World War II: Difference between revisions

* [[All of Them]]: An [[Urban Legend]] states that on [[World War II|D-Day]] dawn a German soldier looked out at the English Channel and phoned his superiors:

{{quote|'''Soldier:''' Allied ships in the Channel!

'''Command:''' How many?

'''Soldier:''' All of them. }}

** However this is ''based on'' a real-life occurrence. A local German commander with the rank of Major and the name of Werner Pluskat did sight the invasion force and was so dismayed that he relayed to his superiors that the allies had ten thousand ships coming right at him. At first they thought Pluskat had [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!|lost his mind]] because there was no way his claim could possibly be true, until he assured them that the exact number wasn't important but there was clearly a massive fleet out there. His exaggeration wasn't exceptionally far off either, as the Allies did have several thousand ships involved in Operation Overlord.

* [[Stop Drowning and Stand Up]]: There is an amusing story recounted in Stephen Ambrose's ''D-Day'' by Corporal George Ryan as he got off his landing craft at Omaha Beach.

{{quote|Shells were bursting around the LCT. "We gotta get off this thing," someone in Ryan's crew shouted, and they all jumped into the water. Ryan held back. ""I wasn't so much afraid of them bullets or the shells as I was of the cold Channel water. I cannot swim."

Ryan threw off all his equipment, inflated his Mae West (Not the actress, his life preserver), and began to tiptoe in off the ramp when "some German opened up on the side of the LCT with his machine gun, blblblblang. That convinced me. Into the water I dove. I pushed with all my might and started going. I'm swimming and I'm swimming. [[Stop Drowning and Stand Up|Somebody taps me on the shoulder and I look up]]. I was in a foot of water, swimming. You talk about a will to live. If they hadn't stopped me I would have swam two miles inland." }}

* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: Lots of it, culminating in the [[Atomic Hate|nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]].