerikansky tovarishch!’
:comfy-cool:
Every time I read a story about some American or Soviet WW2 veteran I think it’s the coolest person who ever lived, then I learn about someone new who is also the coolest person who ever lived
On the opposite end of that spectrum was that loser who fought for Finland, the Nazis, then the Americans (in Vietnam). And in real loser fashion he died in a helicopter crash, didn’t even have the dignity to let the PAVN shoot him.
TIL that the British soldier that used medieval weaponry to kill Nazis and carried bagpipes around fought alongside Tito’s Yugoslav partizans in 1944, but beyond the weird/cool gimmick and that specific military campaign, he wasn’t as cool as some of the other examples.
Jack Churchill, my favorite anecdote about him was after the war he would chuck his bag off the train home from work. People thought he was nuts. Turns out he was just throwing it into his own yard so he wouldn’t have to carry it back home from the station.
