Last Stand: Difference between revisions

There is only one thing to do: [[Do Not Go Gentle|make them pay]]. In blood. Make them pay for every inch they take. For every drop of blood you shed -- shedshed—shed a gallon of theirs. No matter that they outnumber you so badly that you can kill a hundred of them and still be overwhelmed. Take as many of the bastards with you as you can.

Sometimes, [[The Cavalry]] or the [[Big Damn Heroes]] do show up out of the blue. Sometimes, the dogged opposition causes the enemy forces to decide to take an end-run about you. More usually this trope is a set up for a [[Downer Ending]], perhaps [[Bittersweet Ending|sweetened]] by [[Sole Survivor|one or two survivors]] [[Left for Dead]], or sent away to [[Bring News Back]]. Or only sweetened by the loyalty, [[Fire-Forged Friends|friendship]], and unyielding honor of the doomed forces, leading to [[It Has Been an Honor]] -- and—and the [[Dying Moment of Awesome]].

In rare cases it ends with [[Kill'Em All]] and a full blown [[The Bad Guy Wins]]. Sometimes the ''villains'' are forced into a last stand, in which case [[Villainous Valour]] is often invoked. Compare [[Hold The Line]]

At least one [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] is likely, even if the characters know each one to be a [[Pyrrhic Victory]]. From the enemy standpoint, it is a [[Self-Destructive Charge]].

Compare [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]], which often expresses similar sentiments about those killed. On a larger scale, [[Hopeless War]]. [[Bolivian Army Ending]] often implies such a stand. [[In Its Hour of Need]] often leads to one. May also be related to [[Doomed Moral Victor]]. [[Stand Your Ground]] orders this. Characters who do this can also be considered [[Defiant to the End]]. Compare [[Do Not Go Gentle]] when it is individuals doing it. Compare And Contrast [[Last Dance]] that is considered a one on one version of this trope. ConstrastContrast [[To Win Without Fighting]].

* Saito from ''[[ZeroThe noFamiliar Tsukaimaof Zero]]'' faces {{spoiler|an army of 70 ,000 man, eventually dying but he managed to hold them for 4four days in order to allow rest of TristainsTristain's army to evacuate. He gets better though}}

** Later he comments that it was {{spoiler|easier to face an army of 70 ,000 man than a pissed -off Louise.}}

* The last few episodes of both seasons of ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex|Ghost in the Shell]]''. {{spoiler|The first by a Narc Hit squad, of all things, and the second by a proper [[False-Flag Operation|False Flag]] operating [[War for Fun and Profit|military industrial complex]] JSDF.}}

* In ''[[Kakurenbo]]'' this is how the [[Creepy Twins]] choose to go down after being cornered by the demons.

* There are two last stands in ''[[Highschool of the Dead]]'' (at least, in the anime--possiblyanime—possibly others in the manga). The first was when the gang was cornered at a wire barricade. They slaughtered dozens of zombies, but more kept coming, but just as things approached the end they were rescued by the [[Big Damn Heroes|timely arrival]] of a group of people with firefighter equipment. The second time happened at Saya's parents' estate. The zombies broke through the gate and flooded the compound, leaving Saya's [[Back-to-Back Badasses|parents]] and their guards to try to hold off [[Not Using the Z Word|Them]] long enough for the civilians to escape. Their fate was left unknown, but it didn't look good.

* From ''[[Naruto]]'', we get one as part of the [[Nigh Invulnerable|Third Raikage]]'s backstory. {{spoiler|He held off an army of enemy ninja, [[Beyond the Impossible|10,000 strong]] to cover [[Father to His Men|his comrades retreat]]. He fought for three days and nights before he finally succumbed to chakra exhaustion. Note, its only possible he died of ''exhaustion'' instead of any injury, considering he could [[NoWon't SellWork On Me]] a fricking [[Razor Wind|Futon]]: [[Sphere of Destruction|Rasenshuriken]].}}

* [[Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness|Dumbledores Army and The Year of Darkness]] is a long build-up to what is fully expected to be a [[Last Stand]] by the Hogwarts students against Lord Voldemort.

