All antipersonal mines explode once pressure is released and announce they are armed with an audable click.
All platoons have one guy who is going to flip out mentally.
Soldiers never get on with their lives after the war.
An entire division can’t take that fortress! But a small squad of expendable men…might…just…get…lucky
Every personal item is bulletproof as a ceramic balistics plate - a bible, that tin whisky flask, a pack of cigarettes. Everything except your body armor.
Are you forgetting Sessue Hayakawa’s Oscar-nominated performance as the POW camp commandant in The Bridge on the River Kwai? He does put Alec Guinness in the “box” for punishment, but he’s eventually humanized.
Yep, during Basic Training. I eagerly look forward to getting my own pair in a few weeks. I don’t know if the Army ever required the men to wear them in the field or not though (I think nowadays, you can wear your own glasses once you get out of Basic)
The second world war was that incident when Germany had all of Europe and northern Africa secured in nazi tyranny, and the United States decided to land a bunch of Marines in Normandy, which swept the continent clean of all the bad guys. Then there was freedom, for which Europeans are ungrateful.
I thought the point of those glasses was that they are solid nylon, and thus very, very durable?
My own contribution:
Everyone has flashbacks to combat once they return to civilian life, because, as a prior post mentioned, everyone in the military spends the entire conflict fighting the enemy. No one has a flashback to spending three days loading a ship with supplies, or driving around a general, or refueling an airplane.
Soldiers are either heroic or crazed psychopaths, with little room between.
Generals are serious men of gravitas, charged with making momentous decisions that weigh heavily on them, not desk jockies who have no clue what is really going on at ground level.
Soldiers are all more-or-less friends. They never get pissed at each other, tell each other to fuck off, or take a swing at each other.
And if they take a swing at eachother, it’s in a semi-formal setting, usually with the Captain or the Sergeant overseeing, sometimes even with boxing gloves and mouthguards
No, you misunderstand. Being a sentry is so boring the soliders prefer to die, just so something interesting happens.
Here’s what I know from war movies:[ul]
[li]If you’re part of a small, SpecOps team sent deep into enemy territory to blow up an installation/recover a piece of vital technology/extract a prisoner, you’re going to[list][/li][li]Lose all of your equipment in–especially vital communications gear–in some unplanned encounter or accident,[/li][li]be betrayed by one of your local partisan contacts (most likely the beautiful woman…you can’t trust them),[/li][li]discover that the information you’re been given is hopelessly out of date or just plain wrong, and[/li][li]overcome all odds using ingenously improvised equipment to complete your mission and escape with only casualties of unimportant and mostly immemorably squad members named Hawkins or Rogers.[/ul][/li][li]Nearby explosions are either deadly or minor distractions, depending on how important the characters in the area of effect are.[/li][li]A trained sniper in a helicopter that is weaving and dodging in turbulent wind can hold a steady sight picture and shoot right through the scope of a competing sniper at 600m.[/li][li]If you get a letter at home informing you that your wife is pregnant, you’ll be dead by the next reel. [/li][li]You can capture Steve McQueen, but he’ll just escape again and again. It’s not really worth the effort. [/li][li]Lee Marvin is indestructible. If you could just make tank armor out of the artificially cloned skin of Lee Marvin, you’d have an unstoppable weapon.[/list][/li]Stranger
Well, isn’t that what someone would flashback on ? Given that combat is likely to be rather more stressful that driving people around, loading cargo, and so forth.
Besides, it wouldn’t make for a good scene to have the traumatized vet clutching his wife or buddy and sobbing, “It’s all I see, over and over again ! Crate # 13AB-7TU-984 ! I can’t stand it any more !”
The only Nations involved in World War II were the USA, Nazi Germany, Japan, and later on, the Soviet Union, who waited until the Americans had almost won and then rushed in and captured Berlin for the Americans, so they wouldn’t tire themselves out fighting through all that rubble, Volkssturm, and wrecked tanks.
WWII also featured Special Guest Appearances by Britain, Australia, and Italy, but they were only there to help the US fight the CommieNazi Stormtroopers and ensure that everyone could drink Coke and listen to Jazz Music.
My grandfather was about Murphy’s size (his nickname growing up was “Banty”, after those small chickens), and he spent his WWII tour of duty in Germany as … a cook.
Submarine’s always have to close the hatch and some of the crew drown. Points added if someone is looking through the window as the cabin fills up with water.
Um…do you not watch war movies? I’m hard-pressed to think of a movie where there aren’t soldiers telling each other to F off or occassionally fighting (or at least stepping to each other).
That cargo container you just risked (or lost) your life to retrieve? It’s always going to be full of socks, or foot powder or 84mm shells for the 60mm mortar. Just leave it.
Not strictly true ,theres often a senior officers clerk at field H.Q. who passes on the order to go on the suicide mission,is deliberately unhelpful, looks down on real soldiers and spends the whole war creeping round the C.O.
There are always a ton of soldiers with the ace of spades card in their helmet strap. But none with any of the other 51 cards. What about the other 51 cards? Are all of the poker games being played short a card?
“Heh, Kowalski’s trying to draw into a 3 aces hand. Sucker.”