* ''[[The TSAB - Acturus War|The TSAB Acturus War]]'' has {{spoiler|the ''Sacred War'' holding off a large number of TSAB vessels by doing [[Explosive Overclocking]] on its [[Wave Motion Gun|relativistic particle cannon]].}}

* In ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Return of the Jedi]]'' the Rebels go along with the idea of charging the Imperial fleet entrapping them at the Battle of Endor. The idea was that they were buying time so Han's team could knock out the Death Star's shield generator, as well as making it harder for the Death Star to one-shot their cruisers without risking some Imperial ships. Plan B, assuming they couldn't buy enough time or Han was already dead, was to damage the Imperial war machine as badly as they could in a [[Last Stand]] (with an option on punching a hole through the blockade so at least some ships could escape).

*** Of course, Balian's only real goal is to get the people out alive and relatively unharmed. The bravado is meant to convince Saladin that letting them surrender is a better idea than forcing a [[Last Stand]] scenario. Balian misinterprets Saladin's intentions, thinking that he wants the Christians all massacred rather than to retake the city in order to appease his followers. And in revenge for the horrors the Christians inflicted when they laid siege to the city before.

* ''[[Scarface (1983 film)|Scarface]]'':

* This sort of thing happens a LOT''lot'' in ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' (see the Tabletop section for more). [[Crapsack World]], and all that.

* Commissar [[Ciaphas Cain]], '''Hero of the Imperium''', is unusually privileged in having had ''[[Subverted Trope|two]]'' official Last Stands, and at the same place! '''AND''' he survived them both!

* At the end of [[Ben Counter]]'s ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]] [[Horus Heresy]]'' novel ''Galaxy in Flames'', the {{spoiler|betrayed Space Marines}} know they can not escape {{spoiler|the planet on which they had been virus-bombed}}. So they set out to make defeating them as costly as possible. {{spoiler|Loken and Torgaddon leave the rest because they have a chance to kill the other members of the Mournivale, which would hurt Horus; when Tarvitz says they may not meet again, Loken is certain that there is no "may" about it. And when the ''[[Humongous Mecha|Dies Irae]]'' comes into play, Tarvitz tells Vipes to kill Space Marines, because they can not damage that machine.}}

* In the ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' novel ''[[Grey Knights]]'', Justicar Alaric and a small team of his Grey Knights were about to face one of the most terrible daemons in the galaxy. In fact, it was one so terrible that it once massacred over 300 Grey Knights in one battle. To inspire his men:

* In [[James Swallow]]'s ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' novel ''[[Blood Angels|Deus Encarmine]]'', in the opening, the Blood Angels are convinced after the death of their captain that they are fighting a last stand. A brief surcease is followed by an even more devastating attack; they must give up the port they were defending, and one is so dispirited that only the suggestion that he [[Driven to Suicide|kill himself]] stiffens his resolve to fight on.

* In Chris Roberson's ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]] [[Blood Ravens]]'' novel ''Dawn of War II'', the defense against the tyrannids looks like a [[Last Stand]] by the end {{spoiler|and to nearly the very end when [[The Cavalry]] arrives}}.

* In [[Ben Counter]]'s ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' story "Words of Blood", Athellenas orders repeated retreats and has to threaten Valerian who objects to the dishonor, preferring a [[Last Stand]]. {{spoiler|Turns about that Athellenas had worked out how to provoke an [[Enemy Civil War]].}}

* In the ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]] [[Imperial Guard]]'' novel ''Cadian Blood'', the Cadian forces are unimpressed by the Last Stand of some [[New Meat]]: they can tell by where the bodies fell. {{spoiler|Later, Seth makes a more impressive Last Stand in the [[Battle in the Center of the Mind]], and though the daemon kills him, he dies laughing and saying the look at the daemon's face made the fight worth it.}}

* In Henry Zhou's ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' novel ''The Emperor's Mercy'', Imperial Guardsmen are surrounded by Chaos forces and are fighting on, despite dying of hunger and disease. Roth tells Celemine that they had no choice but to stay with them. The commander hears and instantly wants to fight a last charge: they can get them to their ship and [[You Shall Not Pass|hold off the enemy]] -- and—and that way, they can [[Famed in Story|be remembered]]. (They are. In fact, their eighteen minutes defense of the ship is immortalized in a mural ''on Terra''.)

* In Steve Parker's ''[[Imperial Guard]]'' novel ''Gunheads'', the 98th is staging a [[Last Stand]] -- theStand—the colonel refused to try to escape and went to hold up their regimental banner to encourage them -- whenthem—when the Gunheads arrive. ([[The Men First|The colonel is perfectly willing to escape if the tanks can open up a corridor where his men can escape]].)

* In Chris Roberson's ''[[Imperial Fists]]'' novel ''Sons of Dorn'', Captain Taelos starts to tell the surviving Scouts and sergeant that he is [[So Proud of You]] in preparation for a force they can not overcome -- whenovercome—when [[The Cavalry]] arrives.

* In ''Legion of the Damned'' a half-strength company of Space Marines is making a desperate [[Last Stand]] against an entire Chaos Blood Crusade. They are supported by a few units of the local planetary defense force and a few thousand untrained civilians. The attacking force consists of an army of crazed cultists, mercenary units led by Chaos Space Marines and horrifying warp demons. However, this [[Last Stand]] is really a [[Thanatos Gambit]]. Once the defenders are all dead, the Chaos army might leave the planet before discovering where the women and children are hiding.

* There are several in [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s [[The Lord of the Rings|''Lord of the Rings''.]]

** In ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', Hurin makes his [[Last Stand]] at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Out of the bodyguard of Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs, 70 trolls were killed by Hurin before he was overborne by an endless supply of cheaper orcs and taken away to a [[Fate Worse Than Death]].

* The ''[[Mithgar|Iron Tower trilogy]]'' gives us the Battle of Challerain Keep, the ripoff of the Battle of Pellenor Fields from ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', in which almost all of the good guys are massacred trying to hold the city built up on a hill. About four important characters escape to make the Sauron-ripoff regret messing with them.

* [[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Ganner Rhysode]] in ''[[New Jedi Order|Traitor]]'': Holding off an entire army of the Yuuzhan Vong single-handedly with nothing but {{spoiler|Anakin Solo's lightsaber}} to aid him -- andhim—and finally {{spoiler|pulling down the building around him to take out the rest of the army, including their tank. This earned him a statue among the Yuuzhan Vong that was placed next to the statues of their gods, and he became immortalized in their mythology as "The Ganner", a guardian of the dead who kept the spirits from returning to life. This statue, though it belonged to the Vong, bore an inscription in Basic that simply read "[[You Shall Not Pass|NONE SHALL PASS]]".}}

* In [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]'s ''[[The Last Battle]]'', the protagonists prefer this to the Calormene offer of slavery for some and [[Human Sacrifice]] for others.

* The revolutionaries have a pretty impressive one in ''[[Les Misérables (novel)|Les Misérables]]''.

* This is almost the standard operating procedure of [[Bolo (literature)|BolosBolo]]s. Any force strong enough to threaten one is overwhelmingly strong in comparison to a human; the Bolos are programmed to protect human beings, so they are often left to cover the meatbag's retreat, and a 32000 tonne moving mountain of metal armed with multi-megaton nuclear beam cannons is as much of a target as it is a threat.

* Tracy Hickman's ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]'' novel ''Speed of Darkness'' ends on this note. To date, the most gripping, best, Starcraft novel I've had the pleasure to read.

* Quite a few people have done or attempted this sort of thing in the course of the ''[[BattleTech]]'' series. Famous examples include Khan Natasha Kerensky holding off the Jade Falcons on Twycross (invoked deliberately--asdeliberately—as a Khan of the their hated rivals, Clan Wolf, she had made herself into a high priority target to get the rest of her force away), and Aidan Pryde decimating the Com Guards on Tukayyid (more traditionally, he held the line to allow his unit to escape the battle, and for his only recently revealed daughter to be rescued).

* ''[[Blake's Seven|Blakes Seven7]]: Gauda Prime''. Avon realizes the others are dead, Blake himself is dead by his own hand, and he's surrounded by Federation troops...He put on his best [[Slasher Smile]] and raises the gun one last time before the scene fades to black.

* One of the standard scenarios in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]''. 3rd edition actually had maps and paper counters for a scenario called "Fornerond's Last Stand," in which a High Elf force had been ambushed by greenskins.

* ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'''s setting gives everyone ample opportunities to die heroically, both on and off the tabletop. A 4th Edition scenario, typically the last mission in a campaign, revolved around one side's Last Stand; the defenders won if they had any surviving models at the end of the game, meaning they held out long enough to let their comrades escape, or that they killed enough of the enemy to have their names forever etched into their opponent's minds.

*** The latest [[Space Marine|Space Marines]]s codex mentions that many chapters' histories feature such heroic last stands, [[Honor Before Reason|many of which were probably unnecessary]].

** The Necrons actively avoid this, preferring to teleport away without a trace rather than lose a battle. In earlier editions this was even the army's [[Achilles' Heel]] - once it had been reduced to a certain percentage of its starting models, the rest would phase out, giving the opponent the victory.

* An actual [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=27231 card] in ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', from the Apocalypse set. It has a lot of interesting effects, as it represents, effectively, the ''entire planet's'' [[Last Stand]] against [[The Legions of Hell]].

* In ''[[Ragnarok Online]]'', the Gunslinger's ''[[Last Stand]]'', gives bonus to attack power and attack speed at the cost of the ability to move (works with all weapons). May also be combined with [[More Dakka|Gatling Fever]].

** In ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]'' skirmishes, the AI doesn't do so well with things like "saving resources" and "wars of attrition".

* Reversed in ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]: Brood War''. The last mission is a Last Stand of three factions against Kerrigan. And you're Kerrigan...

** Then in ''[[StarcraftStarCraft II|Wings of Liberty]]'', {{spoiler|the last protoss mini-campaign mission is set in the [[Bad Future]] where Kerrigan was killed, resulting in the Fallen One using hybrids to enslave the zerg and annihilate the terrans. The mission is a last stand mission where you fight until the very last protoss in existence dies}}.

* In ''[[Punch -Out!!]]'' for the Wii, there's a mode called Mac's Last Stand, where you just keep on going through enemies. {{spoiler|But if you lose three times, that's it. GAME OVER. Mac retires and the Career mode is locked. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|It really is Mac's Last Stand]].}}

** ''World at War'' introduced the [[Nazi Zombies]] game mode, pitting endless hordes of the undead against four [[Crazy Awesome|insane]] soldiers. Or [[John F. Kennedy|two]] [[Richard Nixon|presidents]], a Secretary of Defense, and [[Fidel Castro|a dictator]]. Or [[Sarah Michelle Gellar]], [[Danny Trejo]], [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|Robert Englund]], and [[The Walking Dead (TV series)|Michael Rooker]]. One of the last DLC maps took place on the moon, it's not a game mode that takes itself too seriously.

* If you've played ''[[Hitman (video game series)|Hitman]]'', then you've done this at least once. Alarm goes off, and instead of (or at the same time as) cursing the gods for your failure, you whip out the dual silverballers and make things messy before you go.

* A meta-example from ''[[Halo]] 2'': After Microsoft shut down the X-Box Live servers for the game, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130828230045/http://kotaku.com/5525837/fourteen-halo-2-fans-refuse-to-let-it-die the "Noble Fourteen" were players who simply refused to log off] and stayed in the game, continuing the game's final deathmatch. At one point, [http://kotaku.com/5528475/halo-2-diehards-lured-with-halo-reach-beta-codes Bungie tried to bribe them] with ''Halo Reach'' beta codes, but twelve remained. [http://kotaku.com/5535672/the-last-man-to-play-halo-2-on-xbox-live The last of them was disconnected (involuntarily) on May 10th], more than a month after the official shutdown date.

* ''[[Supreme Commander]]: Forged Alliance'' sets one of these up, complete with actual [[Last Stand]] for a major character, though the player still 'wins' by surviving the massive onslaught long enough to be beamed up.

* [[Stone Wall|Protection]] [[Mighty Glacier|Warriors]] in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' have an ability called [[Last Stand]] that can be used as this trope. It boosts your HP for 15 seconds, but when it wears off, you lose all of the HP it gave you, meaning if you're not healed, you're at 1 HP and the next hit is fatal.

* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' Episode 2. Rosa's [[Dying Moment of Awesome]]. Proof that she does care for her daughter, despite everything.

* ''[[Assassin's Creed: Revelations]]'': {{spoiler|Yusuf}} has one offscreen. Near the end of the game, the villain sends a horde of templars to kidnap a woman [[Hostage for Macguffin|to use as leverage for the keys to Altaïr's library]]. When Ezio happens upon the scene, he finds {{spoiler|Yusuf}} lying lifeless in her house, on the other end of a carpet of dead templars.

* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]'', "Last Stand" is a signature skill of the Captain class that prevents the Captain from being defeated for its duration. What really makes it fit the trope is another Captain skill, "In Harm's Way" that redirects incoming damage from the rest of the party [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|onto the Captain]]. Enforcing the trope further, the default duration of Last Stand is five seconds shorter than In Harm's Way.

* ''[[Nodwick]]:'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20120722014816/http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php Bracing for a last stand]. {{spoiler|Surprise! It's the henchmen!}}

* ''[[Bug (webcomic)Martini|Bug]]'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20130517174452/http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/scarface/ deconstructs] this trope.

* In ''[[Nip and Tuck]]'', the [[Show Within a Show]] ''Rebel Cry'' has [https://web.archive.org/web/20120512185350/http://www.rhjunior.com/NT/00715.html the hero declare he will fight one to defend the only thing they have yet to take from him.]

* ''[[No Spanish Civil War in 1936]]'' gives us an impressive Last Stand in Zaragoza done by the Spanish Army, led by Francisco Franco. The German siege of Zaragoza starts in March 28th28, 1941. They send the best they have, Wehrmacht and SS-wise into the city, and they are fighting soldiers, militias and civilians that don't want to leave the city (a "ragtag force of Spanish and British regular troops, militiamen, and simple civilians", literally). The German estimation is that it'll take 10 days to take the city. It takes them that much (April 7th7) to surround the city completely, pitting 50,000 Allied soldiers and militias against 200,000 German soldiers. It takes them ''45 days'' (May 12th12) just to take the northern half of the city. Zaragoza doesn't surrender until ''June 3rd''. The result? A good chunk of the German army invading Spain has been held up in Zaragoza for more than two months, the Germans have lost a boatload of tanks and they got 100,000 casualties. The Allies have just 50,000 casualties, mostly Spanish, plus some planes that were trying to drop supplies to keep the siege going.

* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] by [[Stoic Woobie]] Blackavar the rabbit in ''[[Watership Down]]'' when it seems their [[Great Escape]] has been cut off.

* The ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers|Galaxy Rangers]]'' episode "Armada" was fairly similar to the ''[[Babylon 5]]'' example. The Crown Forces vastly outnumbered the League's and were pretty much ready to steamroll Earth. [[Da Chief|Commander Walsh]] even invoked the trope. It was only at the last minute that [[The Cavalry|Shane and Niko arrived]], exposing a critical flaw in the Crown's experimental engine design.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131117001546/http://www.cracked.com/article/197_the-7-most-badass-last-stands-in-history-battle/ This article], as the title implies, chronicles some of the most [[Badass]] one man last stands in history.

* Most medieval sieges ended in either in a [[Last Stand]], or in the [[Genre Savvy]] defenders surrendering to the besieger in an attempt to avert a trope that would get them all killed. Castles that were taken without surrender were usually taken with [[Betrayal Tropes|inside help]].

** There were rules about this. When the castle had been lost to the point that it was down to a last stand the defenders could surrender with honor, but subjecting the attackers to the hell of a final meat-grinder battle meant they would receive no mercy. Later, post-Renaissance, walled cities and castles could surrender with honor after the wall was breached, especially as cannon made such defenses less effective. However, should the besieger actually have to attack (the first wave was often called the Forlorn Hope), the defenders were usually subject to massacre. Highly effective as a means to induce your opponent to have an incentive to yield--andyield—and thus spare yourself losses.

* A semi-aversion: the [[wikipedia:Rorkechr(27)Rorke's Drift|battle of Rorke's drift,]] where 150 <s>English</s> <s>[[Did Not Do the Research|Welsh]]</s> ''British'' <ref>The 2nd/24th didn't become the South Wales Borderers until two years later, and in 1879 mainly recruited from rural England and Ireland regardless of what [[Zulu]] may say.</ref> soldiers held off a force of 4,000 Zulus through proper use of fortifications and sheer tenacity. The soldiers inflicted enough casualties on the Zulu warriors to convince them that taking the outpost was unnecessarily costly, and most of the defenders escaped with their lives.

* I also think theThe [[wikipedia:Battle of Wizna|Battle of Wizna]] is pretty much mandatory here. Outnumbered over 58:1, with no tanks or air support, horribly outgunned, the Polish commander "swore that he would not leave his post alive". And theThe Polish forces proceed to inflict remarkably severe casualties upon the Nazis - before, of course, ultimately being annihilated.

*** According to [[The Other Wiki]], the last surviving 40 of the 720700-800 Polish soldiers surrendered after being directly ordered by their commanding officer to do so. The commander chose to kill himself rather than surrender his position.

* The Battle of Camerone in which 65 officers and men of [[Legion of Lost Souls|the French Foreign Legion]] held off a Mexican force of approximately 2,000 for ten hours. When first asked to surrender, Capitaine Jean Danjou replied simply with, ''"We have munitions. We will not surrender."'' The last twothree men on their feet were finally persuaded to surrender on terms.<ref>When offered that last chance to surrender, one of the Legionnaires announced the terms on which they'd agree; these included that they'd '''keep their weapons'''. The Mexican officer replied, [[Worthy Opponent|"To such men as you I could refuse nothing."]]</ref> The nineteen surviving legionairesLegionnaires had their wounds tended and were repatriated along with their arms and the bodies of their fallen comrades. Camerone is commemorated annually by the Foreign Legion to this day.

{{quote|''"The Legion Dies, it does not Surrender!"''|BattleAttributed cry ofto Capitaine Jean Danjou, commander ofcommanding the Legionnaires at Camerone.}}

* Battle of the Bulge, early days of the battle. As related by Hugh M. Cole in [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030075207/http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_14.htmHTM "The Ardennes: The Battle of the Bulge"]: "A small group of [American] stragglers suddenly become tired of what seems to be eternally retreating. Miles back they ceased to be part of an organized combat formation, and recorded history, at that point, lost them. The sound of firing is heard for fifteen minutes, an hour, coming from a patch of woods, a tiny village, the opposite side of a hill. The enemy has been delayed; the enemy resumes the march westward. Weeks later a graves registration team uncovers mute evidence of a last-ditch stand at woods, village, or hill."

* Even Ireland has had a few of these, even in the present day when it's a neutral country. While taking part in a UN Peacekeeping mission in Congo during the 1960's, an army of separatists attacked the UN position at [[wikipedia:Siege of Jadotville|Jadotville]]. The Irish force of about 150 were armed with nothing heavier than personal weapons and some WWI-era machine guns. The attackers had 4,000+ troops, mortars, a field gun, and a ''frakking jet''. The Irish held them off for 5 days, when they finally ran out of bullets and food.

* [http://www.ww2f.com/eastern-europe/13579-pavlovs-house.html#post164521 Sergeant Yakov Pavlov and his platoon, trapped behind enemy lines in a half-collapsed apartment building in Stalingrad,]{{Dead link}} [http://www.cracked.com/article_18550_5-true-war-stories-that-put-every-action-movie-to-shame.html constantly beating the crap out of attacking German troops] ''for 59 days''. [[Badass]]...

* The Battle of Berlin was this for [[Those Wacky Nazis]]. The Russians threw everything they had at the city, and the last bastions of the Third Reich held out for a while, but were ultimately fighting a battle most knew they weren't going to win. This was also the battle in which [[Adolf Hitler]] decided that it was [[Better to Die Than Be Killed]], and shot himself in the head when even the [[Ax Crazy|he]] Hitler realized there was no way out.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131206234641/http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs.html The 21 Sikhs] at the [[wikipedia:Battle of Saragarhi|Battle of Saragarhi]]. Twenty-one Sikh soldiers defending a small but vital outpost on the Indian border were faced with twenty thousand tribesmen armed with rifles and heavy cannons, and all of them volunteered to stay. They staved off the enemy army for most of a day before being overwhelmed, killing an estimate of eight hundred enemy troops and warning the British army of the attack, giving them time to prepare a defense and counterattack. When the British Parliament heard of the battle, it resulted in a standing ovation, and September 12 is now considered an official holiday in India.